THE front page of the Belfast News Letter on Monday got it right. "Mowlam's True Grit" was the headline over a report that the British Labour Party's frontbench spokesperson on Northern Ireland had been receiving treatment for a brain tumour.
The story had already broken in some papers over the weekend that Marjorie "Mo" Mowlam had received daily radiotherapy for a non cancerous tumour between early January and the end of last month. To counteract the effects of the treatment, she had also had to take large doses of steroids.
During that time, there had been snide articles in some tabloids criticising her appearance, the amount of weight she had put on and her new hairstyle. She had decided "to put the record straight", because she thought her constituents and colleagues - not to mention the tabloid press deserved to know the truth.
Her candour and her courage have won tributes across the political spectrum. These have been particularly heartfelt in Northern Ireland where people recognise what the treatment must have cost her in practical terms. As the News Letter revealed, there were days when she had radiotherapy at 8.30 a.m. and then flew to Belfast to meet politicians and officials.
During this period from January to the end of March, she was also called upon to show political as well as physical courage in expressing a deepening concern about the Conservative government's handling of the peace process. This was particularly evident when she criticised Sir Patrick Mayhew's refusal to implement the key recommendations of the North Report on Orange marches. She made it clear that if she were to become Northern Secretary she would give legal effect to its proposals.
More recently, she has been the one British politician to signal some concrete hope for the future when she offered Sinn Fein swift entry into talks following an IRA ceasefire. Her interview on BBC's Radio Ulster was a direct response to the ideas put forward in a St Patrick's Day speech by Senator Edward Kennedy, appealing to the British government to take steps which would enable the IRA to renew its ceasefire.
ALL this has coincided with a period of renewed violence, when Mo Mowlam must have been under great pressure from the leadership of New Labour not to say or do anything that would provide electoral comfort to the Tories.
The IRA's response to her peace overtures - the shooting of a woman police reservist in Derry and the bombthreats to Aintree which led to the cancellation of the English Grand National - have already provoked taunts that Labour can't be trusted on terrorism.
Mo Mowlam is unlikely to buckle in the face of this kind of pressure. It is a measure of the respect in which she is held by her shadow cabinet colleagues that no attempt has been made to silence her, or to distance New Labour from her views.
Yet when she took over as the party's frontbench spokesperson on Northern Ireland in 1994, her appointment was greeted with considerable scepticism by both communities in the North.
Many nationalists resented the way Kevin McNamara had been dumped and saw this as a ploy to ingratiate New Labour with the unionists by weakening the party's traditional aspiration to a united Ireland. The unionists, for their part, were not convinced. They were closely aligned to the Conservatives and regarded Labour as instinctively hostile to their concerns.
Since her appointment, Ms Mowlam has worked hard to convince the political leaders of both communities that she is deserving of their confidence, not because she is partisan but because she is prepared to listen and to tell them, quite frankly, how she sees the situation and what she thinks should be done. .
I've heard her speak at the annual conferences of both the UUP and the SDLP and, despite my initial scepticism, have been impressed by her capacity for straight talking to both sides.
She's also gifted with formidable reserves of demonstratively affectionate charm. As she told one television interviewer over the weekend about her recent treatment and its side effects: "I'm a very touchy feely person and I hated having to draw back physically from people in case they realised I was wearing a wig."
It's not to everyone's taste but it sure beats the patronising viceregal hauteur to which we have been so long accustomed and will, I think, play better in Northern Ireland.
IT'S important just now to recall the qualities which Ms Mowlam has brought to the job, the fact that she has given many of us hope that the peace process may yet be saved by an incoming Labour government at Westminster.
Even before her recent illness, there had been sporadic speculation that Tony Blair might prefer to give her another post, using the Northern Ireland job to bring a new face into his cabinet. To this has now been added a perfectly proper concern about her health whether it would be right to expect Ms Mowlam to do a job where stress and crisis come with the territory.
This solicitude is understandable but the answer to the question about whether it is fair to Ms Mowlam to send her to Belfast must be a resounding "Yes". Indeed, it would be grossly unfair not to do so.
It is true that we are going into a difficult and tense period in Northern Ireland. Quite apart from the large political questions (Will the IRA call another ceasefire? How can Sinn Fein be brought into talks? Will the unionists walk out?) there are the increasingly frightening scenes of sectarian tension and the whole problem of Drumcree.
All of these underline the desperate need for a new Northern Secretary who is familiar with the nitty gritty of the situation, understands the fears of both sides and brings a degree of compassionate sensitivity to the task of steadying the community's raw nerves.
Mo Mowlam is the right person for this challenge. If anything, the way she has dealt with the most recent crisis in her own life has shown us the qualities she will bring to the job. She has demonstrated physical courage, political commitment and grace under pressure. Northern Ireland needs all three.
P.S. I can't finish this column without expressing my gratitude for all I learnt from Fergus Pyle, who died last week. When I arrived in Northern Ireland in 1968 as a reporter for the Observer, I was ill informed, naive and shamefully ready to rush to judgment. Fergus, who was Northern Editor of this newspaper, was endlessly generous with hospitality and with his enormous resources of knowledge, but he never reproached my ignorance.
I learnt a lot from his example, about trying to be honest, fair and, as important, about understanding the deep rooted fears that propel the violence.
Both communities in Northern Ireland have lost a good friend.