The Official Monster Raving Loony Party

London's Mayoral Race: No Joke
If nobody is laughing, then it's probably not a British election. Since the launch a quarter of a century ago of the Official Monster Raving Loony Party, contenders sporting ridiculous names and deliberately nonsensical manifestos have taken part in many of the country's parliamentary, municipal and mayoral polls, and sometimes even won them. In the 2002 mayoral race in the port city of Hartlepool, for instance, a man dressed as a monkey and promising free bananas decisively beat Labour and Britain's two other leading parties, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. So it's not surprising that Ken Livingstone, the Labour politician aiming to win a third consecutive four-year term as London's mayor, hopes humor will help him to defeat his main challenger, Conservative Boris Johnson, when Britain's capital goes to the polls on May 1.

There's a twist. Livingstone, who is known for a sharp turn of phrase and once quipped that "if voting changed anything, they'd abolish it," is trying to scare Londoners off voting for Johnson by suggesting that the Conservative is the funnier man, perhaps even the ultimate joke candidate. Billboard posters and 4.2 million postcards being distributed by Livingstone's campaign urge voters to imagine Johnson, despite more than six years as a member of parliament still best known for his many comically chaotic appearances on British TV game shows, in charge of London. "Suddenly he's not so funny," warns Livingstone's campaign literature.


Official Monster Raving Loony Party
The Official Monster Raving Loony Party (OMRLP) is a registered political party established in the United Kingdom in 1983 by musician and politician David Sutch, also known as Screaming Lord Sutch (1940-1999).

Sutch's early political activity

Beginning in 1964, Sutch, of Screaming Lord Sutch & The Savages, stood under a range of party names, mainly as the National Teenage Party candidate. At that time the voting age was set at 21. The name "National Teenage Party" was intended to highlight what Sutch and others saw as hypocrisy on a national scale: while teenagers were denied the right to vote on the basis of their supposed immaturity, the "adults" running the country were involved in such shenanigans as the Profumo Affair.

Formation of the Official Monster Raving Loony Party

Sutch, who had been shot during a mugging attempt in the 1980s while he lived in the United States, left the USA thoroughly disillusioned with what he saw as an increasingly violent country.

He then returned to the UK and to politics, and it was at this time that the "Raving Loony" tag first appeared.

A similar concept appeared in the "Election Night Special" sketch by Monty Python's Flying Circus in 1970 in which the "Silly Party" and the "Sensible Party" competed against each other, and The Goodies did a similar skit with Graeme Garden as a "Science Loony". Monty Python and The Goodies also popularised the word "loony" in the sense that Sutch was using in the name of the OMRLP, but it is equally possible that Sutch inspired the two comedy shows by managing to stand against Harold Wilson in 1966 and in the City of London election in 1970. There had also been a "Science Fiction and Loony" candidate in the 1976 Cambridge by-election.

There were two other individuals important in the formation of the future OMRLP. The first was John Dougrez-Lewis, who stood at the Crosby by-election of 1981 (which was won by the Social Democratic Party's co-founder Shirley Williams). Dougrez-Lewis stood at the by-election as Tarquin Fin-tim-lin-bin-whin-bim-lim-bus-stop-F'tang-F'tang-Olé-Biscuitbarrel (a name taken from the aforementioned Monty Python sketch), having changed his name by deed poll from the somewhat plainer John Desmond Lewis, on the behalf of the Cambridge University Raving Loony Society (CURLS) despite a legal challenge to stop him from standing by a far-right candidate wishing to highlight his suspension from Middlesex Polytechnic for his views. CURLS were an "anti-political party" and charity fund raising group formed largely to be a fun counter response to increasingly polarised student politics on campus and responsible for a number of fun-stunts (their Oxford University equivalents were the "Oxford Raving Lunatics")

Dougrez-Lewis was to become Sutch's agent at the notorious Bermondsey by-election of 1983 where the OMRLP banner was first officially unfurled.

The second person who helped found the party was Commander Bill Boaks, a retired World War II hero involved in the sinking of the Bismarck, who had campaigned and stood for election for over 30 years on limited funds, always on the issue of road safety (he had been prosecuted several times as a result of his campaigns against several prominent figures who had mysteriously managed to escape prosecution for drunk-driving offences). Boaks foresaw the problems that increased traffic and more roads would cause the country, but by the time his predictions of unnecessary child deaths, pollution and congestion were proved correct, he had died as a result of head injuries received three years earlier from a motorcycle collision. Boaks acted as one of Sutch's counting agents at Bermondsey and also proved influential on Sutch's direction as the leading anti-politician: "it's the ones who don't vote you really want, because they're the ones who think". Boaks subsequently retired from standing at elections due to his injuries, content that someone else was now taking up the anti-Establishment baton he had held for three decades.

The Official Monster Raving Loony Party website
" I have come to change the government, not to praise it."
"There is nothing more monstrous than politicians".

"If at first you don't succeed, then skydiving isn't for you "
-- Screaming Lord Sutch


The United States Official Monster Raving Loony Party
First started by rocker Screaming Lord Sutch in England in 1963, we issue daft manifestos with a laugh and propose even dafter laws with a serious intent: to make people take action. If you ever watch C-Span during its public policy blocks, there might be the British General Election. In one of the districts, there will bound to be someone with the audacity to wear a top hat, crazy ties, and a big honkin' button that says "VOTE LORD SUTCH" and he'd be smiling along. That's us.

Now, we are here in America with even more enlightenment than you can shake a stick at.

Screaming Lord Sutch found dead
Thursday, June 17, 1999

A spokesman for the prime minister said Lord Sutch, "will be much missed. For many years he made a unique contribution to British politics.

"Our elections will never be quite the same without him."

A Scotland Yard spokesman said Lord Sutch, whose real name was David Sutch had been found hanged.

A post-mortem has yet to take place and initially the death is being treated as suspicious.

[ ... ]

Mr Hope, who became the first Loony mayor, at Ashburton Town Council in Devon, said: "I'm absolutely devastated - the whole party is going to be. The Monster Raving Loony Party is Screaming Lord Sutch."

The maverick politician became Britain's longest serving party leader after launching the Monster Raving Loonies in 1963.

Mr Hope has now taken over the leadership of the party temporarily until a new leader can be endorsed by the party at its conference in September.

Mr Hope is leading calls for a statue to be erected to Lord Sutch outside Parliament next to the statue of Sir Winston Churchill - one of the Loony leader's heroes.

Mr Hope, who runs the party headquarters from the Golden Lion pub in Devon, said his friend had been in good spirits when they spoke on the telephone 10 days ago.