At a time when the two sections of the community in Northern Ireland are hopefully approaching the end of their long nightmare, and endeavouring to find common ground between their differing though inter-related identities, it is especially useful to explore those periods of our history when appeals to a commonality of purpose were paramount. It is even more useful if we can view such periods through the eyes of men and women whose humanity was beyond question.

One such person was the Antrim weaver, James (‘Jemmy’) Hope. He was born in Templepatrick on 25 August, 1764 to a Presbyterian family originally of Covenanter stock. Hope was a working-class man who held certain fundamental ideals of human liberty and dignity as being greater than any ‘cause’. His primary motivation was to better the lives of his fellow human beings, and, in pursuit of this, he clearly believed that ends never justified means.

This was nowhere better exemplified than during his three-year period ‘on the run’ following the defeat of the Rising of 1798: “Determined never to be taken alive… I went with a brace of loaded pistols in my breast, but I never discharged them during all that time at any human creature, although I had repeated opportunities to have cut off Major Sirr and many other enemies, singly, with the greatest safety to myself. I never felt myself justified in shedding blood, except in cases of attack, which it was my good fortune to evade.”

We in this part of the world are adept at presenting our historical personages as martyrs for one cause or another, and for ensuring that their life stories are ‘packages’ accordingly. Often, scant regard is paid as to how such individuals themselves viewed their actions and aspirations. For those personalities who appear in our history books mainly through second-hand accounts, getting close to the real person is often difficult, if not impossible. With Jemmy Hope, however, we are on surer ground. For Hope’s aspirations, actions and motivations, are set out clearly in his memoirs. There can be no excuse for neglecting to tell his version of the story. And that is why I told it through the Farset Youth Project in the mid eighties in Belfast.

For many within today’s Unionist community, who tend to view the radical Presbyterian inspiration behind the United Irish movement as an aberration – and a dangerous one at that – Hope was at best misguided, at worst subversive. For many Irish Nationalists, on the other hand, Hope was whole-heartedly one of their own. Yet, as a previous pamphlet on Hope commented: “No trace of the romantic nationalism of Davis and Pearse – in which nationalism becomes the ideal – is to be found in the pages which follow. Jemmy Hope, the United Irish Presbyterian worker, was no more hung up on national separation as an end than was Samuel Neilson, the radical bourgeois United Irish leader, who welcomed the Union from his prison in Fort George. It will be clear from the following pamphlet that Jemmy Hope was the pioneer of working-class democracy in Ireland, and was very undisturbed by nationalist yearnings.” [The Memoirs of Jemmy Hope, B.&I.C.O., 1972]

In reality, Hope’s story reveals that he was largely unconcerned with the questions of ‘identity’ which presently divide our communities and dominate our politics. His concern was with that other, often overlooked, division in our society – that between the powerful and the powerless. The ordinary people of this island were Hope’s priority, and his overriding aim was to help create a movement which would restore to ordinary people their natural right – “the right of deriving a subsistence from the soil on which their labour was expended.”

In this perception of “the main cause of social derangement”, Hope’s views were echoed by that other great personality of the period, Henry Joy McCracken, and Hope’s great respect for the latter is a constant theme in his memoirs. As Mary McNeil wrote: “It is not surprising that between Henry Joy McCracken and Jemmy Hope there arose a bond of deep attachment and confidence: here was the leader who cared nothing for privilege and possessions and everything for the advancement of the labouring man; here, on the other hand, was the labouring man possessed of an unusually alert and sensitive mind, able and willing to put theories into practice. There is little doubt that they learned much from each other.” [The Life and Times of Mary Ann McCracken, Allen Figgis & Co., Dublin, 1960.]

Hope remained true to his ideals while living at Brown Square, off the Shankill Road in Belfast. He died in 1847 and is buried in Mallusk Cemetery. His name is commemorated in Hope Street, off Sandy Row, Belfast. No longer should the cry be: ‘Who dares to speak of ’98?’ We should all ‘speak of’ 98’ – and, indeed, many other episodes in our turbulent but rich historical inheritance – but we should do so as objectively as we can, and certainly without constantly attempting to claim these episodes for one cause or another. For it has been my experience, when researching our past, that it more often than not provides us with proof of the shared nature of that inheritance.

As Rory Fitzpatrick said of the United Irish episode in the North (in which a kinsman of my own, the stonemason Archibald Wilson, took part, and for which he was hanged at Conlig on 26 June 1798, aged 26 years):
“The ’98 Rebellion in Ulster was ill-conceived, badly organised and ultimately pointless, but it sprang from generous hearts and the rebels died with hardly a blemish on their name. The Presbyterian community gave some of their brightest and best in a cause that was only partly their own. The patriotism which inspired the Ulster rebels was a broad one, concerned with the rights of human beings and social justice rather than narrow tribal interests.” [God’s Frontiersmen: The Scots-Irish Epic, Weidenfeld and Nicolson/Channel 4/UTV, London, 1989.]