Monster Raving Loony leader set for Rochdale visit

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Following a successful visit to the annual conference held last weekend in Uttoxeter, Official Monster Raving Leader Loony Party leader Alan ‘Howling Laud’ Hope has announced that he is to visit Rochdale next month with a view to re-launching the local party.

Rochdale Online was invited to meet and interview the ‘Howling Laud’, a friend and close confidente of former party founder and leader, ‘Screaming’ Lord David Sutch who died in 1999. He said that he had been following the borough’s local media and reports in ‘Private Eye’ regarding the town and was delighted to have been contacted by local activists.

At a summit-breakfast held in Wetherspoon's last Saturday  (30 September), to which Rochdale Online was given exclusive access, we were told that recent and ongoing local events had caused much interest. ‘Howling Laud’ Hope, resplendently dressed in Stetson hat and trademark white suit said that local activists were keen to re-launch the former Rochdale branch, founded by the late Martin Harewood under the auspices of the Official Monster Raving Loony and Toad Preservation Party. Martin’s widow, Betty, still lives in Newhey and has given her full backing to moves to reawaken the local branch.

We met several leading activists over the weekend including Baron Von Thunderclap, The Flying Brick, Lord Toby Jugg and R.U. Seerius. In the afternoon we witnessed the annual cabinet re-shuffle in which senior party members stand in a double wardrobe on the car-park and shuffle around. There was also a one-minute ‘howl’ for a recently-deceased member.

One party member arrived in a hearse bearing the legend, ‘no dead bodies kept in this vehicle overnight’.

We were told that the central message of the party was that you can mix fun and party politics. Supporters are often noted for their extravagant dress-sense which often includes gaudily decorated top-hats, leopard-skin and frock coats and have become an accepted part of the UK electoral scene in local and general elections. They fielded a candidate in the recent Saddleworth by-election.

The party has been successful in getting members elected to town and parish councils and ‘Howling Laud’ Hope himself was elected mayor of Ashburton in Devon in 1998, having taken his seat as a councillor in the preceding year.

The branch contested several local elections throughout the local 80s and early 90s and attracted much attention at the time.

The party was formed originally as the National Teenage Party but became the Official Monster Raving Loony Party in 1983. It was blamed for the collapse of the Social Democratic and Liberal Party (SDLP) after it beat them convincingly in the 1990 Bootle by-election.

Best known for its ‘off-the-wall’ policies, some of these, thought completely insane at the time, have actually been adopted in UK law. All day pub opening, passports for pets and the lowering of the voting age to 18 instead of 21 were all former, so-called ‘Loony’ policies.