Ireland and the world has said its farewell to John Hume, the former icon of moderate nationalism in Ireland, who died at the age of 83 following a long period of illness. His legacy is that he will be remembered as one of the key architects of the Irish peace process, and especially the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.

It was not a case of him taking gung-ho political risks which marked out John Hume and earned him a Nobel Peace Prize, but his stedfast ability to put principle before party. Coming from the Catholic part of Londonderry, Hume initially got involved with the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s before Northern Ireland literally exploded into decades of sectarian violence.

Politically, he recognised that if change was to come to Northern Irish politics, that vehicle could no longer be either the Stormont-based Irish Nationalist Party or the soft-socialist Northern Ireland Labour Party.    Along with the late Republican Labour MP, Gerry Fitt – later Lord Fitt – he established the moderate nationalist movement, the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP).

Within years, it was to become the majority voice within Northern nationalism. In spite of his vision of an Ireland at peace, the ‘elephant in the room’ always remained terrorist violence. And so in the late 1980s, Hume embarked on what would be the biggest gamble of his political career – trying to bring the Provisional IRA in from the cold and end its terror campaign.

At this point, Hume was already an established voice at Westminster as an MP, in Europe as an MEP, and enjoyed tremendous credibility in the United States. At equally tremendous political risk, Hume – by now SDLP leader – began talks with Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams. They became simply known as the Hume-Adams Talks.

It was a process which initially, when it became public, earned him a volume of political flak both from unionism and even within his own moderate nationalist camp. Undeterred, he soldiered on secure in what he saw as his peace vision. That bore fruit ultimately in August 1994 when the IRA declared its first major ceasefire.

The real cherry on the icing of the peace cake came in April 1998 when the Good Friday Agreement was signed, paving the way for the power-sharing Northern Ireland Assembly later that year. Hume saw his award of the Nobel Peace Prize jointly with then Ulster Unionist Party leader David Trimble – now Lord Trimble – as justification of the criticism he had endured over the Hume-Adams process.

While many others can claim to have had a role in the overall peace process which spawned the Good Friday Agreement, without doubt Hume was perhaps one of the biggest – if not the biggest – cog in that machinery. The iconic image of that success was the photo of Hume, along with Trimble and rock legend Bono – arms aloft – to the cheers of the crowd.

But that peace process came at a very high price for Hume personally. His almost workaholic ethos was beginning to take its toll on his health. He could have walked into the original post of the inaugural deputy First Minister at Stormont when power-sharing returned, opting instead for his SDLP deputy and close friend, the late Seamus Mallon, to take the coveted position.

Politically, there was also a price to be paid for bringing the IRA and Sinn Fein in from the cold and involving the republican movement in that democratic process. Part of this peace process was the ‘lending’ of traditional SDLP votes to Sinn Féin to stabilise that process. But gradually, over a handful of years, Sinn Féin began to eclipse the SDLP at Stormont, in Westminster and in Europe.

After 22 years at the helm of the SDLP, Hume’s health forced him to step aside in 2001. Ironically, his fellow Nobel Laurette Trimble faced the same situation in the unionist community with Ian Paisley’s more hardline DUP replacing the UUP as the leading voice of unionism.

But perhaps Hume’s greatest legacy since his birth in 1937 will not so much be the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, but that the Assembly it created has lasted since 1998, albeit with some rocky periods of suspension and collapse. As tributes from all shades of political opinion flow in for the late John Hume, his political achievements can be summarised in a simple statement: he gave true meaning to the concept of ‘sharing’ in Irish power-sharing.