Gorilla warfare as politics goes bananas

IT was an extraordinary day. In the morning a joke monkey was made mayor of Hartlepool, but he immediately stepped out of his suit and proclaimed that he was a serious politician.

The people then rebelled. They'd voted monkey and they wanted a monkey; they didn't want a man.

And the man who'd once been a monkey but now wasn't was last seen being chased by a newspaper reporter dressed as a gorilla, complete with bunches of bananas, along the Historic Quay. HMS Trincomalee rocked gently on the balmy breeze; a party of schoolchildren on an educational trip tittered at the barmy scenes.

In the afternoon, 15 miles down the A19 in Middlesbrough, the man who the local chief constable, no less, had said ran "an empire of evil" assumed control of a £400m municipal empire. He'd pleaded guilty to 14 serious disciplinary charges while protesting his innocence and was put in charge of the town's crime reduction strategy.

In GG Hoskins' mock-Gothic masterpiece of a Victorian town hall, with sunlight playing sweetly through the lofty stained glass windows, the ex-policeman took no prisoners in his acceptance speech and, as he promised to bury hatchets, the sound of knives being sharpened all but drowned out his words.

And inbetween, there was time for serious reflection, to see how Labour had been humiliated in its heartland, losing all three of its much-vaunted mayoral elections, but had been returned stronger in all the councils it had contested. Bar the new North Tyneside mayor and Ray Mallon in Middlesbrough and the monkey in Hartlepool, it had been a good set of local elections in the North-East for the party.

The day began at the Historic Quay in Hartlepool. Beside the Trincomalee, people were desperately trying to row backwards. Even before Stuart Drummond began his press conference, messages of concern were coming in from overseas businesses. Where once the monkey had been hanged, now it had to be nailed.

So Mr Drummond announced that he'd resigned as the Football Club mascot, H'Angus, and had sent the suit back. "I've been in and out of it about 100 times a day for the last three weeks and so it's been sent away to be deloused," he said.

"People may have seen me as a joke, but I want to prove that Stuart Drummond is very serious and wants to improve the town. This is the right way forward."

Denied their wacky picture opportunity and feeling that a monkey suit had been pulled over their eyes, the press pack turned on him. They tore holes in his policies - he even had no idea how much his banana-a-day pledge for schoolchildren would cost. They ripped to shreds his knowledge of council workings - he admitted he had never even attended a meeting of the organisation he was now in charge of. They even accused him of losing his sense of humour - "I can speak fluent French and Spanish and swear in 20 other languages," he said.

Under such fire, he showed remarkable resilience, puffing out his cheeks in defiance and, to use a cricketing metaphor, played everything with a dead bat. He even managed to make the most salient point of the day: "There is big apathy with local politics because people are sick of the parties fighting with each other and everything just moving sideways. They want refreshing ideas, something new to shake it up a bit."

Then The Sun's gorilla emerged, clutching his bananas, trying to tempt Mr Drummond into something silly - the same Mr Drummond, now Hartlepool's leading citizen, who once when drunk in H'Angus' suit cavorted onto the pitch with a blow-up doll.

The gorilla and the man who was once a monkey disappear down the Quayside with the schoolchildren sniggering - politics in Hartlepool is not a very adult affair, but the ex-monkey is now in charge of a council with a £170m-a-year turnover; the man who yesterday was earning £10,000-a-year in a call centre and living with his mam, is now on £53,000 and in charge of sailing Hartlepool into the future.

They'll be rowing backwards in the town in search of stability for a long time to come yet.

On to Middlesbrough where the town hall is full of bitter personal feuds, the suppurating sores opened up for all the world to see on the 24-hour TV news channels and radio talk shows. There's hours to fill before the result is announced, and they're filling each other in. Groups of Labour members gather to the right of the hall, press releases written in advance in readiness of defeat. Some wear rosettes proclaiming their allegiance to the party, but as soon as they are out of earshot, their loyalty is questioned. They may wear their colours on their chest, but it's the betrayal that lurks deep in the recesses of their minds that counts.

Mr Mallon, the object of it all, is slumped in a chair, surrounded by camera crews but focussing in on himself. Stuart Bell, the Middlesbrough Labour MP who used Parliamentary privilege to try to destroy Mr Mallon, is summoned to give an interview into a camera two metres from Mr Mallon's foot.

As the tall MP walks around the tables, people start to run in his wake, desperate to witness first hand the cataclysmic collision. Mr Bell walks unseeingly past the seated Mr Mallon who raises himself and, in front of the glare of the TV lights, offers his hand. The pulse races. The two have only met once before. It was in a TV studio when they swatted each other with paper files instead of punching each other's lights out.

Mr Bell reaches forward - and takes the hand. "They've just shaken each other warmly by the throats," shouts an excited onlooker.

With a melee around them Mr Mallon graciously says that Mr Bell was a victim of circumstances, driven quite understandably to do everything within his power to get the Labour candidate elected. Mr Bell, equally gracious in reply, accepts the wishes of the people and says that the duly elected MP will work hand-in-hand with the duly elected mayor.

They argue like perfect gentlemen over who's TV interview it is, who should field the first question. After you, kind sir. But I insist, after you, dear fellow.

Sadly, TV pictures can only record their beaming faces - and not what was going on behind the smiles.

This bitterness runs so deep. "Y'know, if we were the last two people on earth," says a Labour figure who appears not to have an ounce of nastiness in their body, "there's no way I could work with Ray Mallon."

"Y'see him over there," whispers another pointing to figure on the margins, "he was in Militant until we got rid of him."

Mr Mallon returns to his chair, and resumes his granite-faced introspection. Even when an extra table is dragged noisily across the wooden floor so that all of his votes can be laid out, he doesn't flicker. Even when the Returning Officer gathers the candidates to tell them of the size of his victory, he looks imperturbable. Even when his thumping win - 63 per cent to 23 per cent - is announced to the public, his stony cheekbones don't twitch.

He moves to the front of the stage, eschews the microphone, and, with his feet fringed by flowers, begins his speech. Just for a moment, he is lost. A smile breaks out as he trips over his words, not knowing who to thank or why.

But he regains his composure and his train of thought. Five years of bile pour out. It is a remarkable speech, driven by invective, delivered without notes. Carole, his wife, beams back her admiration for her side of the hall; from the Labour side, there are ill-disguised noises of derision which, as Mr Mallon goes on, become deliberately undisguised.

"I can't take any more of this, it's making me sick," says a party worker, and leaves.

Somehow, these two sides have to work together. Somehow, they have to find common ground. Someh ow, they have to find a future together.

And the reason why is in the ornamental gardens outside the fading glory of Hoskins' Victorian town hall. A couple of hours earlier, one of the benches had been occupied by a gaggle of ill-kempt bozos, swigging cheap cider from the bottle and strong lager from the can. Their swearwords were offensive, but they were too drunk to do anything about it.

But now, still in broad daylight, they've gone, replaced by a squadron of shaven headed young men, all snarls and menace in their big laced-up boots. High on something, they swagger without a care across the blue and yellow flowers planted carefully in rows. They jeer loudly at their mate who comes running out of a graffiti-covered shelter, struggling to do up his long leather belt. A stain on the brickwork shows just where he's been.

An elderly lady, struggling on a stick, picks up her pathetic arthritic pet - probably the tiniest chihuahua that has ever sustained life - and places it protectively under her arm. She hobbles as fast as she can for the nearest exit.

This is today's Middlesbrough. This is now Mallon's domain. Can one extraordinary day in North-East local politics, which some people regard as a joke, even begin to mend it?