Mo Mowlam, who has died at the age of 55, became one of Britain’s best-loved politicians, endearing herself to the public with a no-nonsense, down-to-earth attitude that reaped dividends in the stormy atmosphere of Northern Ireland.
Almost single-handedly, as secretary of state for the troubled province in the late 1990s, she secured the so-called Good Friday agreement that ended three decades of strife, an achievement all the more remarkable for the fact she had overcome a brain tumour and the debilitating effects of radiotherapy.
In bringing peace to Northern Ireland, she achieved what many thought impossible, fulfilling her self-avowed mission to “civilise the Ulster male”.
Yet it was precisely this irreverence that earned her the ire of the hard-line Protestant Ulster Unionists, intent on maintaining the province’s links with Britain, who openly lobbied for her replacement.
It did, however, draw her closer to senior figures in the Republican movement such as Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, whom she was once overheard chiding: “Bloody well get on and do it, otherwise I’ll head-butt you!”
She was eventually replaced in the job by Peter Mandelson and took a lower-profile post as Cabinet Office minister before retiring from politics in 2001. But even then her reputation for bluntness showed no signs of abating and she was an outspoken critic of the administration, saying it was “harder and harder to defend what the Labour government is doing”.
Marjorie Mowlam was born on September 18 1949 in Watford, north of London, and almost died of pneumonia aged three months. Her family, whom she referred to merely as lower middle class and “dysfunctional” — a reference to the sorry truth of her father’s alcoholism — were always on the breadline and eventually moved to Coventry, where she was brought up.
She was educated at Durham University, where she read social anthropology, joined the Labour party aged 20 and went on to lecture at Florida State University in the United States and back in England’s Newcastle University.
Her political break came in 1987 in unexpected fashion. Mowlam had moved to Redcar in north-east England where, only five days before the election deadline, the local MP decided to quit and the party asked her to contest the seat.
An MP at 38, her first Westminster job was as an assistant in the shadow Northern Ireland Office, followed by a stint as spokesperson on city and corporate affairs and “shadow” posts on women’s affairs, national heritage and, ultimately, Northern Ireland.
Shortly before the 1997 general election, she was diagnosed with a brain tumour. It was treated successfully but she was forced for several years to wear a wig.
She always shrugged off praise for her bravery during the treatment with the self-deprecatory remark: “I’m just a tough old boot.”
But it did not stop her becoming one of the most popular and effective, if unconventional, Northern Ireland secretaries since Labour’s 1997 election victory.
She was the first holder of the post to meet the paramilitary wings of Protestant Loyalist and Republican bodies as well as to authorise the early release of prisoners convicted of terrorist offences.
However, her style was not to everyone’s taste and there was a cruel jibe in Loyalist circles which went: “If you haven’t been kissed by Mo Mowlam, you must be very quick on your feet.”
After her removal from the Northern Ireland post, she was offered other jobs, including health secretary, and was asked to stand as the party’s candidate for mayor of London, but she turned them all down.
Her memoirs, Momentum, caused a stir when they were published in 2002, with stories of smear campaigns against her, including alleged claims by party members that her illness had affected her mental health and ability to carry out her job adequately.
Mowlam also founded the MoMo Helps charity for people in drug rehabilitation and the families of disabled people.
She is survived by her husband, Jon Norton, a merchant banker and Labour supporter whom she married in 1995. — AFP