Similarities can be drawn between Hilary Benn and Mo Mowlam as both were appointed as our secretary of state by incoming Labour prime ministers who achieved spectacular general election victories after prolonged periods of Conservative dominance at Westminster.
However, it would be difficult to imagine two more different personalities than the measured and low-key Benn and the woman who hit Stormont like an earthquake before firmly dividing our senior politicians into those who either adored or detested her.
Benn faces a wide range of pressing political issues as he settles into his new role but, in a different and much darker era, Mowlam’s sole priority was to end the violence which had devastated our society for almost three decades.
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She threw herself into the task with total commitment, displaying little regard for career considerations or even her personal safety, and she was one of a handful of individuals who were absolutely central in ensuring that the historic 1998 Good Friday Agreement was delivered.
Having had either a discussion or a wider engagement with every previous secretary of state from James Prior to Chris Heaton-Harris, with the sole exception of Shailesh Vara, who was barely seen outside Hillsborough Castle during his bizarre two-month residency in 2022, I can say with some certainty that there was no one like Mowlam.
It is sometimes forgotten that she was initially viewed with considerable suspicion by nationalists when she replaced the well regarded Kevin McNamara as shadow secretary of state, with hints that Tony Blair specifically wanted her to improve his links with David Trimble and the Ulster Unionists.
Mowlam threw herself into the task with total commitment, displaying little regard for career considerations or even her personal safety, and she was one of a handful of individuals who were absolutely central in ensuring that the historic 1998 Good Friday Agreement was delivered
She faced a number of queries from journalists about her perceived unionist leanings when she hosted an informal press reception which I attended at the Europa hotel in the run-up to the 1997 election.
When Mowlam kicked off her shoes, borrowed a cigarette and suggested that the questioners should “f*** off”, we began to realise that she would not adhere to the staid political conventions of the period.
Many other lively encounters followed but what we did not know then was that she had recently been diagnosed with a brain tumour, something she successfully managed to conceal after entering government until she began to gain some weight as part of the side effects.
A Daily Mail woman columnist, who disapproved of her cross community initiatives, wrote a disparaging piece saying that she had come to resemble a “slightly effeminate Geordie trucker”, which did not worry Mowlam but forced her to accept that her condition needed to be put in the public domain.
The wave of sympathy thereafter rebounded on the Mail, and allowed Mowlam to repeatedly display that not only did she wear a wig but theatrically removing it could help to break the ice during tense negotiations
She was less than truthful with her colleagues when she played down the full extent of her illness, as it only emerged after her sad death in 2005 that a private prognosis in 1997 gave her a life expectancy of roughly three years.
This might explain why she was so determined to achieve a major Irish breakthrough, and lost little sleep over the political and even physical threats she faced along the way, notably when she walked through the gates of the Maze prison in January 1998, at a time when the peace process appeared on the verge of collapse.
Mowlam’s arguments, amazingly put directly to convicted loyalist and republican leaders in their H-Block cells, won them over and turned out to be a key factor in all the defining events of the coming months.
She was never guilty of taking herself too seriously, despite all her triumphs, although some of her friends were concerned that her increasingly irreverent approach, which charmed some and alienated others, including Trimble at crucial stages, was influenced by her intensive medical treatment.
Mowlam was still truly wonderful company, particularly when my predecessor as Irish News editor, Tom Collins, hosted us for a memorable and extremely long post-agreement Sunday lunch, served with a glass or two of his preferred Lebanese red wine at his rural home outside the staunchly unionist village of Whitehead in Co Antrim.
She produced one colourful anecdote after another, leaving the rest of us, including her devoted and genial husband, Jon Norton, helpless with laughter, as we paused only to check on the wellbeing of the two stoical plain clothes police officers sitting patiently outside in their armoured car, until Mowlam belatedly decided it was time to attend a much delayed political briefing back at Hillsborough Castle.
Her steady decline and death after she was transferred back to London against her will, and the subsequent related illness and passing of the grieving Norton, were tragedies of enormous proportions, but I prefer to recall the good days.
While I wish Hilary Benn well during his term of office, I somehow doubt that he wants to replicate the political and personal style of the one and only Mo Mowlam.
