Knocking on Mallon's door

"I HAVE heard the officer talking about human rights and Home Office objectives. Let me interpret that for you." Ray Mallon is bristling, bridling so much he's burst onto the stage as if he's been fired from a pop-gun.

Minutes earlier, in the car on the way over, he was chatting amiably about why he, a putative Labour candidate, should be appearing on a platform with the Conservative leader.

But now he's boiling. He's bellowing.

"I want you to go out there and smash the doors down, tear the door off its hinges if you have to, and bring it back here, and drag the criminal out of his house and bring him back to the police station," he shouts.

Mr Mallon is at the headquarters of the largest private policing force in the country: Middlesbrough Council's community wardens. It is in a light industrial unit in Cannon Park, and the wardens sit neatly in rows, their luminous jackets matching those of the police officers arranged smartly on the other side of the aisle. Stacked in the corner, their bicycles are tidily waiting for action - even on a wet day when a floodwave is more imminent than a crimewave.

This is a start-of-day briefing. The community wardens and officers are told of crime hotspots and of targeted individuals, and it is the briefing officer's respect for the finer niceties of the law that incenses Mr Mallon.

"We are not being politically correct, we are out there getting stuck in and that's what the public want us to do," he tells the law-enforcers before him.

"Putting those doors in, allowing the criminals to know you are there. I'm not interested in liberty. I'm interested in fairness. I want fairness for the criminal - but I want fairness for the victim as well.

"Plenty of people out there are victims and they want justice. We can speak about human rights, we can speak about Home Office objectives, but frankly I'm not interested in them.

"Get out there and get stuck in. Don't even think about the Human Rights Act. Let your chief constable think about that. Everything you do is to be controlled, honourable and in the interest of the public - as long as you do that it is legal."

SEAN Price, the extremely affable Chief Constable of Cleveland, explains in more gentle tones what Mr Mallon admits later was a "tirade".

"If you are a drug dealer or a burglar and you're wanted by the police, you should expect every morning that your door's likely to go in and there'll be some officers there to take you to prison," says the Chief Constable.

"He's saying we should get away from being hidebound by the rights of the wrong-doers and that is quite right, and completely within the law.

"Some youngsters will tell my officers what their rights are and they will certainly know how to contact their solicitors. The big challenge for us is to get them and their parents to start thinking about other people's rights."

Mr Howard picks up on the theme in his speech. "While responsibility has declined, rights have proliferated," says the Tory leader. "'I've got my rights' is the verbal equivalent of two-fingers to authority."

This is the second time Mr Howard has come courting Mr Mallon. The first, of course, was in 1997, a month before the General Election. Mr Howard said that Mr Mallon, the pioneer of zero tolerance policing, was "my kind of cop".

A few weeks later, Mr Howard was back in Boro - but Jack Straw, then Labour's shadow home secretary, had beaten him to the prize. Mr Straw was ensconsed in the policeman's office while poor Mr Howard had to stand a couple of streets away, casually leaning against a police car, making sure that the photographers knew he was on the phone to Mr Mallon.

Then, on the day before polling, Tony Blair and Cherie, plus Helen Mirren (the toughest detective in Prime Suspect) visited Mr Mallon, the toughest detective in real life.

THEY weren't after Mr Mallon's vote - he said he probably wouldn't bother as he hadn't at the previous election - but they were after a little Mallon magic.

"The reason why they're coming here is because they see success, and everybody likes to be associated with success," Mr Mallon said at the time.

Therefore, no Premiership politicians came calling during the fallow years of the late 1990s. Mr Mallon was suspended from duty, languishing amid Lancet, a labyrinthine anti-corruption inquiry that achieved very little beyond the removal of about £7m from the public purse.

But, now reincarnated as the independent elected mayor of Middlesbrough, Mr Mallon is a success once more.

He explains as only he can. "I don't speak with statistics because you can lie with statistics," he says. "You can't lie with numbers. These are the numbers." Two years ago, Middlesbrough endured 2,800 crimes per month; now it's beneath 2,000. There were 900 autocrimes per month; now there're under 500...

"There were between 320 and 500 house burglaries, that's 12 to 18 a day, now you get under 150 consistently each month, and last month it was 103 and there were three days last month when there wasn't a house burglary. Not one! It's remarkable."

As well as the numbers of crimes, you can measure success in the numbers of politicians. Last week, Labour was desperate for Mr Mallon to stand in Hartlepool; yesterday, the Conservative leader had the national phone-in shows talking about his agenda by visiting Mr Mallon; within the next month, it is likely that both Home Secretary David Blunkett and Prime Minister Blair will be in the Boro.

And they, like Mr Howard, will not wince when Mr Mallon sets off on his populist "tirade".

"Sometimes police officers have to do that," says Mr Howard who sat comfortably when Mr Mallon repeated his tirade for those who had missed it earlier. "You've got to decide whether you are serious about zero tolerance. I am. So is Ray Mallon."

Mr Howard's speech was as uncompromising as Mr Mallon's tirade. He wants more classroom discipline, more prison spaces, more drug rehab places, more police, more stop-and-searches, more community wardens...

"We need to police our streets - not de-police them," he says. "We need a police force which intervenes, confronts and challenges every kind of crime and disorder - from graffiti and litter to burglary and robbery. In short, we need zero tolerance policing.

"As Ray has shown in Middlesbrough, by challenging disorder you begin to claim ground back from the yobs and hoodlums controlling our cities."

This is Mallon language - "hoodlums" is a Mallon word, although his Teesside vowels drag out the 'oo' so it sounds as if he is hooting like an owl.

Yet Mr Mallon wishes, one day, to stand as a Labour MP (a nod-and-a-wink and the word is Sir Stuart Bell will relinquish his Middlesbrough seat sometime during the next Parliament).

BUT still Mr Mallon praises the Conservative leader as "without doubt the most effective Home Secretary in living memory" (something he'll no doubt be discussing with Mr Blunkett when he pops up in a month's time).

Mr Howard's smile suggests he sees the political irony in all this, although his answer cleverly dances around the embarrassment.

"I am endorsing what Mr Mallon has done for the people of Middlesbrough in the way of cutting crime. I share that with him, it transcends political boundaries. We can agree on these things even though we are in different political parties.

"I think he would find a very warm welcome in the Conservative Party."

So, on this day of proudly politically incorrect no-nonsense hard-shooting straight-talking simple messages, it is all very confusing.

Does it just show that there is n o difference between the two parties, or that British politics is so fickle that it is simply about tribal loyalty?

"If Ray stands as an independent in the mayoral elections, we'll probably support him because he's good for Middlesbrough," a local Tory says. "But if he stands as Labour, I'll fight tooth and nail, cat and dog to keep him out because I don't believe in that party."

Hopefully, this political kicking down of Mr Mallon's doors will not infringe his human rights.