Marjorie “Mo” Mowlam (1949-2005), was a British Labour Party politician who served as Northern Ireland Secretary from 1997-2001. She helped bring about the Good Friday Agreement, signed April 10 1998. Throughout her term as Secretary Mo proved a force to be reckoned with. All the while, she privately battled brain cancer, which was the cause of her death on August 19, 2005.
Mo Mowlam was appointed Secretary of State for Northern Ireland on May 3 1997. In November that year, she visited New York, where writer Marcia Rock caught up with her.
May 22, 1997: A crowd of reporters, secret service and Irish American businessmen crowd into an elevator in Mutual of America building in New York after a speech by the new Northern Ireland Secretary Marjorie “Mo” Mowlam. A loud buzzing sound goes off and the doors won’t close. People push buttons but the sound continues to deafen. With her hands over her ears, Mo booms out “There are too many people in the elevator and someone should get out!” Everyone stands frozen. Mo looks one hefty man in the eye and says, “Get out!” He obeys, the buzzer stops and the elevator doors close.
“When there’s a problem,” Mo says, “I have to act.”
Mo Mowlam couldn’t be in a better position to act. When she became Secretary of State she inherited a peace process that had, it seemed, been fatally wounded — the IRA had abandoned its 1994 ceasefire, the marching season was threatening another summer of mayhem, and the Unionists were obstinately refusing to let go of their demand that paramilitaries surrender some weapons before their spokesmen be admitted to substantive negotiations.
Now, six months into her job, she is in a key role to help the multi-party peace talks succeed. She brings to Northern Ireland her seemingly boundless energy, but also a new constitutional agenda set by Tony Blair’s Labor government whose overwhelming majority gives it the opportunity to make real changes. Devolution in Scotland and Wales creates a model for a Northern Ireland Assembly. A new Freedom of Information Act will soon be law to make government more open and accountable.
For 18 years, the Conservative governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major focused on Northern Ireland security issues. Controlling terrorism was their priority before talks could even be considered. Mowlam’s predecessor, Sir Patrick Mayhew, with his patrician persona, only reinforced the impression of imperial power.
In contrast, Mowlam is direct and accessible. She offers a leadership that “takes people with you.” She is very practical. “It’s no good being a leader and you look behind and nobody’s there.”
She notices everything and everyone, including elevator operators and security guards, and makes a point of shaking their hands too. At 48, she sports a blonde bob and has admitted she is trying to slim down her slightly rounded figure. Somehow she seems more American than British. That may be due to the time she spent at Iowa University getting a Ph.D. in Political Science in 1979. When she returned from the States she tried lecturing but gave up this conventional teaching job to become an administrator of an adult education college in the Yorkshire town of Barnsley.
At Northern College she learned about the needs of adults with no qualifications. Mo felt at home in this working class environment. She was born in Coventry, England, to a postal worker father, an alcoholic who died in 1980. Her mother is a retired telephone operator.
Her administrative job was to make alliances with trade unions, community groups and regulatory bodies to conjure up support for the school. She immersed herself in the issues of unemployment and education and became active in Labor party politics. When the candidate for the steel town of Redcar dropped out of the party selection process, she had eleven days to campaign for herself. There was some resistance to her because she was a woman in this culture of hardened coal-miners, the principal of Northern College, Professor Robert Fryer remembers. Her directness and eagerness for change also caused a stir. Her ability to organize and mobilize conquered those fears and she won the party nomination and then the seat in Parliament in 1987.
Ten years later, she is the first Secretary of State able to appeal directly to an American audience. She immediately struck an unexpected chord with them. “Civil rights abuses helped start the current troubles, and I hope guaranteeing basic human rights will help end them.” She went on to list her achievements: negotiations with Sinn Féin, the ending of internment without trial, and pushing forward an agenda based on human rights.
At a luncheon hosted by the National Committee on American Foreign Policy, she stated: “It is up to all of us to negotiate with flexibility and imagination, and all of us are going to have to change.” Change for her means accommodation based on negotiation and respect after decades of fear and distrust. She understands that “we can’t forget our history,” but emphasizes that “we can’t live in it either.”
Her strategy has helped to bring almost all the political parties together to talk for the first time in seventy years. Only two parties refused to join the talks chaired by Senator George Mitchell — the ultra unionist UKUP led by Bob McCartney and the Democratic Unionist Party led by the Reverend Ian Paisley. Although Paisley constantly rejects her overtures, she will keep asking him in because “unless we get them [the talks] to be inclusive and his voice heard…it’s not going to be a solid settlement.”
When criticized that there’s been no progress in the talks, that the parties are still bickering over procedures and agenda, she identifies a more subtle accomplishment, that unionist, nationalist, republican and loyalist are in the same room. She knows for a fact that people around the table have killed each other’s friends and family. Mo leans forward, “Now you and I might say they ought to be doing more than they are…but in five weeks I think for them to be functioning alongside each other and moving forward in that way is progress.”
She sees her role, Britain’s role, as facilitator, using the principles of fairness, justice and equality to guide her decisions. She is adamant that the parties themselves find accommodation and compromise on such matters as a devolved assembly, cross-border bodies, and the reform of the Northern Ireland police force. But the Labour government can help in other areas, especially social issues.
It is investing £140 million in its welfare-to-work program to help 18-25 year olds from both communities learn skills and find jobs. Unfair employment practices have long been the scourge of Northern Ireland with Catholics often suffering three generations of unemployed in a family. In the mid-’80s Protestants along with Catholics became dependent on government grants and support when factories and shipyards closed and investment in Northern Ireland was threatened by the violence.
So it was not surprising that Mo wanted to address an audience of American business executives with employment on her mind. She knows that Americans and Irish Americans have been generous to Northern Ireland and if there is peace, there will need to be work to create a secure and functioning society. There are already sixty companies partly or wholly owned by United States firms in Northern Ireland including Seagate, Fruit of the Loom and Dupont. The U.S. government set up the International Fund for Ireland and since 1986 has invested $290 million in Northern Ireland. Total American investment since 1991 is nearly $1.1 billion. But it is not just money Mowlam wants from Irish Americans. She wants their support.
She is grateful to President and Mrs. Clinton, not only for helping to move the peace process forward but for a more human connection. When the Clintons spoke in Belfast at Christmas time in 1995, Mo looked at the young people’s faces in Donegal Square and felt “there was hope and something better for them in the future.” She is grateful for George Mitchell’s patience which she credits to his years in the Senate. He even knows how to handle her. “He’d never say no to my idea because he knew I’d do it anyway,” she confided. “But he said, `Now Mo, have you thought about this?’ and ten minutes later I’d changed my mind. He has that ability to work with people and bring them on.”
After her luncheon in Manhattan, she spent an hour traveling to Long Island’s Hofstra University in tedious stop-and-start traffic to address a group of Irish Americans from Congressman Peter King’s constituency. King is close to Gerry Adams, clearly supports Sinn Féin and when he ran for Congress in 1992, was denounced by the House of Commons as an IRA supporter. He and Sir Patrick Mayhew shared a mutual animosity.
That’s why King was shocked when he first met Mo in 1995 when she arrived in Washington with nine other British Parliamentarians. King received a cold, almost hostile reception from the others until he got to Mo, then shadow secretary for Northern Ireland. “Hello, I’m Mo,” she said. “I’m Patrick Mayhew in drag.”
In his introductory remarks at Hofstra, he laughed at the new relationship he has with the British. “I never thought that I would accompany a British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland as she traveled to Nassau County to discuss a peace process in Ireland.” Then glancing over at Mo as she leaned forward to listen to his next line, “In fact, I never could have imagined any British Secretary of State wanting to appear anywhere with me!”
Mo’s visit to Long Island was carefully planned. She sees King as representing an important Irish American constituency that has direct lines to Sinn Féin. Although she often disagrees with King, she respects his beliefs. “Peter has been sharp and rude about me at times,” she said, “and I’ve been equally sharp and rude about things Peter has said.”
Although she may not agree with King, she welcomes his two to three calls a week. She listens to King telling her to get the troops off the streets and the prisoners back into Northern Ireland and argues the political issues. And King listens to her because for years he told the British not to be afraid of ideas, so he feels he can’t be afraid of hers either. This is proof to him that “we’re in a new phase of mediation and negotiation.”
King’s closing remarks showed his respect; “She’s taken unprecedented actions as going out into the most politically volatile neighborhoods and communities in Northern Ireland and meeting real people on the ground. Mo Mowlam…carries no bias or prejudice.”
Mo did not come to the States to preach to the converted. She wanted to get out into the lion’s den of anti-British Noraid supporters and tell them what she’s doing. The questions at Hofstra were a bit tamer than expected.
In response to a question on the growing IRA defections and Continuity Army Council bombings she replied, “Anybody finds change destabilizing. In a sense, it shows that it’s real.”
More unsettling is her relationship to the security forces. Many Irish Americans want to see changes in the police force which is 93 percent Protestant. They’d also like to have the soldiers completely off the streets. Recent bombs in Derry and in Markethill, Armagh, and the recent shooting of a Catholic G.A.A. man by loyalists, make it more difficult for her to move on these issues.
Although she did make an attempt on her return to Northern Ireland to ease military presence in West Belfast by taking army troops off the streets during the day, she insists on the need to fight “terrorism.” She still makes this the number one priority of the Northern Ireland police. Daytime relief may not be enough to help Sinn Féin prove to its constituency that things have changed and that nationalists can trust the British. It may be too much for the unionists.
Civil rights abuses helped start the current troubles, and I hope guaranteeing basic human rights will help end them.
Security issues surrounded the new Secretary from her first month on the job. The first round of press coverage on Mowlam in the States concerned the Protestant Orange marches in Drumcree in July 1997. As far away as Vancouver, Washington, she was criticized in the Columbian newspaper for “the pre-dawn military operation…where 3,000 residents were locked in behind 100 armored cars and 1,500 riot police troops.” She responded then that the actions were “the least worst option.” Today she sees it as the nature of dealing with Northern Ireland. “At least at Drumcree we had competing rights…the right to march, right to free assembly and the right to live free of fear and intimidation. Those are competing rights that you have to work to accommodate.” She paused and admitted, “We failed.” But for Mo, other demonstrations of sectarian hatred that continue to persist outside the marching season upset her. “Picketing people who go to church in Harryville and the sectarian boycotting of shops are more repulsive.”
Irish Americans are also concerned about the prisoner issue which is under her purview. Although it seems fairly certain that Northern Irish prisoners will be transferred from Britain to Northern Ireland so they can see their families, there is very little movement to meet Sinn Féin’s demands for 60 percent remission of sentences for political prisoners.
Mowlam knows that she has a lot to do between now and the self-imposed May deadline for the talks. Her appeal to the group in Manhattan and on Long Island is to give her time. She warns that things will get rough before they get better. The plenary sessions in December and the meetings of the individual parties with herself and Blair will be filled with problems. But time is the one thing Irish Americans are reluctant to give her. No matter how charming she is, they want results which charm alone cannot achieve. Speaking for the nationalist community, King knows that “they’ve had broken promises. They want results,” and fear that “if Mo goes, they’ll get screwed.” Therefore, he wants to keep up the pressure from this side of the Atlantic.
Mowlam is used to pressure. At the end of the day that started with a breakfast meeting in Boston and ended with a meeting with the editorial board of Newsday, she slid into her jaguar for the long ride to Kennedy airport, exhausted. She whipped off the wig she is forced to wear since her surgery on a benign brain tumor, radiation and steroid treatments in January 1997. With typical Mo humor she joked, “I was fat and bald, but I’ll be haired by Christmas.”
Besides an international phone call to her car phone from her merchant-banker husband of four years, Jon Norton, the only topic that perks her up is the women of Northern Ireland. When elected to the Labor shadow cabinet in 1992, her first responsibility was for women’s issues. That concern is still evident in her support for early childhood education and childcare for single mothers so the women can work. Mo is proud of the Labor Party’s record of 102 women MPs.
Although women in Northern Ireland are starting to get involved in political parties, the only women at the talks are Monica McWilliams and Pearl Sagar from the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition. Mo admires how hard these women work with almost no support except for party members like May Blood. In her late 50s, May was a union factory steward. As campaign manager, May, a Protestant, spoke against decommissioning as a prerequisite for the talks. This did not go down well in her community where the pressure to conform is intense. May’s clarity and strength inspire Mo when she is tired and has a rare moment of doubt about her work. “I think of May. She climbed out of that [sectarian politics] and joined the Coalition. She’s a very brave woman to do it and people respect her.” Mo wants to help create an environment where individuals are free to state their beliefs without recrimination.
She also admires former President of the Republic of Ireland Mary Robinson. “She gave confidence and leadership to women and to the Republic,” Mo observes, but sees herself as a different kind of role model, perhaps because women in Northern Ireland can identify with her working class background. “I get lots of letters from both communities saying, keep going, we’re with you and that keeps me going.” She thinks Northern Irish women are strong in their communities, but are just now making the transition to mainstream politics so they like to see her out front, “a woman working through and delivering stuff.”
The election of Mary McAleese, the second woman and first President of the Republic of Ireland from Northern Ireland, might be an asset to Mowlam. McAleese may help the nationalist community’s desire for a greater connection to the south but she may alienate the unionists. The first few months will be telling.
At McAleese’s inauguration, Mo sat with John Hume and Gerry Adams. The press missed her handshake with Adams, which makes her giggle. She sees shaking Gerry’s hand as an agreement to work together, to listen to each other and “to treat him as a human being, as you would treat anybody else.”
The unionists watch her handshake with Adams in Dublin and her success in New York and feel that she’s spending too much time abroad and should focus on Northern Ireland and on them. They fear the British and the Irish have a predetermined agenda that ignores their needs. Caught between meetings at Westminster, Jeffrey Donaldson, Ulster Unionist MP and Party Honorary Secretary, says unionists want more support. They approve of her security stance but want her to make a stronger attempt to include the DUP, which carries almost 20 percent of the Protestant vote. Although Donaldson was initially impressed by Mo’s directness, he quickly felt that “she takes her eye off the ball. She’s said and done things that upset people and undermine their confidence.” Asked what specific things she could do to address unionist needs, he was guarded, saying their agenda was before the government and not yet ready for release.
Mo knows unionists feel vulnerable. The smaller loyalist parties change the dynamic of the voting majority that unionists once enjoyed. She also says she knows she must include them to reach a lasting peace.
Mo takes off her shoes and slumps down nursing a cold that just got worse. Her goal is to “break down old prejudices and build confidence between the two sides and keep things moving.” Although Mo is a woman in motion who wants to make things happen, she knows her limits. She will cajole, she will push but she will never force an agreement. “You can’t force people to a table to talk, you can’t force people to give up weapons, you can’t force people to live in harmony. What you need to do is set a process in place that lets parties themselves work to that point.”
The car pulls into the airport and Mo Mowlam puts on her wig and her shoes, pulls herself together and strides out with all the pride and confidence of a person on an important mission, her next stop Los Angeles.
See the AGREEMENt at the Irish Arts Center and see Mo in action again.