Baroness Paisley says her husband and John Hume had mutual respect, which we need today

Speaking to the News Letter yesterday, Baroness Paisley expressed personal sympathy to Mr Hume’s widow, Pat, who she said had been “a great supporter of John’s”.

She said: “I know what it’s like to go through the bereavement of your husband.”

Baroness Paisley, whose husband Ian served alongside Mr Hume for decades as MPs in London and MEPs in Brussels, said that “irrespective of politics or religion, people’s needs right across the board are the same – we feel pain the same, we feel joy the same”.

Referring to the relationship between her husband and Mr Hume, she said: “Despite their political differences, and despite their religious differences, the three of them [as MEPs] – John Taylor, John Hume and Ian – all worked together for the good of Northern Ireland in general.”

She said that Dr Paisley and Mr Hume “had respect for one another’s beliefs, religiously and politically, and they still talked together” even when they had disputes.

She said that when her husband and Mr Hume discussed political agreements and disagreements “it was not nasty – it was in friendship because they had a united interest in the country and the people that they represented”.

When asked what today’s leaders could learn from Mr Hume, Baroness Paisley said: “We live together and we need respect for one another’s arguments and for one another’s points of view, and no one has the ability to bully another person into changing their minds; everybody should have freedom of opinion and freedom to speak.”

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