Rt Hon Mo Mowlam MP

Speaker 30:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety nine, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:31

My castaway this week is a politician. Since entering the Cabinet after Labour's victory two years ago, she's become one of the best-known women in Britain. Her straightforward manner has brought her political success, and her courage in the face of illness has earned her public admiration. She herself confesses to being a slogger. The daughter of an alcoholic post office worker, she was the first in her family to go to university. I don't believe in great revolutionary possibilities, she says. I'm much more driven by results than ideology. She's the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Dr Marjorie Molum, whom it's impossible to call anything else but Mo. I mean the Labour Party tried to get you more formally addressed at one point, but it didn't work, did it? They did. They gave up. I can remember I was doing um

Presenter1:16

The Dimbleby won question time and somebody said to me afterwards because he kept trying to call me Marjorie and others on the panel called me Mo and they thought there was an extra person on the panel and it caused terrible confusion. And the doctor gets lost all of the time really.

Rt Hon Mo Mowlam MP1:31

Yes.

Presenter1:31

It's well, I don't think doctors are medical doctors. I'm a academic doctor. You're a PhD. Yeah. And it doesn't strike me as necessary. I would think uh the idea of being alone on a desert island must sound like bliss to you, doesn't it? Wonderful. Would be absolutely wonderful. No phone, no faxes. I would sit there and enjoy every moment.

Rt Hon Mo Mowlam MP1:37

Yeah.

Presenter1:50

I'd miss my husband John and his two two children, H and and Freddie, but I'm sure they'd find a way to visit.

Presenter1:58

Can I go next week, please? How many nights a week do you sleep in your own bed?

Presenter2:02

It depends what you define as my own bed. I always think I've got three.

Presenter2:06

Um, I have one in the constituency in Redcar, one in London with John, and one in Belfast in the castle I live in. The real problem is is when you get up goofy in the morning and you kind of wander towards the bathroom, I I have to kind of wake up enough to w work out which direction to wander in. Which one are you most relaxed in?

Rt Hon Mo Mowlam MP2:23

Yeah.

Presenter2:26

I think wherever John and the his children are. Um

Presenter2:30

I think, well, it's diff difficult. I'm most relaxed in Redcar in the constituency because the house looks out over the sea and it is so wonderfully levelling after a tough week and you think, oh, this is crazy. You just get back to Redcar and you see the sea and everything is back in perspective. Can you sit in bed and see the sea? You can sit in bed, you can sit up and look at it, and that's wonderful. And wherever you are, you have the security men.

Presenter2:56

That must be har I mean, however nice they are and I'm sure you get on with them very well but you know you're a nice person, you can't ignore them, you've got to be nice and it's it takes up another bit of yourself, doesn't it? In a sense and it did to begin with, I found it tough for the first two or three months uh and as I say I ran away once, round to the corner shop in Record and they caught up with me, but that just gets them into trouble and I think now I have a working relationship with them. I probably spend more time th with them than I do my husband.

Rt Hon Mo Mowlam MP3:00

Uh

Speaker 33:00

But

Rt Hon Mo Mowlam MP3:00

Uh

Presenter3:23

But we get on now, both sides of the water. So can you be rude to them if you want to? Oh, we're very rude to each other. You have to be. You have to be. I mean, we joke and we have a good time. You've also said that you believe that if they that's to say the terrorists want to kill you, they'll kill you anyway.

Rt Hon Mo Mowlam MP3:26

So can you be rude to them if you want?

Speaker 33:30

They have

Presenter3:39

Yes, I mean if if somebody wants to take a pot shot they will. And

Presenter3:44

If you there's a previous they tell stories, the security folk, of a b a previous uh minister in Northern Ireland who, whenever they slowed down at traffic lights or at a a roundabout, kind of sunk in his chair till he was beneath the wind.

Presenter3:57

If you feel like that, you shouldn't do the job. I mean, an end will come, whether it's a bullet, a a bus or old age.

Presenter4:05

So do you still feel, you know, two years in you've been doing this job now, I mean, do you still feel, as you said at the beginning, that it isn't at all a poison chalice, it is the opportunity of a lifetime? It is an opportunity of a lifetime. It's the job I wanted to do. I enjoy doing it.

Rt Hon Mo Mowlam MP4:14

Opportunity of a lifetime.

Presenter4:21

And um I want to keep doing it.

Presenter4:25

to make sure that we get as far down that road to peace as possible because there's a lot more hurdles to get over yet.

Presenter4:32

Tell me about your first record.

Presenter4:34

Um, it's called Don't Fence Me In, and I chose it because when I'm feeling enclosed, either in the Northern Ireland process and as you suggested, I don't get very much time to myself. This record

Presenter4:49

says to me and I listen to it when I just want to close everything else out and it just says the pleasure of those odd moments that you get when you're by yourself.

Rt Hon Mo Mowlam MP4:58

Oh give me land, lots of land, under starry skies above Don't fence me in, let me ride through the wide open country that I love

Rt Hon Mo Mowlam MP5:08

Don't face me Let me be by myself in the evening breeze Listen to the murmur of the cottonwood trees Send me off forever but I ask you

Presenter5:19

Ha ha

Rt Hon Mo Mowlam MP5:21

Don't vex me.

Presenter5:27

David Byrne and Don't Fence Me In from the album Red Hot and Blue. You're known, Mo Molum, for your informality. I know George Mitchell, the American senator who chaired the Peace Talks, used to say that occasionally when you were in deep discussion you'd pull off your wig, which you wore because you'd had radiotherapy and scratch your bearish head. Have you used it in a sense like that, as a kind of tension breaker? Well it obviously had that effect. You put it nicely, so I scratched my very balls in. But I didn't consciously do that. But I have to concentrate on what I'm doing and focus on it. And I don't think what I'm doing. So it's not a kind of premeditated, oh, this is a good point to unnerve who I'm negotiating. No, no, it's what you, I mean, you're just a very relaxed, physically very relaxed. I mean, if you didn't have a wig to take off, you kick off your shoes, don't you? I don't wear them in the office. You're known for that, as I say, this directness of approach, informality.

Rt Hon Mo Mowlam MP6:10

Uh

Rt Hon Mo Mowlam MP6:11

Relax.

Rt Hon Mo Mowlam MP6:13

I mean you

Rt Hon Mo Mowlam MP6:16

I don't know.

Presenter6:21

Right language on occasions.

Presenter6:24

Was it a big decision to go into this very formal job with very patrician predecessors? Was it a a conscious decision to do it like that, to do it as you? No, it's only I can only do it as me. You can't

Presenter6:38

Go into negotiations, I don't think.

Presenter6:41

And make them work unless you participate. And and I can only do a job as me. I couldn't be anything different. Yes, but you're nevertheless going into a place where there are experts, there are hard men, there are people

Presenter6:54

There are people who know every single trick there is to pull. They know the inside out of the arguments. You know, it it seems to me it takes great guts not to try and be on your best behaviour, with keep your shoes on and you know, try and dot all the I's and cross all the T's. You'd fail if you tried to do what's not you.

Rt Hon Mo Mowlam MP7:07

Dot all the I's and cross all

Presenter7:12

You're always

Presenter7:14

Annoy somebody.

Presenter7:16

Somebody will always criticise you. And if you took offence or if you tried desperately to do what is right, and there's no right thing, it's a judgment. You just almost have to smell it as you kind of wander through and find the way through. Because you you'd undergone a similar thing, I think, because you used to be spokesman for trade and industry, didn't you? So you've gone into the city as well and you again a different set of people, but maybe, you know, equally.

Rt Hon Mo Mowlam MP7:36

Yeah.

Presenter7:42

Equally expert, equally forked toned, perhaps.

Presenter7:46

For me, maybe? I could hardly say that. No, but the city, again, was difficult. But...

Presenter7:54

I suppose that taught me because I knew absolutely nothing about, I mean I didn't know a hedge from a bond from whatever else they were talking about. But the only way I coped then was I learnt that you look smart and so I got some nice suits and I learnt that you put your shoulders back and you said good morning, good morning, and did it all properly. And then did something like, can I have five minutes from each of you as to what you think the important issues that we should focus on today? And then the lunch had finished and I didn't have to say anything. You passed the bug. Yeah, but you learn a lot. You learnt a lot. And that's how I survived the first three months. And I say now, because I try and get into schools as often as I can to talk to young girls and young boys to say that you can do whatever you want as long as you're confident and believe in yourself. And it's true.

Rt Hon Mo Mowlam MP8:39

But it

Presenter8:39

But you've got to have that confidence in the first place. That's but it's it's learned. You also had quite a compliment paid to you by one of the the hardest men in the maze, Sam McCrory, the UFF terrorist. He said, and I quote, for a woman, she's very up to date on a man's abilities and the way men think, which is some

Presenter8:56

Well, it's what do you mean? Well, it's a sexist statement. I sexist question. Do you think being a woman has helped?

Presenter9:02

I think it's helped and and hindered. What are the positive things?

Presenter9:06

Well

Presenter9:07

In in Northern Ireland it's helped, I think, because women are central to the process working.

Presenter9:14

In the community, the referendum, which formed the basis of the consent of the people for the Good Friday Agreement.

Presenter9:20

Majority of women in both communities voted for it. And I think having a woman there.

Presenter9:25

help them realize.

Presenter9:28

That the democratic fabric of Northern Ireland had stayed together thirty years because women kept it going, and they did.

Presenter9:35

And as you said, the patrician predecessors were of a type.

Presenter9:40

And I'm not.

Presenter9:41

And I think that helped.

Presenter9:43

With some of the I mean, I'm not working class, I'm lower middle class is my origins, I'm middle class now, but

Presenter9:52

Uh my roots were different and it made it easier for me to talk to some people that always felt the Brits talk down to them.

Presenter9:59

Record number two.

Presenter10:01

This is uh Michael Flanders and Donald Swan. It reminds me of growing up. This is one of the first uh songs I remember and my mum loves it.

Rt Hon Mo Mowlam MP10:10

Uh

Speaker 210:10

Some people like a motorbike, some say

Rt Hon Mo Mowlam MP10:13

Pay a tram for me.

Speaker 210:15

Uh

Rt Hon Mo Mowlam MP10:15

Oh fablie.

Speaker 310:17

Horry Lori.

Rt Hon Mo Mowlam MP10:19

They lay them down and

Speaker 310:20

The

Speaker 210:21

Yeah.

Speaker 210:21

Uh

Speaker 310:21

Such means of locomotion

Speaker 210:24

Uh

Speaker 310:24

Be ready.

Speaker 210:24

Draw the Dull to us, the driver and conductor of a London Omnibus.

Rt Hon Mo Mowlam MP10:31

But if I'd please

Speaker 210:32

Ting Ting

Rt Hon Mo Mowlam MP10:32

Oh but it ain't these tainting when you are lost in London And you don't know where you are You'll hear my voice a calling ball further down the

Presenter10:41

Michael Flanders and Donald Swann with their tribute to the London bus, a transport of delight. So, Mo, you were a slogger at school, rather than a natural academic, but a successful one. You became head girl in the end, didn't you?

Presenter10:53

And he played hockey for the county? Yes. Debated for the county?

Presenter10:57

I don't know if it was for the county, but we debated. We had a very good teacher, Miss Morley, who now lives in Bournemouth, wonderful woman, who worked us very hard, played us hard, and we enjoyed it. This was a comprehensive in Coventry. That's right. So you'd have looked on paper, because you got into Durham University in the end, made social anthropology, on paper, you would have looked like somebody who was going to make a success of her life. It was at home that there were the problems. And your mother said, I think life was tough, there was always a disaster waiting round the corner. What sort of disaster?

Presenter11:28

It was just difficult'cause you didn't know how drunk he'd be.

Presenter11:31

Your father. Father being an alcoholic, yeah. And so it was difficult in terms of which other families that have the problem will know, that you never knew when you could take people back and when it would be okay and when it wouldn't be. And so it was difficult to do normal things. And that's why you concentrated so hard on the school workers, isn't it?

Rt Hon Mo Mowlam MP11:31

Your father.

Presenter11:50

Well, it did enable me after dinner to go upstairs and do my homework and get out the washing up. My poor sister got landed with a lot more than I did. It wasn't because it and it's been suggested that he in fact one of the reasons he took to the drink was that he wasn't allowed to have an education. Perhaps you were determined where he'd failed that you had to It's possible. I mean my mother thinks that sometimes but um

Presenter12:11

It it you don't do things consciously. That that age you survive. And you went a long way away to university. I went as far as away so I didn't have to come home at weekends. Your mother says you missed the rough bits. Yes, my sister and brother took much more than I did. Um and I've been very reticent to talk about it because I'm a public figure and I don't mind talking about it so that other kids growing up with the problem know they can get through it. But I think it's unfair to them.

Rt Hon Mo Mowlam MP12:23

Well lots of the rough bits.

Presenter12:38

Because they don't choose to talk about it.

Presenter12:42

They don't mind, but I don't think it's fair to push other people into the public eye when

Presenter12:48

They haven't chosen to be there. The other bit of analysis of the children of alcoholics, and I don't know whether you buy into it or not, is that that, you know, you're used to negotiating, finding ways round potentially difficult situations. Do you do you buy into that?

Presenter13:02

Mm. I think a lot of this is looking for a post facto justification for people's behaviour. I tend not to. Um there may be a a truth in it, but it doesn't hold for everybody. I tended to avoid, I think, rather than negotiate.

Rt Hon Mo Mowlam MP13:07

Do you

Presenter13:17

Next record.

Presenter13:18

Um, this is Rod Stewart, Blonde's Have More Fun. It's I think it's represents music for me that was sixties, seventies that I listened to when I was at school, when I was at college. And it just is um

Presenter13:33

Good fun!

Speaker 213:34

Never seen a body gun shot for nobody God knows what I just need to borrow

Speaker 213:42

Oh, yeah.

Presenter13:42

Uh

Presenter13:45

You can keep your fucking ready!

Presenter13:47

You can keep your promise too!

Presenter13:50

I wanna get

Speaker 213:50

Don't let some target!

Speaker 213:54

SAP! We too

Presenter13:59

Rod Stewart and blondes have more fun. Although as your hair grows back it seems you're not blonde anymore, but you were a natural blonde. I was a natural blonde and I called it off blonde, so it's not anything else. It's you haven't got a full head of hair yet but it's coming back. I've got lots of the back. I ha I don't know if this bit the front's going to grow, but if not I'll grow it long enough and do another scarging and blush it across.

Presenter14:21

When did you get interested in in politics, Mo? Who or what was your inspiration?

Presenter14:27

I think it was at school.

Presenter14:30

Um

Presenter14:31

Because Miss Morley, who I mentioned earlier, made a big effort to get us debating. But also, I began to...

Presenter14:38

develop what I think is the driving force that's taken me into politics from that age through to today is little things. Like when we used to do netball or hockey, you used to go to another school and they had six times better than you did.

Presenter14:53

And I thought this just isn't for better facilities, bigger fields, more of them, you know, and better biscuits at half-time. More oranges.

Rt Hon Mo Mowlam MP14:54

Better facilities.

Presenter15:03

But it was just there was an inequality in provision.

Presenter15:07

And that annoyed me. You you didn't do anything for long well, you just studied it, didn't you went off to America. You were in America for five years. Yeah, I studied politics.

Rt Hon Mo Mowlam MP15:13

Yeah.

Presenter15:15

Oh, I was all I joined the Labour Party when I went to college.

Presenter15:18

But I didn't go into politics, politics, because I was moving about. Then you came back and and taught it here. Newcastle and Barnsley, you taught politics, didn't you? Yeah, but you see, in a sense I did. Barnsley, I think, was the beginning of me saying that I wanted to do something different from teaching because you had to be over twenty-three with no qualifications to get in. And that was a different place to work, and one that had a politics in its very being. But you were, what, thirty-five by this stage or more. So what happened? Did you wake up one morning and say, I'm sick of talking about it, now I'm going to go and do it?

Presenter15:52

No. I was I'd done five years in Barnsley, having finished at Newcastle, and I think I was just going to go and get a job in Leeds. Um we go to all the best places, don't you? Yes. Leeds' a lovely city. Um and

Presenter16:06

That I'd always been active in the party was known in the North, in the Labour Party. And uh an MP in Red Car resigned in eighty seven five days before the election and as I often say to people when they say how do you get into politics, a lot of it is luck. And I went up to this election and got the seat. And then ten years of opposition from eighty seven to ninety seven, which must have been pretty dreary at times. Did you nevertheless drive you mad? Well, I used to do surgeries and you'd get a pensioner that would come in and she'd put down her elect Trusty Bill, she put down a pension book and said, I can't pay it, what are you gonna do? And the honest answer was I could do very little. What did you say to her now?

Presenter16:45

Well, I now say that she gets a hundred quid to give you a good political speech. She gets a hundred quid winter funeral. Yes, you should be careful. But no, we've put money into pensioners are the most vulnerable, which which counts.

Rt Hon Mo Mowlam MP16:50

Uh

Presenter16:59

Next record. Next one is John Lennon, Working Class Hero.

Presenter17:04

And I used to listen to this at at university and I've never really stopped. Uh not because of the class origins, even the class bit of it, but I think that still holds. Not as much today, 30 years on, but it's still important. But because it's the way that in there it says so clearly how the establishment can make you feel small. Now, wherever you go, whoever you are, there are still people that can belittle you. And Lennon says that for me in a way that I've never heard anybody else do. Working class hero is

Rt Hon Mo Mowlam MP17:36

Something to be

Rt Hon Mo Mowlam MP17:42

A working class hero is something to be

Presenter17:49

When the tortured and scared you for twenty odd years

Presenter17:58

Then they expect you to pick a career.

Presenter18:03

John Lennon, an working-class hero. You were Shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland for, what, 18 months before the election?

Rt Hon Mo Mowlam MP18:09

Before the

Presenter18:11

Then you won the election, as we recall. Did you wait by the phone? Did you know that you were going to get the job? How did it go? I didn't know I was going to get the job. No I don't know if anybody went told, but I certainly hadn't. I didn't hear anything all day Friday, and by Saturday I was getting a bit worried.

Presenter18:29

But luckily the call came, so I was relieved because it was a job I wanted, and I went straight out to Belfast. And you've been doing it ever since. Is it true that you could have moved last summer in the reshuffle, but that you said to Tony Blair, I don't want to?

Presenter18:45

Um, I think I was asked if I wanted to, but he didn't indicate he was about to move me. And you didn't want to? No. You want to see it through? Yes, because it's a job that I wanted to do and it's one that is real politics, because whether

Presenter19:00

We succeed or not, and I still believe we can succeed, we've saved one hundred plus lives this year. Now, whether people are playing straight, whether they're being serious or not, and people keep coming up to me and saying you're naïve, you're taking uh terrorist words for it, they're leading you up the path, they'll be back to violence next month. Well, even if I'm wrong in believing that there are elements of all parties that want to make progress.

Presenter19:26

Then it's been worth it. Hm. But it nevertheless, in the twelve months nearly, that have expired since the Good Friday Agreement, would you say that right now is the toughest time?

Presenter19:38

I think he probably is, um George Mitchell said uh very appositely.

Presenter19:44

That

Presenter19:45

It was tough getting the agreement, but implementing it is tougher because in the agreement you we'd be sitting around a table, you'd want your prisoners out on accelerated release, somebody else would want an assembly.

Presenter19:57

Somebody else would want Human Rights Commission. Nobody wanted everything that was in there. And so, as a result,

Presenter20:05

Everybody signed up, but they didn't realize the full impact of what others wanted until it was implemented. And that is what we're doing now. Now you've got to the real AMPASS, haven't you? Because it's the decommissioning of arms. It's the IRA giving up their weapons and it ain't happening.

Speaker 320:12

But I'm not sure.

Presenter20:19

Well, it's the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement.

Presenter20:23

What is needed is all parts are implemented. But would you say that was in the agreement? Because they're saying it wasn't. Well, what's in the agreement? And the difficulty is that both sides are right at the moment.

Rt Hon Mo Mowlam MP20:29

Yeah.

Presenter20:34

All bits of the agreement, as I've just made in i illustration, have to be implemented together. Decommissioning is part of that. It's not a precondition, which is where Sinn Feiner write, but it's an obligation. And if they're going to be serious, people say,

Presenter20:49

If they're serious, well why don't they make a gesture? Why don't they do something if they want to instil confidence? And Sinn Féin say, why should we? We agreed to the agreement, we support it, but nobody said then that weapons had to come first. We've got an assembly. So it's simply an argument about timing. It's partly timing and partly who makes the first move. And I think that...

Presenter21:12

The parties want to make progress and if we work at it, I believe we can do it.

Presenter21:18

Record number five.

Presenter21:20

This may seem a bit out of kilter in a sense, but this is Noel Coward and Mad Dogs and Englishmen, only because just of which was very appropriate of what we've just been talking about, I listened to a whole cross-section of Irish music and there was no one bit that I could choose, but this song reminds me when at the end of a week you think what on earth's happening, I play this and it cheers me up.

Speaker 321:47

Map

Presenter21:47

Uh

Speaker 321:47

Dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday

Presenter21:50

Sun, the Japanese don't care to, the Chinese wouldn't dare to. Hindus and Argentines sleep firmly from twelve to one, but Englishmen detest us, yes.

Speaker 322:00

Um In the Philippines they have lovely screens to protect you from the glare. In the Malay States there are hats like plates which the Britishers won't wear. At twelve noon the natives swoon and no further work is done. But neer dog's an Englishman go out in the midday sun.

Presenter22:15

Yeah.

Presenter22:16

Noel Coward and Mad Dogs, an Englishman. Tell me about the illness, Mo. It was a brain tumour. What was the first you knew about it?

Presenter22:23

I dislike shaking my right hand, um didn't take notice of it for months, um and in the end went for check-up.

Presenter22:31

And, um, how to scan?

Presenter22:34

That January and that was it? This was January 96. But there must have been a period when you you obviously you didn't know whether it was life threatening or not. Luckily I had a scan and it came through

Rt Hon Mo Mowlam MP22:41

Luckily

Presenter22:45

week, ten days. But that's where

Presenter22:49

My character and John's are very good together because during that period there was very clearly nothing I could do. You know, there's no point in getting depressed, having a fit, etc.

Presenter23:00

So we went to the pictures the night, you know, I found out I'd got something, and we just kept going all week.

Presenter23:06

In the end, happily, it wasn't terminal, you were told. But you had to have radiotherapy and take the steroids, and and the press were soon having a field day, weren't they, discussing your

Rt Hon Mo Mowlam MP23:10

That you have

Presenter23:16

Your weight gain.

Presenter23:17

Why didn't you just let them know and put a stop to it? It was so cruel in Highness. Basically, I got through it all and I've to you know, lots of women write to me now and say, you know, how did you get through? And a lot of them did what I did, which I told John and his daughter

Rt Hon Mo Mowlam MP23:21

What's that f

Presenter23:33

Because she could clearly see I was getting fat and my hair was falling out so when she walked in the bedroom in the morning, Oh, I'm gonna hair Um so they had to know. But past that I didn't tell anybody because I didn't you cope by keeping going and doing what you're doing. You don't if people keep coming up and saying

Presenter23:54

You don't look so good, are you okay? And I just didn't want all that. So I didn't tell anybody. And it was only the press only woke up really at the election when I was still fat and had a wig on. So I didn't intentionally mislead. And when I was described in very abusive terms, I don't blame them because they didn't know. But when I told journalists that wrote awful things what was actually going on, they then apologised. So that's life. It would be easy to think that you didn't care what you looked like, but you obviously do. You mentioned earlier on buying new suits when you went into the city and that kind of thing. And again, reading the research, I can see you've appropriated journalists' jewellery from time to time. You've taken a fancy. There is a very conventional and a very feminine side to Mo Molam, isn't there? Oh, I. I mean, I like...

Rt Hon Mo Mowlam MP24:36

In fact, you can

Presenter24:45

I'm not unfeminine. I mean I like things, but it's not my major priority. I don't like shopping. They're bad at colours. And sometimes'cause the security police are with me, they help me choose. And uh I don't want to talk about them too much'cause they get a lot of abuse from other policemen. They're they're being called style police now after another interview I did, which I apologize to them for.

Presenter25:09

Uh it's not my favorite, but I don't like looking a mess'cause I represent people and I should therefore look as smart as is possible.

Presenter25:17

Record number six.

Presenter25:19

Um this is Tom Leara National Brotherhood Week. Um

Presenter25:23

I like it because it points out hypocrisy, which is one of the things that frustrates me in life. And this is about attempts to deal with racism, which I feel very strongly about. And it basically says that for one week of the year everybody's nice, and then for the remaining weeks, they do exactly as they want. And I think this points out an aspect of politics that I find distasteful.

Rt Hon Mo Mowlam MP25:50

Oh the white folks hate the black folks and the black folks hate the white folks To hate all but the right folks is an old established rule But during National Brotherhood Week, National Brotherhood Week, Lena Horn and Sheriff Clark are dancing cheek to cheek It's fun to eulogize the people you despise As long as you don't let them in your school

Presenter26:17

Tom Lera and National Brotherhood Week.

Presenter26:20

The bottom line, Mo Molum, of negotiating in Northern Ireland is of course that you have to treat everybody the same.

Presenter26:27

No matter who they are. You have to be even handed in your toughness and in your compromises. How difficult is that when you're doing business with a murderer?

Rt Hon Mo Mowlam MP26:28

You have

Presenter26:37

It's not easy.

Presenter26:39

But

Presenter26:40

I made a decision very early on in relation to Northern Ireland that unless you talk to people

Presenter26:46

They'll go back to violence. It's as I mean, it sounds oversimplified, but in the end, unless you bring people into the process and talk to them, you're not going to make progress. And unless you treat them in a way with a certain degree of you're part of this process and we're only going to get somewhere if people stop the violence and decide to take it. And that, of course, excuses any oversimplification of any kind or any accusations of that kind. But I just wonder, as a human being, you know, when you've met, as as obviously you've done, the victims, the wives, the mothers. That's the hardest time. You know.

Rt Hon Mo Mowlam MP27:09

And that of course

Presenter27:21

That's the hardest thing. When you talk to people who whose hurt and pain will never leave them and they will carry it with them all through their life and you talk to them and the absolute

Presenter27:33

Anger and disgust at what I do is sometimes very difficult to cope with.

Presenter27:41

But sometimes the most forgiving are those that have suffered most, and they'll say to me something like I despise you for what you're doing.

Presenter27:51

Uh but in the end, if you

Presenter27:55

Stop another family having to go through what we've gone through, then keep going.

Presenter27:59

And I get that quite often. People don't like it.

Presenter28:03

Can't stomach it.

Presenter28:05

But if it means we're getting somewhere, then do it.

Presenter28:09

You obviously take a lot of notice of of what people say, but also what people write. I mean, again, reading about you, you mention a lot the letters you get, whether it's about Northern Ireland or about alcoholism or about cancer.

Rt Hon Mo Mowlam MP28:10

It's very

Presenter28:22

You obviously take on board what people are saying to you all of the time. Well, you have to, because if you don't, I mean, one of the aspects of the job and of security is you meet people but they only get twenty seconds. So I don't have much time to sit and talk. But I think there's a degree of honesty in letters which keep you normal.

Presenter28:44

Um

Presenter28:45

Things like when you say people write a lot of women write who've lost their hair. And, you know, sometimes when I'm feeling fed up.

Presenter28:53

To get a letter from somebody that says I'll keep going if you can and you think, Well.

Presenter28:58

I'd quite happily not do anything today. And you think, No, I've got to keep going'cause they're keeping going. And on a purely selfish level.

Presenter29:04

You enjoy it, don't you? I mean, you

Presenter29:07

I I say this in in the best sense. You enjoy your celebrity. You enjoy being well known. And the past two years, as I say, has

Presenter29:17

I accept what goes with the job. As a result, I meet very interesting people. I I live a a demanding life, but a very c complete life. I mean, I get a lot of different experiences. I'm not so I'm not saying I'm unhappy.

Presenter29:34

Um but there are things that I don't get in life that I look forward to getting when this job is over. I'd like to be able to go home and not have the phone ring. I'd like to be able to go away for the weekend and not be thinking, I wonder if Sanso would do this, or I wonder if that would help. And I look forward to that space which I don't have at the moment. But um I mean I I have an incredibly

Presenter29:58

um fulfilling life, even though it's tough.

Presenter30:02

Number seven.

Presenter30:04

Well this is one that I listen to quite a lot f for a couple of reasons. One, it reminds me of the time when I had the space to travel, because I like going to different places. But also I don't control the C D very much'cause I'm not in, and this is one that all our musical taste fits.

Speaker 230:21

On State Street, that great street, I just want to say...

Speaker 230:27

They do things they don't do on Broadway.

Speaker 230:34

They have the time, the time of their life I saw a man, he danced with his wife In Chicago Chicago, my hometown.

Presenter30:47

Chicago and Frank Sinatra.

Presenter30:49

Um

Presenter30:50

If the big if happens, Mo, and power is divulged.

Presenter30:57

East really to Northern Ireland in the coming weeks.

Presenter31:00

What will you do? Will you will you take an offer which is bound to come from the Prime Minister of a softer billet?

Presenter31:06

Well, I just even if we make progress and we will

Presenter31:10

It uh you don't get peace overnight. It it's a process. It's not like switching a light switch on and off. It's going to take time for people's attitudes. You don't have the kind of history of bigotry and it change in a year. It's going to take a wee while. So I'm happy to stay there as long as I'm left there.

Presenter31:28

As long as I make a positive impact to it, I'll go on living at the pace you've described, never having any space, any free time. But I presume when when we devolve...

Rt Hon Mo Mowlam MP31:30

But you can't.

Rt Hon Mo Mowlam MP31:32

If an early

Rt Hon Mo Mowlam MP31:34

No, but I

Presenter31:37

They'll do a lot more work, so I will have more time. So you're not attracted by a softer billet? Um, well this'll become a softer one if it works. There isn't one you've got your eye on? No. Uh I'll do what I'm asked to do, but there's

Rt Hon Mo Mowlam MP31:45

There isn't one you've got your

Presenter31:50

There's nothing that I'm I have a great longing for. This It's speculated that you've got all sorts of longings for all sorts of things. From health to being the enforcer to If I do Health Foreign Enforcer, there was a fourth one that was running. Um anyway, I think it's'cause sometimes the press are looking for a story and this'll pop up from now until

Rt Hon Mo Mowlam MP31:56

Yeah.

Presenter32:09

goodness knows when, when they have nothing else to write. It's possible, of course, that you'll end up with with quite an epitaph. I don't attempt fate here, but uh you know what is your Secretary of State who oversaw peace finally coming to Northern Ireland? Well, I think it would be unfair.

Rt Hon Mo Mowlam MP32:17

Please don't.

Speaker 332:17

Uh

Rt Hon Mo Mowlam MP32:17

Hmm.

Presenter32:23

Because of course I've worked hard, but then so did hundreds of other people.

Presenter32:27

um my predecessor, previous governments, and hundreds of people that no one will ever have heard of have given years of their lives to build this. So it would be an unfair epitaph and it would have to be for the people of Northern Ireland, who, whether this works or not, it will be them that make it work.

Presenter32:44

Last record.

Presenter32:45

Okay, this is one that symbolizes for me the importance of enjoying life and having fun.

Rt Hon Mo Mowlam MP32:53

I just can't, I just can't, I just can't control my beat, I just can't, I just can't

Speaker 233:00

Yeah.

Speaker 233:03

Just can't control my beast Sunshine Dependent on the moonlight

Speaker 233:09

Don't forget about the good times

Speaker 333:11

Clicking on a book in a hand

Speaker 333:13

I don't care on the sunshine, I don't claim it on the moonlight I don't care on the good times

Speaker 333:20

No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no

Presenter33:22

The Jacksons and blame it on the boogie. I can see you on the beach now, though.

Presenter33:26

Gyrating, what? I'm not very good on the beach. I just lay there like a beached whale, I think.

Presenter33:33

If you could only take one of those eight records Uh I think it'd have to be Chicago. What about your book, as well as the Bible and Shakespeare?

Presenter33:41

Well, I thought long and hard about this and because I couldn't fit in Irish music to the kind I'd want, I think it would have to be Seamus Heaney's poems.

Presenter33:51

And what about your luxury?

Presenter33:53

What I want to do is take a very big globe. You know this one that they have in all old-fashioned houses which it is kind of orangey-yellow and you can twist it round. I'd like a big one of those so I could choose all the places that I'd want to visit when I got off the island. Dr. Marjorie Molum. Thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs. Thank you.

Speaker 334:20

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.