Bishop Auckland Constituency Labour Party holds its centenary dinner in Auckland Castle tomorrow night. Since there are those who have long regarded these columns as a thorn in the red rose side, it is a particular pleasure - if something of a surprise - to have been invited.

The £22.50-a-head bash will be preceded by a service led by the Bishop of Durham. They will sing Jerusalem and Guide Me O Thou Great Redeemer, hear the reading from Revelations about a new heaven and a new earth, say Amen to the prayer commending the Labour party to the love and the mercy of God.

They will enjoy a sherry reception, dine on carrot and coriander soup, salmon thermidor and herb crusted chicken supreme, listen to International Development minister Clare Short and local MP Derek Foster and close with "live" musical entertainment, presumably to differentiate it from gramophone records.

After all that, alas, we are unable to attend, Thornton Watless Cricket Club having first appealed for the column to come to the aid of its party. In honour of the occasion, however, today is Labour Day in the John North column.

WALTER Nunn, a party member since 1938, is now 80-years-old Labour. He was a councillor for 47 years, remains as active as a cocktail of pills will allow - "look at the Health Service, if I had to pay for these I'd be dead" - wrote a short history of the Labour movement in Shildon to be buried in the town's millennium capsule.

In 1997, it records, New Labour won power - "but (caused) sadness, anger, frustration and even hatred locally as grass roots members and supporters felt they were sacrificed for the prosperous middle class." He remains an idealist, a soapbox Socialist with a strong streak of Methodism who learned his pre-war politics from the Daily Herald and Reynolds News and like thousands more North-East youngsters was a member of the Northern Echo Nig-Nog club.

"Some would say I'm a nig-nog still," he concedes.

Where Walter stopped, the Labour Party moved on. Despite 25 years as a Labour member of Sedgefield Borough Council, from its inception in 1974, he never got to chair so much as the sewage and lighting committee.

"There were people there who could hardly find their way to their seat, who knew nothing at all about local government," he says.

"Others were promised positions if they would ditch me, and they wouldn't."

It is advancing years, however, and not his constructive contempt for New Labour, which mean he will be unable to join tomorrow's celebration. No party pooping here.

Shildon remains the only town in the region where "Popping round to Walter's" still means seeking the advice of Alderman Walter Nunn, and not visiting the neighbourhood supermarket.

Son of a chargeman labourer and Independent Labour Party man, he went to Bishop Auckland Grammar School where institutionalised bullying, he uses words like "scragging" and "dyking", helped mould his commitment to justice and fair play.

Even as a nine-year-old, he recalls singing on the streets of Shildon, seeking support for Labour man Hugh Dalton against the Liberal, Charlton Curry.

Vote, vote, vote for Dr Dalton

Who's that knocking on the door?

If it's old Charlton Curry

We'll shift him in a hurry

He won't come knocking any more.

He also remembers Shildon folk walking 15 miles each way to hear Barnard Castle MP Arthur Henderson, pie and pea suppers that raised 12/6d for party coffers, joy at nationalisation.

After 18 months at Fylands brick works, near Bishop Auckland - "rough? It nearly killed me?" - he became a welder at Shildon wagon works, was elected to the Urban District Council in 1952 - "there was prestige in being a councillor in those days" - set about his battle.

The house where he and Kathy, the late Sid Chaplin's sister, have lived for 51 years is almost overrun with books, files and political records, the back bedroom long abandoned to more of the same.

"Some of these government circulars are written by kids," he says, adding "college kids" for good measure though he himself, a zealot for self-improvement, has had more courses than a Chinese banquet. He has been offered and declined what might be termed back-handed compliments ("apart from anything else, Kathy would have thrown me out"), clings to his founding faith as might a drowning man to a plank, denies that, like the dinosaur, old Socialists face extinction.

"I don't like spin doctors, I don't like people who tell lies, I don't like expediency and I don't feel I'm being left behind.

"Every day I hear people shouting for re-nationalisation because they realise that privatisation isn't the answer. Whilst they have strayed in the short term" - strayed, he says - "they are coming back to reality.

"I have never believed in seeking popularity as a short term answer to problems, knowing bloody well they'll only come back worse.

"Whatever you do it's far better to be honest, because the chickens will come home to roost. Numbers in the party are dropping, a lot of old people particularly feel very let down."

But what of the alternatives? "What, Margaret Thatcher and the bloody Tories? That's why I keep fighting. Hell, aye, anything's better than that."

THE thorniest alternative of all, probably, was that in 1970 the column stood for Shildon Urban District Council, pushing Walter Nunn into second place by 157 votes. Two other Labour lads trailed more distantly.

It was Thursday May 7. The Queen Mother spent a comfortable night in a carriage at spruced up Bedale railway station, RCA records opened its £1.8m factory in Washington, Farndale's daffodils were saved from the threat of a reservoir, the Football League contentiously proposed a minimum six shilling admission charge and the Tories lost control at Darlington (and lost dear old John Hunter, too.)

"Voters swing gently back to Labour," read the Echo's front page headline, but not in Shildon they didn't. All five non-Labour candidates were elected, and no need to search for a collective noun.

We were a declaration of Independents.