The Day John Hume visited Margaret Thatcher

It nearly killed John Hume to leave the Bishop's presentation to the Forum a half an hour after it started, but he had to. Margaret Thatcher has asked to see him and Hume wasn't going to miss a chance to put his and the Forum's case. At the door he looked back eagerly. The round table Forum glowed under the television lights. Bishop Cathal Daly was dealing smoothly with his SDLP questioner. The Taoiseach, the Tanaiste, and the opposition leader and the pay ked press gallery were, straining to hear every word. Hume's Forum was at last hitting the headlines. By Olivia O Leary

He tucked Cathal Daly's opening statement into his pocket and accosted a BBC man in the ante-room. Where were the BBC cameras, where was their political correspondent? Now that Hume had forced the media in the Republic to take note, he wasn't going to let BBC Northern Ireland off the hook.

Their current affairs programmes had ignored the SDLP annual connference a fortnight before. They weren't going to be allowed to ignore the Forum. Neither was Margaret Thatcher.

Shepherded onto the plane by an Aer Lingus official, Hume was already working out what he needed to say. The last meeting with the British Prime Minister, some two years earlier, had been a stormy one. He had suggested terms on which the H-Blocks hunger strike could be settled, terms which could have headed off the deaths and the emotional campaign, terms which might as well have been granted earlier, since they were granted later, but too late, from Hume's point of view to avoid damage to the cause of constitutional nationalism in the North. Emerging from No. 10 Downing Street at the time, he said as much angrily to the waiting television cameras. Margaret Thatcher hadn't forgiven him.

Her cry had always been that she didn't understand the heat of emotion about the hunger strikers. They were, after all, starving themselves to death. She had simply decided not to forcefeed them. Neither did she understand the sense of Catholic alienation from the whole Northern Ireland state. How did they feel alienated ahd why?

Hume would have a chance to tell her.

As the policeman on duty at Westminster waved Hume's taxi through, he said suddenly: "Do you know where they put poor old John Redmond, the Irish MP who sacrificed everything for them?

They put his bust outside the Stranger's Bar, That's as far as he got - the Stranger's Bar."

Hume has no intention of joining Redmond outside the Stranger's Bar. He wants to be Ireland's not Britain's, favourite Irishman.

Leading the way to the Stranger's Bar, which is where MPs entertain visitors, Hume waved an expansive arm. "Welcome", he said mincingly, "to mah cleb". He admitted he felt like a stranger at Westminster. He felt constitutionally uneasy, and that was the way he wanted it. He had John Redmond's bust to remind him that Westminister, to coin a phrase, had been the graveyard of Irish politicians and if Redmond failed to haunt him, Gerry Fitt was always there.

Hume went looking for the group of Protestant schoolgirls he was to entertain before he met Thatcher. He settled with the policeman who had ushered them in and bought them their lunch. Where were they now, asked Hume. "Out on the terrace, Mr Hume" said the policeman, "with Lord Fitt". Hume smiled wryly and sprinted up the steps to the long terrrace overlooking the Thames. Fitt was in full flight explaining the geography of the House of Commons, and the Waterside girls listened, sipping the martinis Gerry had bought for them.

Gerry had stolen a march.

The girls had their picture taken with Hume, talking pointedly all the time about "Londonderry" as Hume went to fetch Protestant MP Willie Ross down to meet them. Their political stance is now miles apart, and Fitt is quick in the corridors of Westminister to point up what he would regard as the virulent green of Hume's nationalism. But he's still drawn to Hume, greets him like an old friend, treats him to his latest "wait till I tell you, hey" story. Gerry may now be a national institution - Britain's favourite Irishman - but John is the one in active politics, John is the one with the news. Gerry likes news. Hume tolerates him, teases him "How can You bear being called My Lord" he asks incredulously of Fitt. Fitt grins. "I mean, My Lord" scoffed Hume, the boy from Derry. "How can you bear all that stuff?" Gerry looked as though he could bear it very well.

Hume now had a choice to make.

The house was debating the Long Kesh break-out covered in the Hennessy report and Hume had something to say. He didn't want to talk about the report but about the fact that while the Commons could give prime time to a debate about what he saw as the symptoms of Northern Ireland's conndition, it refused to discuss the condiition itself, except when the house was practically empty in the small hours, and it refused totally to discuss the causes or the cure for that condition. If he said that, would he anger the Prime Minister before their meeting?

Gerry Fitt was telling him about the extraordinary freedom being given the prisoners in Long Kesh. Did Hume know, he asked, that the prisoners were allowed to bring their wives arid girlfriends off to a special room during visits? Gerry sounded shocked. Hume didn't see anything wrong with it. It would be a humane thing to do. Anyway, the freedoms which existed in Long Kesh had been agreed after the calling off of the hunger strike, and had been agreed at the highest British Government level, so what was new?

Hume went into the chamber where Jim Prior was trying to wriggle out of any responsibility for the prison breakout. Taking his seat on the Labour benches in front of Merlyn Rees and across the floor from where Margaret Thatcher sat in black velvet and pearls behind the wriggling Jim Prior, he bided his time. One arm flung along the green benches, his face assumed that haughty dromedary expression which it adopts when he's thinking three moves ahead. The Labour Northern Ireland spokesman, Peter Archer, began to reply, criticising the insensitivity of the Thatcher and Duke of Edinburgh visits to Dromad. Beside Hume, the Unionist members sprang to defend the Duke's right to visit his regiment. Hume listened for a moment and then asked to speak. The speaker agreed readily. He usually bows to Hume, who speaks rarely enough and amounts to a one-man party.

Hume spoke for two minutes.

They were dealing with the symptoms, not the causes of the Norhtern Ireland problems, he complained. Why couldn't they understand the sense or alienation of Northern Catholics? If eight policemen at Brixton had been charged with killing blacks and the Prime Minister and a member of the royal family had made a point of going to Brixton station to extend Christmas wishes, wouldn't there be an . .outcry in Britain?

"That shut them," said Hume happily.

He straightened his tie, gulped a scalding cup of coffee and headed off to meet Thatcher. "Give us a packet of fags, I'm on my way to meet Maggie." he announced cheerfully to the barman and a group of Labour MPs .

Margaret Thatcher saw him in her Westminster office. "I don't think we have any Irish," she apologised. Would he have Scotch. Hume said he would, he wasn't a bigot. Mrs Thatcher joined him in a Scotch. And Hume started on what he had come to say. Her invitation to him had been a gesture of friendship and he was determined to keep it that way. He avoided obvious flashpoints like the Dromad visit but explained again that the hunger strike and her own government's attitude to it had created serious difficulties for the SDLP, had allowed the development of an emotional campaign which had created apolitical platform for the Provisionals. He explained that politicians like himself who were looking for progress in non-violent ways had to tackle the problem of an alienated minority community. He warned that the extent of that alienation was not at all appreciated in Britain. Mrs Thatcher didn't underrstand. She asked him for examples. He gave them to her.

It was more difficuit talking to a woman. You couldn't swear and bang the table, as with Willie Whitelaw. And she looked tired and thin. He spoke of the Forum and his hopes for it and gave her his copy of the Bishop Cathal Daly statement made in Dublin that morning which claimed that the Bishops didn't want a Catholic State for a Catholic people. She expressed interest in the outcome of the Forum, as indeed she has before. He spent an hour with her and came away, happy at Ieast, that she had listened.

Dining in the members' restaurant that night, waving at Roy Hattersley and other Labour members with whom he's friendly, Hume admitted that the Tories have almost stopped listening. IRA violence had closed Tory ears. But the Forum had pushed Margaret Thatcher to talk to him. The Labour Party had promised a debate on the Forum report and the Tories hadn't ruled it out. The Forum report might yet have them hopping up and down on those green benches, and call the ghost of John Redmond from the Stranger's Bar.