Labour force

AS improbable as it was welcome, the column found itself invited last Friday night to a Labour party do in Shildon - and after all that, couldn't make it.

The dinner was to honour 87-year-old Walter Nunn, presented in recognition of a lifetime's service to the party with a glass crystal which had been laser engraved with the Labour rose.

For Walter, sadly, the rose has long wilted, New Labour bedevilled by old Adam.

He is not, as a lady councillor at the function put it - and in rather unladylike manner - "some Blairite bum-kisser". In truth, she put it rather mildly.

"I have no time, no time at all, for Tony Blair and New Labour," he says when we catch up on Tuesday. "There were things which needed to be put right, but you don't throw out the baby with the bath water."

The Labour Party may have changed, Walter hasn't. He is a Shildon lad and proud of it, party member for 70 years, branch secretary for 54, councillor for 47, ex-member of countless other bodies and an honorary alderman.

Physically he may be a bit femmer, nursing a broken hip after being blown over in the wind, mentally he remains as bright as a billy-can.

"I've helped make plenty of changes, it's principles which shouldn't change," he says. "New Labour isn't about principles, it's about expediency."

Speaker after speaker had praised his honesty. At times, he says, it's cost him dearly. "Even when I was a security NCO in the war I almost got court martialled for refusing to turn a blind eye to fiddles. Some bitter, dirty things have happened over the years and Shildon is worse because of them."

It was the day that an opinion poll showed Tory support to be at its highest for 15 years. It scares the hell out of him, he says.

"I've lived most of my life under a Conservative government and I know that anything working people have got out of them has had to be choked out of them. Tony Blair has squandered a golden opportunity.

"We had 120 members in this branch once and they've dropped off left, right and centre since he came. People aren't mugs. Tony Blair isn't the fountain of all wisdom, all these people can't be wrong.

"The gap between rich and poor has got wider, the gap between north and south has got wider, they don't even trust councils to build houses or schools.

"They are promoting private enterprise out of the public purse. It can happen because too many people will just say 'Yes Tony, no Tony, three bags full Tony'. People don't respect us any more."

A former Bishop Auckland Grammar School boy - "I didn't like it, too snobbish, but it stood me in good stead" - he became a welder at the wagon works and senior welding instructor at the technical college.

Kathy, his devoted wife of 65 years, is now in Hackworth House care home. "Our door was open 24 hours a day," says Walter. "That was mainly down to her. She's helped hundreds of people over the years."

The dinner was attended by former Bishop Auckland MP Derek - now Lord Foster - by Helen Goodman, the seat's present incumbent, and by Durham MEP Stephen Hughes.

"You may not agree with Walter's politics," said assistant branch secretary Colin Devonport, "but you can't help admire his integrity, determination and political stamina."

They also gave him a book called The Men Who Made Labour. Walter was one of those.

IMPOSSIBLE to be in the vicinity of Hackworth House without popping in to see dear old Jenny Wren, still singing at 101 - and looking good on it, too. "It's the Avon," she said, and they should give her a few years' supply. Inevitably we launched into a Laughing Policeman duet, Jenny still word perfect. The old 'uns are the best 'uns, as ever.

DOWN at Shildon Railway Sports Club, forever the BR, the persevering Peter Dargue has made a fascinating discovery while clearing out the old tea hut.

It's a solid brass plaque, about the size of a tea tray, in memory of Private 9261 John Cree, who served with the 4th Royal Fusiliers in France and died, in Stockport, in 1917. He was 19.

"It was black, absolutely gone," says Peter. Now it's restored, bright burnished, but a mystery remains. Despite enquiries with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, and elsewhere, they have been unable to find any of Private Cree's family. Truth to tell, no one can even remember Craddock Street in Shildon, where he lived with his parents William, a wood machinist, and Elizabeth Jane.

The plaque is engraved: "They are the world's noblest and truest sons who act the noblest."

Peter would love to return it to the family, or learn more of the story. Can anyone help?

WHILST back in Shildon, we'd also hoped to deliver a card for Cliff and Marjorie Howes - old friends - whose diamond wedding fell today. Sadly, Cliff died on Monday evening, aged 82.

Probably he is best remembered as a big, straight backed, railway policeman - upright in every sense - who finished as a detective sergeant in York.

"He could be called out from Shildon and because of the traffic be on the scene of an accident quicker than some of the York people could," recalls Marjorie.

They'd met when he was a signalman at Simpasture - Newton Aycliffe, as is - and she a clerk at Shildon station. Marjorie will be 82 tomorrow.

Until a long and difficult illness, Cliff had also been much involved with the Hackworth Society and was chairman of the group which placed the millennium time capsule in the town park. "He was absolutely steeped in railways," says Marjorie - and, bless him, he was also a thoroughly good man.

LAST week's piece on Peter Tod, revivalist director in the 1970s of Darlington Civic Theatre, stirred many memories - none more colourfully than Maire Garood's.

Maire was secretary of the Sedgefield Players, a position she held (she insists) despite being unable to type. It was Peter, she recalls, who suggested that they stage a drama festival - an event which grows bigger by the year.

"Peter was absolutely magic. He did so much for us, helped us so much, even adjudicated one year. His enthusiasm was quite wonderful."

Now 63, Maire particularly remembers a crinoline-clad production of Dandy Dick with which the Players themselves won the festival, thus qualifying for a festival on the Isle of Man.

Margaret Bell, her mother, also had a leading role.

"Peter said we couldn't go straight from Sedgefield parish hall to the Isle of Man so he let us have the Civic one Sunday.

"I remember going across on the boat with our hamper and the crinolines tied on top, seeing our names outside the theatre and going out and getting drunk.

"Unfortunately the hotel was appalling. We stayed in better hotels after that, but we still disgraced ourselves."

Margaret Bell and Monica Cunningham, her late sister, were among Sedgefield's great characters. Both former mayors, one was SDP and t'other Conservative, though memory fails to suggest which was which.

Margaret's 91 this month, lives in sheltered accommodation in Redmarshall, near Stockton, but remains a trouper. "She says she's going to live until she's 105," says Maire. "I've no doubt that she will."

The brightest and best

AFTER death, a celebration of life. They aren't usually funerals - Matthew Courtney's had been held, privately, the day previously - but these thanksgiving services can be every bit as tricky, and as tearful.

In Matthew's case they achieved Blondini balance. A sad occasion, it was announced, but a real celebration, too.

Then, because it is the 21st century and perhaps because the chapel at Durham School was full of lawyers, they announced where the fire exits were, as well.

Matthew, who was 27, died following a sixth floor fall at the Tate Modern, in London.

George and Margaret, his parents, were both Co Durham headteachers; George was an international football referee.

Matthew, an Oxford graduate, was a lawyer with the top London firm of Freshfields, a name still impossible to hear without imagining a supermarket in Coronation Street.

You could tell there were lawyers behind us, too. They were comparing receipts.

The orchestra played the theme from The Pink Panther and Groovy Kind of Love, both doubtless significant. The order of service spoke of what Matthew was, and is.

Perhaps there should also have been a glossary of public school terms - old school friends spoke of the Shell, and the Loose - for the elementary benefit of those of us from Timothy Hackworth Juniors.

Matthew, an only child whose parents live at Middlestone Moor, near Spennymoor, had been a pupil first at the Chorister School and then at Durham School - "the brightest I ever taught," said the Rev Tim Fernyhough, a former chaplain.

He'd made his mark early. Told to write an introductory essay, said Mr Fernyhough, most pupils would have contributed a few hundred words on their favourite football team. Matthew wrote a compelling treatise on why Columbus hadn't discovered America after all. Sport wasn't really his game. He was a wonderful singer, member of the National Youth Choir, talented musician on piano and saxophone, spoke several languages fluently, loved literature and art, hoped to write a novel, recommended his favourite reading not in English, but Spanish.

He was also, said Mr Fernyhough, one of the rare breed of young gentleman who epitomised good manners - "the sort of young man a father would wish his daughter would bring home one day."

Reminiscences ranged from nights in Crazy Barry's in Fulham - "a club with, shall we say, mixed reviews", there spoke a lawyer - to camping on the beach in the western Highlands, cooking bacon on a driftwood fire and drinking vodka, but only (we were assured) to keep away the midges.

They told of his intellect and of his curiosity, his energy, his enthusiasm, his honesty - "He never told a lie, could never even have been suspected of it" - and of his love of performance.

At Durham School they'd made a Christmas CD, Matthew on 19 of the 20 tracks. He only missed the 20th, said Mr Fernyhough, because he allowed the organist to play a solo.

The singing at Saturday's service was memorable, too - Praise My Soul the King of Heaven, Love Divine, a coruscating Thine Be the Glory.

Afterwards everyone gathered - family folk, football folk, Freshfields folk - in the hall at Big School. There was much laughter, a few tears, a final word from Chris Forsyth, a Freshfields associate. "Matthew would have been a great colleague, a great friend and a great lawyer."