‘Briefing’ is fake sophisticated, meant to show the briefer is an insider.
Like ‘cogar’ in Irish (literally ‘whisper’) it says ‘come here (somewhere private) ‘til I tell you’. It used to be an almost entirely male business and men in the media and government-advising business loved the whole carry-on. That’s bound to have changed now; yes? No, not in Downing Street, nor Merrion Square.
The briefing against Mo Mowlam, Northern Ireland Secretary of State from May 1997 to October 1999 (she died in 2005) was the opposite of sophisticated; crude, blatantly unionist in sympathy. And heartless? Civil servants who fed out that line probably left office with honours, certainly were never unmasked. They possibly knew, no, probably knew when they spread around Mowlam’s medical history - medication, diagnosis, prognosis, which wasn’t great, Mo’s chance of beating her tumour - that they were in tune with the British prime minister of the time, Tony Blair.
For some time she had kept Blair in the dark about her illness. Arguably she outlived her usefulness before illness robbed her of judgment. Mowlam came to the north first as a shadow Labour minister, emissary to unionism while Blair long-fingered what he would do in office about the embryo peace process. Ulster Unionists loved her until they didn’t, when she returned as secretary of state with the brief to schmooze Sinn Féin on its way to relegating the IRA.
Some allusion to all of this turned up among the recently released Irish and British state papers. By far the most acute and also sympathetic – but then this was war by other means and he was on ‘the other side’ - was Irish ambassador to Britain Ted Barrington, writing in July 1997 to headquarters, the Department of Foreign Affairs. RTE’s meticulous coverage headlined Barrington’s conclusion that a ‘whispering campaign’ consisting of articles in British papers plus leaks from the Northern Ireland Office in Belfast was meant to ‘present Mowlam in an unflattering light’.
It was ‘focussed, sustained and sinister’ and did not serve Irish interests. It was meant to undermine Mowlam’s self-confidence and authority. The ambassador wrote that it was difficult to be certain who was behind the campaign but evidence suggested ‘forces within the NIO unsympathetic to her style and outlook’ were combining with ‘pro-Unionist sections of the London media.’
Barrington reported that not long after her appointment ‘Paul Bew of Queen’s University’ (since 2007 cross-bench peer Lord Professor Bew) ‘spoke to me about Mowlam’s lack of knowledge of the lexicon of Anglo-Irish relations, her garrulousness and her propensity to put her foot in it.’
The remarks, Barrington wrote, were made at a London conference in the presence of others ‘and he felt obliged to defend the Secretary of State.’ David Trimble, then Ulster Unionist party leader, he noted, had by contrast not criticised Mowlam in front of him and instead reserved ‘his fire for current and past members of the Irish government.’
Barrington could not think of any other member of the Labour government who ‘had to endure a similar attack.’ There was certainly gossip about Mowlam’s successor Peter Mandelson but written from ‘a position of grudging and fearful respect.’ (But then Mandelson arrived to settle unionism unnerved by the imminence of negotiations.)
The ambassador repudiated Bew’s estimate of Mowlam’s fitness for the job. But he reckoned she drew fire because she was sympathetic to ‘a settlement that would suit our interests in terms of the protection of the rights of the Nationalist community and North-South cooperation. These indeed may well be the reasons why she has come under attack.’ Her opponents might ‘calculate that, even if they do not succeed in having her removed their criticisms will have the effect of undermining her authority and judgment...’
That the evolving peace process had enemies is not news. It is still interesting to glimpse efforts to re-tool it. No doubt some were well-intentioned.
