Julia Langdon, an experienced political journalist, describes her book as the definitive biography. I think not. Mo herself was not interviewed, but the author did have access to many friends and family members. Most Irish people know Mowlam as the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland during a period of critical importance running up to the negotiations towards the Good Friday Agreement and thereafter. Her tenure in office was marked by great success and public popularity. In October 1999 she was replaced by Peter Mandelson and within weeks of leaving Belfast she had, we are told in this book, decided not to stand at the next general election.
Courageous, charismatic and honest, she is universally popular here in the Republic. She was the key person who drove the Peace Process on behalf of New Labour. Because relatively little is known of her, beyond that, there will be considerable interest in this biography.
The book begins with Mo's departure from Northern Ireland and goes back to tell the story of her life leading up to that moment. For the Irish reader, it's slightly frustrating that only 48 pages of a 300-page book relate to her period in office: indeed, she only becomes a Shadow Spokeswoman on Northern Ireland on page 253.
The book outlines Mo's early childhood. She was the middle of three children, born to a lower middle-class family in 1949. Mo was a person who always coped very well in adversity. Notwithstanding her father's alcoholism and the negative effect on the family, she was a diligent, popular and academically successful student. From a young age, she also displayed the simpatico for which she was to become famous in politics. She makes good friends and keeps them. The book suggests that she has the longest Christmas card list of any living politician, going back to the dinner ladies in her old school.
What makes Mo unique, and what dominates this book, is the forceful, charming, "larger than life" personality to which few people have been immune. She has had - since childhood, it seems - an instinctive desire, indeed, a need to communicate and connect directly with all sorts of people in all walks of life. These were the qualities which would endear her to the people of Ireland, North and South, during her tenure of office.
There is a lot more to her than that, however, and perhaps the very force of her public persona has tended to obscure her considerable political abilities, permitting her detractors to paint her as a less than substantial figure. The phrase "touchy feely politics", which she hates, has been used to suggest "good with people, but lightweight". This is to severely underestimate her weight as a politician.
She is, by her nature, a reforming politician; the type who relishes the demolition of the status quo. She was active in Labour politics for almost 20 years, most of it at national level, before the Labour Party came to Government in 1997. She served as Shadow Front Bench, and in the party's National Executive. When appointed by Neil Kinnock as Labour's liaison with the financial world in the City of London, she immersed herself successfully in the brief. Similarly, when appointed by Tony Blair, as Shadow Spokesperson for Northern Ireland in 1994, she networked extensively in her new brief, visiting Northern Ireland almost every week thereafter. She was, says Langdon, probably one of the best prepared people to be appointed as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. Those reforming qualities and non-ideological pragmatism were very useful in the unchartered political waters of the Peace Process, which as we know was a mixture of conflict resolution and democratisation.
A measure of her character is that only a few months before taking up office as Secretary of State for NI, she had been diagnosed with a brain tumour. As a result, at the time of the election and her arrival in Belfast, she had just completed three months of exhausting and demoralising radiotherapy. Because she was private about her illness for some time, unfortunately she was the subject of very cruel press comments about her altered appearance. All of us were gobsmacked at how indefatigable she was, in spreading optimism and resolve to the other participants during the gruelling months of negotiations that led up to the Good Friday Agreement. The basic facts of Mo's life are easily told. Born in Watford in 1949, she grew up in London and Coventry. She studied sociology and anthropology at Durham University. From 1968-1971 she worked briefly as a researcher for Tony Benn MP; studied and taught Political Science at universities in the US from 1973-1979. She's still Marjorie to her family, but ever since student days, has been called Mo by everybody. Although not from a political background, she was always an activist, wanting to achieve results and always impatient of obstacles. She had aspired to a political career, but did not decide definitively on this until she came back from the US in 1979.
Thereafter she became active and well known in the Labour Party, first in Northern England where Labour Politics was extremely traditional and union-based, and it was difficult for her to make any headway as a woman. Eventually, she was nominated for a safe seat just before the 1987 election, and became the MP for Redcar. She was close to Neil Kinnock as leader. Langdon claims that she and Gordon Brown do not get on, and that this lack of friendship prevented her from getting one of the key economic jobs that she would have liked, when the Labour Party came to power.
There is much anecdotal evidence of Mo's notorious irreverence and her informality in dealing with people and events. This was to bring her into conflict with that section of the human race who dislike familiarity; who like their body space, and dislike those who stand too close. She picks from your plate and would slurp from your coffee cup, without a by your leave. For those of us who love Mo, this is all part of her charm. There is plenty in this book outlining this aspect of her personality. In fact, it is perhaps overplayed.
She endured many frustrations as Secretary of State during a period of unprecedented change in Northern Ireland, and the custodians of the status quo in the NIO didn't make life easy for the reforming Labour Minister. Leaks were frequent and very demoralising. Overall, I found the book annoyingly short of political analysis of her as a heavy-hitting politician of real significance, historically in Anglo-Irish relations; in fairness, it may be too early. The issues are still current and the cast of players almost all still on the stage. Neither does the book get into the mind of Mo Mowlam, and this is its great flaw.
It is widely said that it was Mo's popularity that was to be her undoing, and that the jealousy of others ensured her political demotion and marginalisation. Ms Langdon develops this theme. At the risk of straying into controversial comments by a serving Irish minister, suffice to say, Ms Langdon's account adds nothing to the political hearsay that abounds.
Those of us who were on the inside know just how big an impact she had on developments. Given her love and practice of inclusivity, so appreciated by the smaller parties and women's organisations in Northern Ireland, it hurt her to the quick when she herself was excluded and marginalised when she became expendable to the process. Seamus Mallon, himself a strong supporter and admirer, was diminished to see her being edged out by the separate channels of access to the Prime Minister being used by Unionists. Politics is a rough trade in Northern Ireland with heavy doses of misogyny.
Without notice, the book ends suddenly, like a collapsed cake, leaving the reader somehow unsated, cranky and longing for Mo's memoirs.
Liz O'Donnell is Progressive Democrat TD for Dublin South and Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs