AD ELICIOUSLY foreign-sounding word has swum onto our tongues this week with one of our councils refusing to release a contentious report because it was in "purdah" prior to the local elections.

Earlier, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith was accused of contravening the period of purdah by making a politically-sensitive announcement about extra policemen.

Purdah, as we know it, is the run-up to elections where authorities and officials are supposed not to release information which may have an effect on those polls.

It is an Indian word meaning veil or curtain, and it particularly refers to a screen which drops from the ceiling to prevent women from being seen by men. The women are kept in purdah.

There are surprisingly few common English words that come from India: bangle, bungalow, cot, guru, jungle and pyjama. A pundit is a Sanskrit learned scholar, like Alan Hansen, and shampoo comes from the Hindu verb meaning "to knead".

Best of all is juggernaut.

Jagannatha is the Hindu lord of the universe.

On his festival day, vast, elaborate statues of him are pulled around Indian towns in giant chariots - or juggernauts. Some devotees sacrificed themselves by throwing themselves under the wheels of the juggernaut; some by-standers were fatally squashed when the enormous statue toppled out of the chariot.

Either way, a juggernaut is an unstoppable force that demands self-sacrifice - or a giant lorry.

ARISTOCRACY, land, capital, the professions are all there; but the poor labouring thousands of the county have none to care for them,"

fumed An Elector in a letter to The Northern Echo after the first Durham County Council elections in 1889. "Great mining and manufacturing centres like Bishop Auckland and Spennymoor, with their teeming thousands of working-class populations have never been noticed."

An Elector was right in that Durham's first 72 councillors were largely colliery owners, industrial magnates, landowners and peers of the realm - the Earl of Durham was unable to attend the first council meeting on February 7 because he was at the High Court in London contesting a libel action brought against him by champion jockey Charles Wood, whom he accused of pulling horses.

But the Echo said there were six Labour representatives, including a butcher from Hetton, a draper from Willington, a miner from New Silksworth and a country grocer from Coundon.

Plus John Wilson and Samuel Galbraith, who had remarkable political careers.

Wilson hailed from near Hartlepool. He was orphaned before he was a teenager and went down mines at an early age. He emigrated to the US, but returned to found the Durham Miners' Association (DMA) in 1869. This caused him to be sacked from Wheatley Hill pit and labelled an agitator.

He was elected Liberal-Labour MP for Houghton in 1885, a seat he held for a year. In 1890, he defeated the Marquis of Londonderry (also a member of the first county council) to become Mid-Durham MP - a seat he held for the Liberals until his death in 1915.

He was succeeded by Irish-born Samuel Galbraith who had started down Trimdon Colliery aged just ten.

At 11.20pm on August 25, 1874, having been in the pub after a game of cricket, Galbraith had a sudden religious conversion which turned him against alcohol and sport. He attended Brandon school, sitting among the infants, to begin the studies he had missed, and grew into a leader of the DMA.

He was representing Spennymoor in Parliament as a Liberal when he retired in 1922, but remained on the county council until 1925.

Were such giants among the councillors elected to Durham's first unitary authority on Thursday, or should we draw a discreet purdah over that?