John Hume was a giant of Northern Ireland politics who rejected violence entirely

To add that qualifier, ‘within nationalism’, is not to try to diminish his standing but to reflect the fact that he had a very different world view to unionists. Mr Hume once said something similar about David Trimble, explaining his respect for someone of a profoundly different British Orange tradition to his own Catholic Irish background.

Among unionists there will always be lasting respect for Mr Hume’s repudiation of violence. The party that he helped found, the SDLP, was unwavering on that point, and bravely so, given the enmity its activists faced in republican areas.

All through the years of terror, the nationalist community, by a large margin, endorsed the SDLP as their lead party, even after Sinn Fein began to contest elections in the 1980s. That remained so until after the second IRA ceasefire of 1997.

This key part of the historical record could be lost in the mists of time: that SDLP rejection of violence was vindicated in the electoral success of the party Mr Hume led for 22 years, and that later Sinn Fein dominance within nationalism, far from being approval of the IRA, only came after the IRA abandoned the armalite.

In the days before double jobbing was banned, Mr Hume shuttled between Londonderry, Belfast, Dublin, London and Brussels. Any thinking unionist could only aspire to be able to build connections with powerbrokers in America like he did.

Many of the associations that unionists make with Mr Hume are painful ones, from his insistence on the Council of Ireland at Sunningdale, to his boycott of the 1980s assembly, then him being rewarded behind the backs of unionists in 1985, and his talks with Gerry Adams in the late 1980s.

But recent political paralysis and instances of celebrations of terrorists have been a reminder of how much more agreeable it was for unionists when they had to deal with nationalist leaders such as Seamus Mallon and John Hume, who were unequivocal in their support for solely peaceful politics, and who helped cement all-island support for of the principle of consent over Northern Ireland.

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