Mrs Robinson review – the politician whose joyful underdog triumph made the establishment suck lemons

The Guardian

8 hours ago

It's rare for a politician to cry on camera because they're so moved, especially in a legacy-cementing retrospective. But it happens several times in Aoife Kelleher's feature-length profile of the former Irish president, Mary Robinson. Whether it's pride in the Irish national identity, sympathy with the disenfranchised or grave fear of how the climate crisis will affect future generations, Robinson is not afraid to let her emotions show and is, indeed, unable to avoid it. In those moments, we see the core of her enduring popularity. As captured by this programme, Robinson is a leader who actually, genuinely cares, about people and principles.
A conventionally structured film – archive clips, journalist talking heads, an interview with Robinson herself – begins with her latter-day incarnation as an environmental campaigner before flipping us back to postwar County Mayo, where Mary Bourke grew up competing with four brothers. Despite being 'shy' and a 'bookworm', she was filled with an impulse to 'make life more fair', and sought to implement that via the study of law at Trinity College, Dublin, where she met her future husband, Nicholas Robinson. A spell at Harvard meant she was in the US to witness protests against the Vietnam war and the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. 'What is law when all of this is happening?', Robinson remembers thinking.
Back at home, she practised law but was soon drawn into politics and was persuaded to run in the 1990 presidential election. Her initial misgivings about the post being an irrelevant ceremonial institution soon gave way to a realisation that it could be a platform from which to advocate globally for human rights.
And so, at a time when Ireland was still deeply misogynist, this little-known woman stood as a rank outsider against the slicked grey hair, ballooning double-breasted suit and contrived bar-room bonhomie of old warhorse Brian Lenihan. Lenihan's party, centre-right traditionalists Fianna Fáil, had never lost a presidential election, but the charismatic Robinson's ability to connect with a tired, downtrodden populace was already seeing her begin to draw level in the polls when a Lenihan acolyte launched a sexist personal attack on her in a radio interview. This gaffe provoked many female Lenihan supporters to switch sides.
Robinson's campaign, depicted to the sound of Cannonball by the Breeders, became unstoppable: the footage of her accepting the nomination, smiling freely while Lenihan and beleaguered Fianna Fáil taoiseach Charles Haughey stand behind her looking as if they've sucked on lemons, is a moment of purely joyful underdog triumph.
Her presidency was profoundly different from any of her predecessors. Setting up a continuously lit lantern in the window of her official residence to represent members of the Irish diaspora who had been driven away by discrimination and oppression, Robinson made headlines by meeting with Queen Elizabeth II and Gerry Adams – not at the same time – before travelling to Somalia to draw attention to famine, and to Rwanda in the aftermath of genocide. At home, Ireland's positions on gender equality and sexual freedom fundamentally changed, with Robinson's drive to give voice to the voiceless playing a major part.
She quit in 1997 before the end of her term, a move that is not the only decision she candidly describes as a 'mistake' – although why it was so bad to renege on her deal with the Irish when her presidency only had a few months to run isn't properly explained. She'd been lured away by the prospect of becoming the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and here the film gently prompts questions about Robinson's politics.
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Now she could take on key transgressors, criticising Serbia, China, Russia and, indeed, the US, on the subject of Guantánamo Bay and the deliberately vague 'war on terror'. The US responded by levering her out of her job, then awarding her the Presidential Medal of Freedom some years later. Watching this film, it's hard not to wonder whether Robinson represents the best of and the limitations of rational, progressive liberalism: she spoke truth to power, her admirers would say, but others might say that she often politely asked power if it wouldn't mind awfully reining it in a bit, and power said no.
The concern abides as we see Robinson, now 81, acting as chair of The Elders, a prestigious pressure group founded by Nelson Mandela. Doing the rounds of conferences, seminars and campaign launches, Robinson is seen being brought to tears by melting glaciers, while giving speeches to green activists. The climate crisis might be the ultimate example of asking nicely not working, but perhaps someone listening to Robinson will take a more radical step forward: if they do, they'll be the latest in a line of countless people inspired by a woman whose desire to do the right thing has never wavered.
Mrs Robinson airs on Sky Documentaries and streams on Now, on Sunday, 17 August.