BOLTON SOUTH-EAST CONSTITUENCY PROFILE: (LABOUR Majority 12,691 at the last General Election) TONY Blair and his high command had better watch out - Brian Iddon is coming.

The councillor and former housing chairman is a dead cert to win Bolton South-East for Labour on May 1 and is determined to make an impression in the Commons.

Mr Iddon, 56, inherits a majority of 12,691 from veteran MP David Young, kicked out by the constituency party after 22 years in Parliament and six election victories.

His strong views on housing and crime - expecially drugs - are likely to make Labour's Environment Chief Frank Dobson and Home Affairs supremo Jack Straw sit up and take note.

The science lecturer at Salford University - famous for his Magic of Chemistry shows - is passionate on both subjects.

Indeed on the housing front he seems destined to be the equivalent of Frank Field on social security - a maverick thinking and saying the unthinkable.

After 20 years as a Bolton councillor, and 10 as chairman of Housing Committee, Mr Iddon is well qualified to speak on the issue locally and nationally.

He believes housing and crime are key issues in the election and is passionate about both.

The way that perfectly usable council houses stand empty and boarded up because of the activities of drug dealers in the street angers him - and many local residents - deeply.

Therefore he has little trouble with Mr Straw's tough line on law and order and is convinced that it plays well with the people living in the terraced homes that make up much of the constituency.

The victims of crime in Bolton South-East are mostly his voters.

On the wider issue of housing, he has radical ideas to join public and private sectors together and to provide more and better homes for people.

His most outlandish idea is to tax new homes from the day they are built and to invest the cash in a fund so that when they need major repairs and refurbishment 25 or 50 years down the line, the cash is available to pay for it.

This would avoid the current grim situation where many nineteenth century Bolton terraced houses are in urgent need of repairs which their owners cannot afford and which the council cannot find cash to pay grants for.

A long -term Halliwell resident, Mr Iddon can see for himself the problems this causes every day.

His strong local presence and identity should help ensure a much improved majority for Mr Iddon in conjunction with any national swing.

Tory Paul Carter - a thoughtful philosophical Tory who objects to being branded left-wing - faces a hopeless task.

Whatever bravado he puts on, in his heart he must know that standing in Bolton South-East is a training scheme for becoming an MP later.

How he handles the campaign and what kind of result he gets will determine whether he gets a better chance next time round - provided that the Tory Party has not swung too far to the knee jerk right for his taste.

As Mr Iddon is bound to increase the majority, Mr Carter's press cuttings will be crucial to his ambitions.

Preston-born and bred, this 30-year-old management consultant, is keen to stress his local credentials and commitment to the North-west.

He would hope one day to represent a seat in the region and has a good eye for a headline as his tongue-in-cheek ambition to become the first paid US-style Mayor of Bolton showed.

Mr Carter is playing the council card against Mr Iddon - portraying him as part of a Labour junta that runs Bolton for their benefit rather than the towns.

He also hopes that bitterness in the local Labour Party, over Mr Young's unceremonious dumping as the candidate, may cost Mr Iddon a few votes.

And he is passionate - if perhaps not quite so passionate as his Labour rival - about his belief that more could be done to bring new, overseas investment to the town.

An expert on the Far East, he is angry that all the investment from the booming Pacific Rim economies goes to the North-east, Scotland and Wales.

He wants some of it to come to the North-West and in the unlikely event of being elected would write to the bosses of 10 major Far Eastern companies extolling the virtues of Bolton and its skilled and dedicated workforce.

A further problem for Mr Carter is the presence of an agent from the Referendum Party working behind party lines. Bill Pickering is a 73-year-old former spy and radio operator who worked with the Italian resistance in the war.

While his chances of winning are nil, he is just the type of candidate who will appeal to the older disaffected Tory voters - often themselves wartime servicemen - to whom the whole question of Europe is the crucial issue of the election.

As Mr Carter is cautiously pro-Europe and Mr Iddon cautiously Euro-sceptic, it is the Conservative vote he will eat into.

Like all the rest of the candidates Mr Pickering, from Hindley, is from the local region, rather making a mockery of Mr Carter's claim to be "A North-West Man for a North-West seat."

Natural Law candidate Lewis Walch, from Farnworth, will do well to increase his 290 vote from last time and beat Mr Pickering into fifth place.

One man hoping to increase his party's vote is Liberal Democrat Frank Harasiwka.

A Bolton man and lifelong Wanderers fan, he too will play the local card and hope to exploit Old Labour discontent with Tony Blair's shift to the right.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.