One Unionist politician publicly denounced "the huggy-wuggy lovey-dovey Secretary of State - instead of fighting she's embracing the enemy" She shrugged: There's nothing I can do about being me. In the space of just under a month, Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, has demonstrated how easily an organisation can forfeit the public's trust. The downside is that my style is difficult for some men to handle, but in the end I am what I am It's me.. She once said it was her mission to "civilise the Ulster male". The people love her, though many politicians in Northern Ireland do not.
She had problems with many Unionist politicians who did not care for her informality and bad language: the Ulster Unionist leader cannot have welcomed being referred to as "Trimble-Wimble". She herself outlined her behaviour during long hours of negotiation: I can remember going back and forth, and the way I kept sane was to punch the security guards at one of the doors in their stomachs. The first time it got them, but the next time they had hardened their muscles and were used to it and were ready for it That's how I dealt with a lot of the frustration. The US Senator George Mitchell, who chaired the talks, described her thus: She is blunt and outspoken and she swears a lot She is also intelligent, decisive, daring and unpretentious The combination is irresistible. The move was risky but it worked: within hours of her visit they agreed to stick with the process, and the talks went on A spokesman for the prisoners said: "They were impressed. The crucial negotiations in Belfast were largely the personal work of Tony Blair, but Mowlam was unflagging in her work.
It wasn't what she said, it was the fact that she was there, that's really what it came down to. Mo Mowlam took the unprecedented step of going into the Maze H-blocks and meeting loyalist prisoners, some of whom were serving sentences for multiple murders. The process was endangered by restless loyalist inmates, who threatened to destabilise it by withdrawing their support. She may not have been the most orderly or disciplined of ministers, but she cajoled, persuaded, bullied and embarrassed many into moving against their instincts. She was, someone quipped, the woman who put the Mo in momentum. Although she played a major part in the exhausting negotiations preceding the historic Good Friday Agreement of 1998, the incident which was both most striking and most typical of her time in Belfast centred on the Maze prison.