6 Awesome Things We Learnt From "Screaming Lord Sutch" and The Monster Raving Loonies

Way back in the olden days during the 1987 General Election (in the UK) my school decided to hold a Mock Election - some very serious young men and women stood for various parties and made speeches.

I decided to stand for The Monster Raving Loony Party,

I stood on a platform of shorter school days, better school dinners and the end of tracing paper toilet roll.

If you have not heard of them, The Monster Raving Loony Party are a satirical political party in the UK, they are known for outrageous candidates, campaigns and promises all of which are ridiculous........or are they.

Remarkably several of the policies of Screaming Lord Sutch (going back to even before his time with the MRL Party) are now adopted into legislation.

In the 60's when campaigning for the National Teenage Party a key policy of Lord Sutch was to lower the voting age from 21 to 18. This was introduced in 1969.

Another policy close to his heart was Radio stations that you could listen to pop music on, Lord Sutch actually ran a pirate station himself from the Thames Estuary.

Until the launch of Radio 1 in 1967 tuning into an illegal pirate station was the only way to hear any pop music at all. Eventually in 1972 commercial radio stations were given licenses for the first time.

Along with his friend Bill Boaks, there was a campaign to make the very busy and popular Carnaby Street a pedestrian-only zone after traders complained of the increasing congestion. Carnaby Street was pedestrianised in 1973.

In 1987 the Government abolished the need for a dog license, prior to this you were obliged to possess a legal document allowing you to own a dog. Many people ignored the law but it was supposed to be mandatory. The Monster Raving Loony Party had originally campaigned for this to be abolished four years earlier in their 1983 election manifesto.

Also in 1983 they pledged that they would introduce passports for pets in order to allow people to travel freely with them rather than have to spend long periods of time in quarantine. This "mad-cap" idea was introduced 18 years later in 2001 and the lives of pet owners changed for the better.

In the 1980's pubs in the UK legally had to close for several hours each day and on Sundays, it was even more restrictive. The Loonies, campaigned against this and in 1995, the law changed allowing "All Day Opening".

This victory was not enough for the MRL Party who then started campaigning for all night drinking - which was adopted in 2005.

As you can see several things that we now take for granted all started from original suggestions from what is considered to be a 'joke' party - maybe they are just ahead of the curve and we should all start to pay proper attention!

Unfortunately, the charismatic leader and joint founder of the party did not live to see some of these policy victories' as his long battle with depression caused him to commit suicide in 1999. Please if you have any feelings such as this I would urge you to reach out to someone and talk to them, there is always a way out - https://www.samaritans.org/

If you would like to know more about the Monster Raving Loony Party please visit their website or Twitter page.

As for my own school election campaign, well like Lord Sutch I received very little popular support from the electorate (I came last with just one vote, which was a tad upsetting at the time but now a great story - very lucky I voted for myself!) but changes were made to the school dinner menu the following term and the toilet roll was changed almost immediately - however the fight for a shorter school day continues still.