Price of Hume's invitation to Sinn Fein to step aboard the peace train was too high

There were bucket-loads of effluent hurled last week at anyone who criticised John Hume for legitimising Sinn Fein. As Eilis O'Hanlon pointed out in yesterday's Sunday Independent, "Republicans may once have plotted to kill John Hume and even tried to burn the former SDLP leader's wife and daughter alive when they were alone at the family's home in the Bogside," but when it came to writing about him, "in the IRA's case, it would apparently be rude to bring up the past."