Farewell Mo Mowlam

There’s much chat today on the Northern Irish blogs about the death of Mo Mowlam.

Many bloggers have set aside their political opinions of Mo and have posted some respectful euologies about the lady and her work as Northern Ireland Secretary. I saw a news article on MSN this evening that claimed she was once tipped to succeed Tony Blair as Labour leader in a poll.

Of course, some people’s resentment toward Mo, the British State or whatever else outweighed their sense of decency, with some extremely snide comments being placed on popular NI blogs. In the case of Slugger O’Toole, the moderators - rightly - removed the offensive comments. I only wish it were so easy to remove the commenters!

For my part, I will remember Mo as someone who tried. She thought outside the box and took risks to revive a flatlining peace process, at a time when many of our home-grown politicians would not or could not. A brave lady in my opinion.

From what I’ve read about Mo this evening (and what I already knew), she was one of a kind. The world is a little emptier this evening without her.