Professor Monica McWilliams

Speaker 20:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.

Presenter0:04

Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. And, for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:39

My castaway this week is Professor Monica McWilliams. She co-founded the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition Party in 1996, bringing women from different communities together in a bid to find peace. Despite facing intimidation, opposition and even violence, two years later she was a signatory to the Belfast Agreement, also known as the Good Friday Agreement, setting out terms for peace in Northern Ireland. She later became Chief Commissioner of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission. As a social scientist, her area of interest is domestic violence, especially in societies touched by conflict. In the 1990s, her study investigating the connections between paramilitary violence and abuse in intimate relationships was the first of its kind. Last year, she co-authored an updated report looking at the situation today. Beyond Northern Ireland, her peacebuilding work has taken her all over the world. She says, In working with people from different communities, I have learned to not only be rooted and proud of my own background, but to shift, to be able to understand how people can be proud of theirs. Professor Monica McWilliams, welcome to Desert Island Discs. Thank you very much. And as we're recording, the Northern Ireland power sharing talks have begun again after breaking down more than two years ago in January 2017. How optimistic are you that they'll be successful this time?

Presenter1:58

I remain optimistic. It's always an unfinished business, peace building. I never thought when I left the table in 1998 on Good Friday that it would take us over two decades to continue to work as hard as we did the day that we signed the agreement, and it has been very tough, but I still believe that we will get there. I think the atmosphere has changed. Unfortunately, as is often the case, it's because of a tragedy, the death of the young woman journalist Lara McKee a few weeks ago. But it was amazing at that funeral to see people rising up and saying enough is enough. And as she said herself once in her own words, it has to get better. And we are better than this. When you taste peace and you have the prize of peace, there's no going back.

Presenter2:46

Tell us about the first piece of music that we're going to hear today. Why have you chosen this? Well, in 1994, when my children were very small, it was announced that President Clinton and the First Lady, Hillary Clinton, were coming to Belfast. The cessation of conflict had been declared, the ceasefires. And it was a moment we'd all waited on. And it was one of those moments where you weren't sure, is this going to last this time? And it was Christmas. And I'll never forget it. Had to walk about three miles because you weren't allowed to bring cars anywhere close to the city centre. When I turned up, there was over 100,000 from East and West, Protestant, Catholic, Nationalist Unionist, Republican, Loyalist, every shade of diversity were there to listen. And suddenly Van Morrison started singing, There Will Be Days Like This. And I never forgot it. In fact, it was a turning point for me because I began to think, how can I contribute now to making this last? Little did I think two years later I'd be at a peace table.

Presenter3:49

Yeah.

Professor Monica McWilliams3:49

Uh

Presenter3:49

Does not always rain.

Professor Monica McWilliams3:49

It was not all over

Speaker 23:51

Uh

Presenter3:51

There'll be days like

Speaker 23:54

Uh

Professor Monica McWilliams3:54

Well does no one complain?

Professor Monica McWilliams3:57

WJ like this

Professor Monica McWilliams3:59

Everything falls into place like the flick of a switch.

Professor Monica McWilliams4:04

Well my mama told me

Professor Monica McWilliams4:07

There'll be days like this

Professor Monica McWilliams4:12

Well you don't need to worry

Professor Monica McWilliams4:15

There'll be days like this.

Presenter4:17

Van Morrison and Days Like This. Professor Monica McWilliams, you're currently working as an academic researching domestic violence in conflict and post conflict societies. What do you see as the relationship between domestic violence and conflict in wider society?

Presenter4:33

Well, during conflict it's very hidden because the hospitals and the police officers are taken up with so much of what they call terrorism. But actually a great deal of domestic terrorism is also going on behind the scenes because the women can't speak out, they can't seek out the support that they need, and it goes on at much higher levels. When I did my study, I was able to show that as many women were being killed by their own partners as there were in the conflict itself.

Presenter5:04

Which was quite shocking. It was 1993 when you first studied the subject in Ulster and you carried out more research to update your findings last year. How's the situation now? It's an enormous difference. What difference does peace make? It means now that there are support services where the police and the army were not able to go into areas. In fact, in one case, they came by helicopter. Inside the United Kingdom, in a place called Northern Ireland, they were having to respond to domestic violence by helicopter. And so, of course, all of that has changed. And the satisfaction levels with police, because what happens in peace agreements is that there's criminal justice reforms, there's police reforms, and that makes it more representative, more accountable, and more transparent. It's time for some more music. Tell me about your second disc. Why have you chosen it? The town I love so well. Well, I'm from that part of the world. I think Phil Coulter, in those lyrics, just absolutely epitomised everything that was terrible about what we call the Northern Iron Troubles. And he pictures a scene of devastation. And the words about what's lost and gone forever is something that I'll never forget. But it's also a story of how we can move on. And in the White House on St Patrick's Day, each year that we were at the peace negotiations, we were invited. And this is the song we sang. And I recall Phil Coulter and John Hume and President Clinton and others all singing this together.

Speaker 36:36

But when I

Presenter6:37

Uh

Speaker 36:37

Yeah.

Presenter6:37

Uh

Presenter6:38

Every turn, how my eye

Presenter6:43

Ziff Burn

Presenter6:45

Deceived.

Presenter6:47

How would

Speaker 26:49

Big Ross.

Speaker 26:51

To its knees and turns.

Professor Monica McWilliams6:53

By the al

Presenter6:56

But cars.

Presenter6:59

And the bummed out boy

Presenter7:02

I'm the gas.

Presenter7:04

That Heinz on

Presenter7:06

Two or three

Presenter7:09

Phil Coulter and The Town I Loved So Well. Professor Monica McWilliams, you were born in the mid fifties and grew up in Kilrah in County Lorindonderry, one of five children. What are your early memories from that time?

Presenter7:23

Well, I was very fortunate to grow up on a farm. My father was a cattle dealer, and I have fantastic memories of learning to run after the sheep. He told me not to chase after the one that left the flock because that little one would come back when he saw he'd taken the wrong turn. You were a Catholic family and went to convent school. What was it like there?

Presenter7:46

I loved school.

Presenter7:48

I loved books, I loved poetry, and then we had the opportunity of drama. So I participated in every school opera, in every concert. I won a few prizes. They called it elocution, because obviously the part of the world I came from, Ulster Scots would have been a dialect, and that wasn't always going down too well with the nuns. And so they always thought we needed to have proper elocution classes in order to learn to speak properly. But it was a very good education. And my hockey coach was a nun, so it was quite a picture to watch her flying up and down the field in the full nun habit. Habit flying. Yeah, yeah. But she was great, and we did win quite a few hockey matches. So there were incredibly happy days.

Professor Monica McWilliams8:27

Yeah.

Presenter8:33

Except I do recall the teacher once saying, when she was doing a war poem, it would be great if we had a gun. And my father, of course, having sheep that were being worried by dogs, had a gun, and I thought nothing of putting it into my hockey bag and bringing it to school, and it was at the height of the troubles. And of course when I put it up and mounted it all together and set it on the table, she walked in.

Presenter8:57

And she nearly fainted.

Presenter8:59

And she said, Who has brought this into school? And I said, But you said yesterday that you needed a gun and I thought it was just natural that I should bring you one. So I'm remembered now as the girl with the gun.

Presenter9:11

She's gone on to be very ironic. How much did you mix with your Protestant counterparts as a young girl? Well, that was the sad thing. We actually didn't. There was two of everything, two youth clubs, two dance halls, of course, two schools. So from the age of four when we went to school till I was eighteen, I could honestly say to you I never mixed with anyone from the Protestant religion, which I wanted to. This is your third disc? Tell us about it. When I first saw El Postino, the postman, it just brought me to a place. It was a small island in Corsica, I think, and the Chilean poet Nerudo was writing the poetry for the postman. And here we have a story of romance, of an island, beautiful scenery, beautiful music, but also politics, because it was about how that little island needed to have a water supply and how it became such a divisive issue to the point where the person who fell in love and married the woman was killed. So it was very poignant, but when I hear this music, it carries me to another place. It is so beautiful and haunting.

Presenter10:56

Part of the film soundtrack to Il Postino composed by Luis Bakaloff. Professor Monica McWilliams, we talked about your dad a little bit. Tell me about your mum. What sort of role model was she to you?

Presenter11:08

She was an incredible woman in that she had married Liet.

Presenter11:12

She was very independent, and as a result, at a very early age she gave me a very strong message, which was Always have some money that you can call your own.

Presenter11:22

Because back then when women married, that was the end of their jobs. And she was put a great emphasis on education. What had her job been before she married?

Presenter11:34

She worked in a creamery, in a buttery factory. I still buy that butter in memory of her. And it was an all-Protestant workforce, except for herself. And she had the strongest, strongest friends who visited her when she was in her eighties and nineties. And we and I felt incredibly privileged that these women from a completely different background came into our home to tell us what a wonderful supervisor she had been to them. And they came to her funeral. And it was something I'll never forget in a country like ours where there was so much division to see this united spirit of these women from the factory. You attended Queen's University in Belfast during the early seventies. The troubles were ongoing. How much was student life affected? Queen's University was a place like a sanctuary, but you were exposed to it. I mean, a terrible thing happened in 1974 in my second year, and I was starting to do part of my finals. A very good friend of mine was murdered. And it was devastating. And it was frightening. We had no electricity. We were trying to study for exams. We had no food. There was no petrol. There was curfew. And then to get the news that he had been killed, what should have been and were in many ways the happy days of our lives were also tinged by incredible tragedy.

Presenter13:04

And with that as the background of what you were experiencing when that scholarship from the University of Michigan came through, it must have been foremost in your mind that it was a good time to go? Completely. I thought I'm getting out of here and maybe I'll never come back. But I just have to get away from this place because I can't see it at this ending. And I had the most wonderful opportunity with that scholarship to go and study urban planning and architecture in inner-city Detroit at the University of Michigan. But what I couldn't bear was watching places at home burning down. I would go by myself most nights to watch the six o'clock news, and the main stories were Northern Ireland. And so as soon as I got my qualification, I decided to head back home. I had a great belief, and I still do have it actually, that if you get the opportunity to have an education like that or a qualification, you should go home and make use of it.

Presenter14:04

It's time for your next disc. Why have you chosen this one?

Presenter14:07

This is Carl King, You've Got a Friend. I think every one of us needs a rock in our lives. I was very fortunate. I have my wonderful sister, and she is not only a sister by birth, but she's a friend. And also on the day that I got married, this was the song I chose.

Professor Monica McWilliams14:30

You just for

Professor Monica McWilliams14:33

Out my name

Professor Monica McWilliams14:36

And you know

Professor Monica McWilliams14:38

Wherever I

Speaker 314:39

I am

Speaker 314:42

I'll come running.

Speaker 314:47

To see you again

Professor Monica McWilliams14:54

Winter, spring, summer or fall

Presenter14:58

Carol King and you've got a friend. Professor Monica McWilliams, in nineteen ninety six, you became one of the founders of the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition. Now as its name suggests, it's a party made up from women across the political divides in Northern Ireland. Why was it needed?

Presenter15:15

Well, we had been working together for the previous two decades and more. Many of us had cut our teeth on asking for the Sex Discrimination Act to be extended to Northern Ireland. And so we figured, you know what, there's an awful lot that unites us here. And if there's going to be peace negotiations, why shouldn't there be some women at that table? And so we wrote to all the parties and they didn't bother answering. And we said, well, we'll get together and see if there's a potential for us to do it. You had to get elected. We had to get out our

Presenter15:49

Posters and the posters were interesting. Yep, wave goodbye to dinosaurs.

Presenter15:54

They were pretty pathetic posters. They had a little dinosaur.

Professor Monica McWilliams15:56

Innocent?

Presenter15:58

But the message that some of the political leaders sent back to us was How dare you call us dinosaurs? And we said But your name's not in the poster, so why are you self-identifying? And that didn't make us popular, but it did give us a lot of spirit and a lot of attitude. And that's what we brought to the table. Your party gained two seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly. How were you and your fellow members greeted in the debating chamber?

Presenter16:26

Well, we'd already experienced quite a bit of that humiliation and derogatory remark. Some of it was misogynist, just downright misogynist. Go home and have babies, and the only women that should be at this table should be the ones who are going to polish it. Have you seen any of that footage again? Because there are documentaries being made about it, and what's it like to revisit that? Because at the time, to an extent, presumably, it's normalised and it's part of your daily experience. It may have been normalised in daily experience, but it was also incredibly hurtful and at times damaging. Of course, it takes your confidence away. And it made me think, am I doing the right thing here? When that's all you're being fed, that diet. You have to build yourself up. And you have to come to believe this is more about them than it is about you. But there's part of you that thinks, what have I done to deserve this? Watching film footage of that time shows an incredibly macho, to say the least, political culture. How different are things now? I think the dinosaurs have morphed, either because they wouldn't be caught on camera saying what they said back then, but I also think their attitudes have changed. They were quite dismissive of us as a novelty, as not being a serious political organisation, that we wouldn't have had the expertise or skills to be good negotiators. We proved them wrong. And I think today Northern Ireland's a different place. We have women political leaders. 30% of the legislative body is made up of women. Do they make a difference? Time will tell, but I do think it is really important for younger women to see that they have role models now, either in the media or in politics, in institutions that were so male-dominated that a young woman couldn't even have believed and dreamed that she could do that job. Now they can. It's time to go to the music. This is your fifth disc. This is bread and roses. I remember in the 70s walking up Royal Avenue on International Women's Day when International Women's Day was not famous at all.

Presenter18:27

There were so few of us. But we did bring out our coloured banners and we did bring out our songs. And this was the song we sang. And the words of it are incredibly powerful. I only have sons, but there's a line in this song saying, and we march for men too, because they are also some mothers' children. So it's about changing the world. And it's saying everywhere that, yes, we're fighting for bread and we're struggling all the time to put bread on that table, but there are days when we just love those roses. As we go marching, marching, we battle to for men, for they are women's children, and we Father them again

Speaker 319:17

Powerline

Presenter19:17

Our life shall not be sweated From birth until life closest. Hearts starve as well as bodies Give us bread, but give us roses Hi.

Presenter19:35

Joan Byers and her sister Mimi Farina with Bread and Roses. Professor Monica McWilliams, you met Joan Byers. I did, in the dance hall, in the village, in Kilray.

Speaker 319:35

Uh

Presenter19:46

She came to sing, and I remember thinking, Oh, heavens this famous woman from the United States has come all the way here

Presenter19:55

As co-founder of the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition, you were present at the negotiations of the Belfast Agreement. What perspective were you looking to bring to proceedings?

Presenter20:05

In the Belfast Agreement, in the Good Friday Agreement, it was principle was nothing was agreed till everything was agreed.

Presenter20:12

And everything was huge. First we wanted a process that was inclusive, because we said if you're going to be part of the problem, you need to be part of the solution. Whereas others at the table did not want some of those individuals who had been engaged in armed conflict to be at the table.

Presenter20:28

But the substantive issues were really important. It was that issue that we talked about. We don't want other children to have to be educated the way we were. They need to live and learn together. And so we brought integrated education, we brought mixed housing where people would get the opportunity to live in the same housing areas. Issues about young people, but the most important one that wouldn't have been there had the women not been there was the issue of victims and what we were going to do for the victims in the future. And we still haven't delivered on that in the way that we promised, but at least it's in the agreement.

Presenter21:03

You and your colleagues went to South Africa while negotiations were ongoing. What did you learn there about resolution?

Presenter21:10

I think it was the most profound learning experience of my life.

Presenter21:14

We were actually locked up in a military camp in a place called Arneston in Eastern Cape. We went with blackened-out windows on a helicopter from Johannesburg airport and we didn't even know where we were going. And I was a bit concerned about how I was going to phone my children because we were told that we shouldn't even have any communications. And yet for three days we listened and listened to people like President Mandela, to the Klerk's people, to Budalazi's people, to the Liberal Party, to the Freedom Front, and we learned so much. And their message was: you don't have to take what we're telling you to your own situation, but we'd like you to listen to how we got to where we're at. And after those three days, we were different people, all of us. And IRA called a ceasefire about a week after we came home and entered the talks and stayed. And Sinn Féin, the political party, remained at the table. And I think the South Africans will never know how much we appreciated what they did for us.

Presenter22:21

It's time for your next piece of music. This is your sixth disc. Yeah, that is the South African experience being reflected. I love this national anthem, and it's talking about all the colours of South Africa and how you bring them together. And to have in my lifetime, to be able to say that I was locked up with Mandela for three days and then to hear this song brings me back to that place. So I feel very honoured.

Speaker 222:48

Gosi sig le afri.

Speaker 322:53

Go! Uh

Speaker 222:54

Uh

Speaker 322:54

Palupagani Sutumolayo.

Speaker 323:00

Izo Imitanaso Yetu.

Speaker 223:00

Israel Yetu.

Speaker 323:05

Yeah.

Speaker 223:05

Uh

Speaker 223:06

Yeah.

Speaker 323:06

Uh

Speaker 223:06

Uh

Speaker 323:06

Uh Uh

Speaker 223:06

Oh see.

Speaker 223:09

Sigene la

Speaker 323:09

Eagle.

Professor Monica McWilliams23:12

Uh

Speaker 223:12

Two. Lucipolayo.

Professor Monica McWilliams23:14

You saw by your

Speaker 223:17

Yeah.

Professor Monica McWilliams23:18

O C C

Presenter23:22

Gozi Sikalele Africa, the South Africa national anthem sung by the Teal Choir. Professor Monica McWilliams' negotiations in the final days before the Belfast Agreement was signed were long and arduous. What are your memories of those final days? It was the tensest three days other than giving birth to my children that I've ever experienced. In many ways, it was a bit like that. It was hard labour. We were up all night. The hero of the process was Mo Molam, who

Presenter23:51

Had been through chemotherapy and was wearing a wig, like I once had to do for the same reason. And so I knew how uncomfortable it must be. So she used to take her wig off and she would run around with an intra-travenous strip in her arm and barefoot, negotiating like you never saw anybody negotiating between the rooms. Absolutely phenomenal, and should be well remembered for having done that. That was part of it. The tension, one minute it was on, the next minute it was off. It started to snow, which was incredible, on the 9th of April. And it was late, because we very rarely get a downfall of snow. And yet, there was something symbolic about that, too, because we walked out in dawn and it was the most incredible sight to see.

Presenter24:39

Thousands upon thousands of journalists waiting for the word.

Presenter24:42

And I had said it was going to end at midnight on the Holy Thursday night.

Presenter24:47

And when it didn't, it spilled over. But I knew that this was the deadline because I'd seen the flight tickets for the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and for Sandra Mitchell and others to go for their Easter holidays. And it was probably symbolic that it was Good Friday. And we said, let's hope there'll be many Good Fridays. And finally, we were called to the table. And I had said to the woman, Now the cameras will be on us, so make sure we don't cry, because this is an incredible emotional time.

Presenter25:18

You know, you're signing a peace agreement for your country after many, many decades of conflict. And we all held ourselves together till we looked around the table and saw grown men crying.

Presenter25:29

And I threw up my arms and said, Okay, you can cry now if you want.

Presenter25:33

And I can see the emotion that you feel now. You never forget it.

Professor Monica McWilliams25:36

Yeah.

Presenter25:38

It's time for your next piece of music. This is quite a track. Tell me why you've chosen it. I was invited to do Strictly Come Dancing for a fundraiser for WAVE. The acronym stands for Widows Against Violence Empowered. But they're now a very well-known NGO in Northern Ireland that works with trauma and counselling for victims of the troubles. And it was a very daunting task to be asked to do this with Alan McBride, who's very well known in Northern Ireland. We won that night. So every time I hear this music, I start dancing. Whether I'm in a shop or whether I'm in the kitchen, it just brings me back to the night that I had to put on my glad rags and perform.

Professor Monica McWilliams26:26

Make a dragon ball and retire man, I'm too hot

Professor Monica McWilliams26:30

Say my name, you know who I am, I'm too high.

Professor Monica McWilliams26:34

And my band back that one break it down Girls hit your hallelujah Girls hit you hallelujah Girls hit your hallelujah Cause uptown punk gon' give it to ya Cause uptown punk gon' give it to ya Cause uptown punk gon' give it to ya

Speaker 326:51

Don't believe me, just watch

Presenter26:54

Mark Ronson, featuring Bruno Marr's Uptown Funk. Professor Monica Williams, you won your strictly performance with that track. And I saw a little bit of a shoulder shimmy today. The moves are still in there. I could see it going. Uptown funk, I'll never forget it.

Professor Monica McWilliams27:04

See the moves are still

Professor Monica McWilliams27:06

See you in the next one.

Presenter27:09

So alongside your academic role, you work part-time as a member of the Independent Reporting Commission. It's a body which is working towards ending paramilitary activity and tackling organised crime. How optimistic are you about achieving those aims? Well, we've made the recommendations. We had to go and visit around the country what communities were telling us, what politicians were telling us, what some of the armed groups at that stage have been telling us. And we put together a report that was well received, first time ever that all the political parties agreed it. So we're now two years into our work, with two more years to go. We will not have perfect peace, but we're going to have to make our peace a whole lot better than what it is. And we need to say to these guys who I call coercive controllers, get off our patch. Your time is over. Go home and be grandfathers, which you keep telling me you want to be, instead of brigadiers and commanders and all these titles that they give themselves. There's a bit of toxic masculinity in there too, but people don't want them. And it's great to hear, sadly, as a result of Learn McKee's death, but also in terms of the very loud voices of saying just go away, disband, disrupt.

Presenter28:26

But we don't want you here.

Presenter28:28

Were people able to be more outspoken after Lera McKee's death than they would have might have been twenty years ago? That's important that they're outspoken. What was more important is witnesses. There's a huge frustration that people keep saying the dogs in the street know who's doing this. But you can't have dogs in the street in courts. You actually need to have strong witnesses. And I've learned from domestic violence and sexual violence and rape court trials, you need special measures to protect those witnesses because organised gangs can come after you if they know you're going to stand up in court and give evidence against them. And they're very powerful and quite intimidating. So we've learned a lot. And it's good now that we're putting these measures in where witnesses can be anonymised, they can give their evidence behind a screen, they can give their evidence through a video, and therefore it's much less scary because it is quite anybody who's ever gone into court knows what a terrifying experience that is. So we've had as a result of Lera McKee's death 140 witnesses come forward. Now they need to be supported.

Presenter29:35

You've got a very busy life, still lots of travel, lots of meetings. How will you be with all of the solitude that is waiting for you on our desert island? Oh, I'm so looking forward to it. I just I love the sound of the sea. I love taking the opportunity to get long walks by the sea, and I think I'll be very content. It's time for your final piece of music, Professor Monica McWilliams. Why have you chosen this one?

Presenter30:02

Well, Edith Piev is just the most powerful woman singer in terms of that size of her little body and the strength of this voice. And it's in French, and I speak French and I'm trying to learn it even better. So I'm memorising these words, but it's actually the words themselves. No, I regret nothing. And I think that, of course, we all have regrets and we would do things differently. And there have been some real tragedies in my life. But I really don't want it to be about regrets. Because as I said earlier, you're an ordinary woman who gets thrown into extraordinary times and you do the best with what you've got.

Speaker 330:45

Oh, Loriado

Presenter30:47

Yeah.

Speaker 330:50

No runaway.

Speaker 330:55

Nila bea coma pa

Speaker 331:01

Me and my

Speaker 331:03

I'm not sure if I can do it.

Speaker 331:12

No regulatory.

Presenter31:16

Edith P. F. Nome Jeune Regrettrian.

Presenter31:19

Professor Monica McWilliams, I'm about to cast you away to your desert island. I will send you there with the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare to read. You can also choose a book of your own to take with you. What would you like? I would love to take the Field Day anthology, volumes four and five, which are known as the Women's Anthology. Volumes 1, 2, and 3 had been predominantly focusing on the poetry and the stories of Irish male writers. And so the women came together to do an anthology and said, We will help with this. And I think I'll have long enough in this desert island to make my way through that anthology. And it's a beautiful anthology. You can also have a luxury item, something to soften the blow of being cast away. What would you like? I'd love a snorkel. I absolutely love going down under the water and watching the fish pass me by. And I might even have to find out where those little fish are if I'm going to survive. And finally, which of these eight discs would you rush to save from the waves if you had to? I think it'll have to be El Postino because I will be in that place listening to those waves and being carried away with that beautiful music back to that beautiful island. So I hope my experience will be as nice as El Postino's. Professor Monica McWilliams, thank you so much for letting us hear your desert island discs. It's a pleasure.

Presenter32:54

As we leave Monica on her desert island wearing a snorkel to gaze at the fish, there's just time for me to remind you that there's a whole range of fascinating castaways in our back catalogue and you can hear all those and many more programmes via the Desert Island Disc's website and on BBC Sounds. Monica recalled the long days and nights of the Good Friday Agreement negotiating process with the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Mo Molum. In 1999, Mo Molum was cast away by Sue Lawley.

Presenter33:22

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

Presenter33:29

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?

Professor Monica McWilliams33:30

Yeah.

Speaker 333:30

You have to

Presenter33:39

It's not easy.

Presenter33:40

But

Presenter33:42

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

Presenter33:48

They'll go back to violence. 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 obviously you've done, the victims, the wives, the mothers. That's the hardest time.

Professor Monica McWilliams34:10

And that of course

Presenter34:23

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

Presenter34:43

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.

Presenter34:53

But in the end, if you

Presenter34:56

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

Presenter35:01

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

Presenter35:05

Can't stomach it.

Presenter35:07

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

Presenter35:11

You obviously take a lot of notice 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. 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.

Presenter35:46

Um

Presenter35:47

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 to get a letter from somebody that says I'll keep going if you can and you think well

Presenter36:00

I'm quite happy not to do anything today, and you think, no, I've got to keep going because they're keeping going. The Right Honourable MP Mo Molam. It's a really fascinating programme, so do have a listen. Next time on Desert Island Discs, you'll be able to hear the musician and composer Nitin Sorni. Join me then.

Professor Monica McWilliams36:23

I'm Simon Mundy, host of Don't Tell Me the Score, the podcast that uses sport to explore life's bigger questions, covering topics like resilience, tribalism and fear with people like this.

Speaker 236:33

We keep talking about fear and to me I always want to bring it back to are you actually in danger?

Professor Monica McWilliams36:37

That's Alex Honold, star of the Oscar-winning film Free Solo, in which he climbed a 3,000-foot sheer cliff without rope.

Speaker 236:44

So, I mean, a lot of those, you know, social anxieties things and certainly I've had a lot of issues with talking to attractive people in my life where I'm like, oh no, like I could never do that. And it certainly feels like you're going to die. But realistically, you're not going to die. And that's all practice too.

Professor Monica McWilliams36:55

But realistic.

Professor Monica McWilliams36:57

Have a listen to Don't Tell Me the Score full of useful everyday tips from incredible people on BBC Sounds.