Seeking an accommodation between Irish nationalism and Ulster unionism, and soliciting American support, he was both critical of British government policy in Northern Ireland and opposed to the republican embrace of "armed struggle".

Ó Fiaich's colleague, Monsignor Brendan Devlin recalls that the future cardinal and Primate of All Ireland turned his student (with whom he spoke in Irish) towards the local history of Ulster.

Determined to engage the great social problems of housing, unemployment and emigration, they were willing to accept "the Protestant tradition in the North as legitimate" and that Irish unity should be achieved only "by the will of the Northern majority.

[17] Involved in voluntary housing movement in his home city, Hume argued that (notwithstanding "excellent assistance" form the Ministry of Development),[12]: 20  he battled the same sectarian-political logic within Derry itself.

[7]: 53–54 A later official inquiry found that all that had been required for police to begin "using their batons indiscriminately" against the 400 protesters (among them Belfast Republican Labour MP Gerry Fitt, hit twice on the head and hospitalised)[12]: 76  was defiance of the initial order to disperse.

It also committed to a needs-based points system for public housing, an ombudsman to investigate citizen grievances, the abolition of the rates-based franchise in council elections, and a review of the broad security provisions of the Special Powers Act.

[22] When these reforms were placed in jeopardy by the internal unionist dissension, and a snap election was called by Prime Minister Terence O'Neill, Hume decided to enter electoral politics.

Devlin had made international headlines, aged 21, as the youngest MP to enter the British House of Commons following her victory in April 1969 as the "Unity" candidate in a Mid Ulster by-election, and again in December when given a six-months sentence for her role in the defence of the Bogside.

While they were committed to "eventual" Irish unification—to a new all-Ireland constitution that would provide "the framework for the emergence of a just, egalitarian and secular society"[25]—this would be on the basis of "the consent of the majority of the people in the North and in the South".

[24]: 142  As a further token of their cross-community bona fides, Hume cited the fact that Cooper, among other founding members, was Protestant, evidence, he suggested, that "the important issue" for the party was "human rights not religion".

[14]: 57 In June 1971, while he appeared to join his colleagues in responding positively to the offer of Prime Minister Brian Faulkner to more fully engage them in parliament through committees,[26]: 36–42  Hume suggested to party activists that it was time to consider scrapping the Government of Ireland Act 1920.

[24]: 155–156, 138  But when in July the Unionist government refused to authorise a public inquiry into the fatal shooting by the British Army of two men in Derry, Hume carried the day and led the SDLP out of Stormont, declaring it unreformable.

[30] In the interim, Hume, together with Paddy Devlin, had his first experience of mediating between the Provisional IRA and the British government: 18 days of cease-fire assisted contacts that PIRA decisively broke off with Bloody Friday.

There was a need to respond to the general "unificationist feeling" among nationalists that had followed the closure of Stormont,[33]: 39  and at the same time to fend off the challenge from PIRA who were continuing to draw on public outrage over Bloody Sunday and the slow winding down of internment.

[34]: 96 [35] Hume's party colleague, Social Services minister, Paddy Devlin regretted the SDLP had not "adopted a two stage approach, by allowing power sharing at Stormont to establish itself".

[36] Arguing with what Faulkner regarded as "exasperating dogmatism",[37]: 428  Hume would neither delay the Council, nor accept the condition now sought for its introduction by pro-executive unionists: the repeal of Articles 2 and 3 of the Irish Constitution claiming Northern Ireland as the Republic's national territory.

[45] In defending the Sunningdale agreement, Hume suggested that it had been "purely on the basis of [their] agreed economic and social policies that members of the executive had come together", and that to consider the case for state intervention, worker democracy and a radical approach to poverty they would do so again.

[52] In his personal memoirs,[53] Hume passes over Currie and other of his one-time fellow SDLP MPs with single references, including Seamus Mallon who served 22 years beside him in the party as deputy leader.

[14]: 103 When in March 1981, Sinn Féin put forward PIRA hunger-striker Bobby Sands as the Anti H-Block candidate for a Fermanagh and South Tyrone by-election, Hume prevented his party colleague, Austin Currie, from entering the contest.

[64] Together with the continued swelling of support in Ireland and internationally as nine further hunger strikers died, by standing aside the SDLP is seen as having accommodated the first steps of the Provisional republican movement on the political path that would ultimately see Sinn Féin in 2007 supplant the party as the principal representative of nationalism.

The question was whether the provisional republican movement would take responsibility for the suffering and loss caused by the choices it had made in responding to that presence, and whether it would accept that the "armed struggle" had not advanced the agreement needed for the divided country to exercise its right to sovereignty.

When Adams and Sinn Féin leadership refused to accept the need for an end to the PIRA campaign, when it was clear that their strategy would remain that of "the ballot box and the armalite", Hume publicly restated his moral and political rejection of their methods.

[14]: 142  (Later, in response to Sinn Féin, he was to caution against underestimating the challenge involved: Ulster Protestants had their own "deep-seated and deeply felt reasons" to "wish to live apart from the rest of the people of Ireland").

[72] Yet a month later, in June 1983, Hume in his maiden speech in the British House of Commons, and in subsequent debates, called on the government to reconsider its consistent policy--"that there will be no change in the constitutional position of the Northern Ireland without the majority's consent".

Disregarding universal unionist opposition, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher signed an agreement with the Irish Taoiseach, Garret FitzGerald that for the first time gave the Republic a direct role in the government of Northern Ireland.

[77] In their submission to the inter-party talks in 1992, the Ulster Unionists (then still the largest party) said they could envisage a range of cross-border bodies so long as these were under the control of the Northern Assembly, did not involve an overarching all-Ireland Council, and were not designed to be developed in the direction of joint authority.

[78] In the course of the talks, Hume acknowledged the provisional republican movement as "the one organisation that could make the greatest contribution" to an agreed future (he also revealed to John Chilcott of the Northern Ireland Office, that he knew PIRA already had a back channel to the government through another St.Columb's old boy, Brendan Duddy).

[14]: 282–284  (After Trimble resigned as First Minister in 2001, bringing down the first, UUP-SDLP-led, post-Agreement executive, Mitchell's report was the basis on which PIRA finally agreed procedures to put its weaponry "beyond use", a process not completed until 2005).

[85] In the Multi-Party Agreement signed in Belfast on Good Friday, 10 April 1998, Hume and Adams conceded the Ulster Unionist conditions for cross-border bodies,[86]: 1155–1157 [87] and the amendment of Articles 2 and 3 of the Irish constitution.

[92] In 2010, Hume topped a viewer poll by the Irish national broadcaster RTÉ as "Ireland's Greatest" ahead of Michael Collins, Mary Robinson, James Connolly, and Bono.