Hillary Clinton and the 'Vital Voices' of Northern Ireland's women

Tea and straight-talking

Hillary Clinton meets the women of the peace process

In November 1995, Hillary Clinton, then First Lady, accompanied President Bill Clinton at high-profile events in Belfast, Derry and Armagh. But it was an engagement she conducted alone that made the most lasting impression: a meeting over tea with nine working-class women from both sides of Northern Ireland’s religious divide, at the ‘Lamplighter’ café in South Belfast. 

The First Lady was taken by the women’s determination to build a better future for their children, and warmed to the straight-talking approach of Joyce McCartan. Joyce lost many family members during ‘the Troubles’, including her 17-year-old son Gary, shot dead by loyalist gunmen inside the family home. Along with other women, she set up the Women’s Information Drop-In Centre to bring Catholic and Protestant women together, ‘to convene and talk over their needs or fears’.

Joyce explained to the First Lady how frightened they all were when their sons and husbands left the house and how relieved when they arrived home safe. They hoped the paramilitary ceasefires declared in 1994 would last; Joyce told Clinton, ‘it takes women to bring men to their senses’. 

When Clinton remarked how well the café’s teapots were keeping the tea warm, Joyce insisted she take one home to the White House. Hillary recalls how she used the teapot every day in the Clintons’ personal kitchen.

Just a few weeks after meeting the First Lady, Joyce died. But her message of cross-community work on the path to peace had caught Clinton’s attention.

In 1997, Hillary Clinton delivered a lecture at the University of Ulster in honour of Joyce McCartan. Accompanied by her ‘Lamplighter’ tea pot, she praised ‘the courage of Irish women like Joyce who, at kitchen tables and over pots of tea, helped chart a path to peace.’ 

'A path to peace'

Clinton develops her bond with the women of Northern Ireland

Impressed by Joyce McCartan’s example, Clinton forged strong bonds with more local women activists, including Monica McWilliams and Pearl Sagar – the leaders of the newly-founded Northern Ireland Women's Coalition party. 

During the St Patrick's Day festivities of 1997, White House officials arranged meetings with President Clinton for bigger Northern Ireland parties, but missed the Women's Coalition off their list. Instead of protesting, Monica McWilliams and her colleagues agreed to meet the First Lady. The encounter, scheduled for a few minutes, stretched over an hour with the women exchanging tips on how to cope with hostile commentary from the media and other politicians. 

At the White House St Patrick's Day reception, Hillary paid tribute to women working for peace on both sides of the Irish border. She started making plans for a women's conference in Belfast – what would become the ‘Vital Voices: Women in Democracy’ conference.

'The face of hope is what we have to make now'

The Vital Voices: Women in Democracy conference in Belfast

When the Vital Voices conference took place in autumn 1998, the Northern Ireland parties had already negotiated the Good Friday Agreement. But tragic setbacks, like the Omagh bombing, showed the path ahead would be far from smooth.

Clinton already had a new friend and supporter in the indomitable Mo Mowlam – the UK's first female Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, and resident of Hillsborough Castle. She stayed at Hillsborough Castle with Dr Mowlam during the conference, and described her as a ‘delightful new friend’.

In September 1998, Clinton delivered a speech at the ‘Vital Voices: Women in Democracy’ conference, earning a standing ovation from her 450-strong audience at Belfast's Waterfront Hall. 

Clinton argued that women’s progress was essential for economic and democratic progress. After Women's Coalition representatives had endured sexist and bullying language from their opponents (including at one point being greeted with 'mooing' noises), the First Lady praised, ‘the voices of women who withstood jeers and threats, prejudice and violence to make themselves heard in a political world once reserved primarily for men’. 

Clinton thanked Mo Mowlam for bringing the conference to fruition. For her part, Dr Mowlam credited the conference with boosting the confidence of women in Northern Ireland.

'They had to be there'

The political legacy of Hillary Clinton, Mo Mowlam and the women of Northern Ireland

After leaving the White House, Hillary Clinton maintained her close interest in Northern Ireland. 

In March 2005, she was one of a group of US Senators who met the McCartney sisters when they visited Washington DC. The Belfast sisters were campaigning for justice for their brother Robert - the family believed IRA members had been involved in his murder and a subsequent cover-up. Senator Clinton told reporters the peace process could not move forward, 'unless there is a complete reckoning with the demand for justice' by the McCartney family. 

Hillary Clinton went on to become US Secretary of State, a Democrat presidential candidate, and is now the first female Chancellor of Queen's University Belfast. She has often repeated her message about the vital contribution women could make to peace and politics. 

In 2021, Clinton visited Hillsborough Castle again to meet Brandon Lewis, one of Mo Mowlam's successors as Northern Ireland Secretary. 

Then at Hillsborough Castle in April 2023, Clinton praised Women's Coalition negotiators who had, 'persisted in the face of dismissiveness and occasional contempt... not just because they wanted to be there. They understood, because Mo [Mowlam] had made it clear, they had to be there if their hopes for a more peaceful future for them and their children were to be realised.'

Sadly, Dr Mowlam wasn’t in the audience to hear her friend praise her insight; she died in 2005, just seven years after her key role in brokering the peace deal. 

The Women's Coalition dissolved in 2006, following a remarkable decade encouraging voters to embrace compromise. After losing her seat in the Stormont Assembly, Monica McWilliams went on to become Northern Ireland's first Chief Human Rights Commissioner. 

The Coalition's Pearl Sagar became a consultant to Clinton's international ‘Vital Voices’ project – now a global partnership that promotes women’s voices in leadership positions.

The number of women involved in political life in Northern Ireland has continued to grow since the 1990s. The percentage of women Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs) at Stormont rose from 13 percent in 1998, to 36 percent by 2022. The Democratic Unionist Arlene Foster became Northern Ireland's first female First Minister in 2016. Sinn Fein's Michelle O'Neill became the first nationalist First Minister in 2024. 

Clinton has referred to her meeting with Joyce McCartan and the women of the Women’s Information Drop-In Centre several more times in subsequent speeches about Northern Ireland. At Hillsborough Castle in April 2023, she returned to what she'd learned during her trips in the 1990s.