John Sheard casts his eye over the General Election candidates for the Skipton and Ripon constituency.

HIS childhood was spent in a society gripped with fear. Local industry was closing down, hundreds of men were losing their livelihoods and being driven away from their home villages. A way of life was collapsing around their ears.

Sounds a bit like the Yorkshire Dales today, with farming racked by foot and mouth, hundreds of local tourism businesses facing financial disaster, and young people being driven from their villages by spiralling property prices.

In fact, Michael Dugher's background could not be more different for, within the county of broad acres, there could be no greater contrast between the Dales and his birthplace in South Yorkshire.

Michael, the Skipton and Ripon Labour candidate aged just 26, hails from the pit village of Edlington, near Doncaster, and he was 10 years old when Arthur Scargill's miners' strike hit. His dad was lucky: he worked for the railway but he had uncles and cousins who were down the pit.

It is history, now, but mining villages have a community spirit just as strong as any Dales village and Edlington would never be the same again.

"It put family against family," he recalls now, a trace of desolation in his voice. "The miners went without pay for a whole year and a lot of the older lads spent their spare time on the spoil heaps, searching for odd lumps of coal - their families couldn't afford fuel.

"The streets were full of London Met policemen with strange accents, often dressed in full riot gear. It was like being at war - a very disturbing experience for a 10-year-old lad."

Now if this were a novel in the Catherine Cookson mould, young Michael Dugher would have at that early age determined to become a politician to fight for the rights of the working man.

But it isn't - this is real life. At 10, all he wanted to be was a professional footballer. Five years later, it was a rock 'n' roll singer and he did, indeed, become a pretty good guitar player and play in a few bands.

Then he considered journalism (and wisely turned against it). It was not until he got to Nottingham University - the first member of his family to get into tertiary education - that his thoughts turned to politics.

"As a Donny lad from a totally working class background, I was suddenly mixing with middle class students from the South of England," he smiles wryly. "At my first formal dinner, I took along four cans of Tetley's bitter when everyone else had shelled out on vintage wines.

"That was an embarrassment but the real shock came when I suddenly realised that the academics who were supposed to be teaching me politics knew absolutely nothing about the subject from the working class point of view.

"I had, until then, toyed with the possibility of an academic career. I could have bought myself a nice lumpy sweater and spent the rest of my life drinking sherry and prattling on to young people in some nice, comfortable ivory tower.

"But I suddenly realised that it was not only a complete waste of time but it was also totally futile: it would never get anything done. If you want to change things for the better, politics is the only way."

Decision made, he launched himself into politics along the classic path of the modern party apparatchik: he took over the almost moribund Labour Club at the university and eventually became National Chairman of Labour Students.

This is a paid post funded by the Labour Party so eventually he arrived in London with a backpack and a guitar under his arm. In his shared flat, he still put red wine into the fridge - much to his flatmate's derision - but he was soon at the heart of Blairite young Labour.

After jobs as a researcher and speechwriter from some big Labour names - including then Health Secretary Frank Dobson - he joined the trade union movement and is now Head of Policy for the AEEU engineering union, Britain's third largest.

If you think he is one of those trade unionists weaned at the breast on miners' strike militancy, you would be wrong: he has some refreshingly modern views on the role of trade unions in today's global economy.

"Manufacturing in this country has been in decline for decades," he says. "There is no room in this highly competitive world for inter-union squabbles and demarcation strikes over what man does which job.

"All we ask now is that unions are treated as equal partners in a business enterprise. We realise that there are no jobs for our members in non-profitable companies so we are prepared to discuss any means of increasing efficiency and productivity so long as our members are treated fairly and get a fair share of the spoils."

And if you need the proof of the pudding, Michael has himself negotiated groundbreaking industrial partnership deals with several Japanese companies who have set up major operating plants in the UK. Anyone who has been in contact with Japanese businessmen will know just how much skill, patience and perseverance that demands.

That said, such a background in full time politics may not cut much ice with a dour hill farmer up the Dale when it comes to casting his vote.

Michael recognises this: "I cannot go round pretending I am a tenth generation Dalesman with farming in my blood. That would be downright stupid. But I am a Yorkshireman through and through so I say it as I see it. And make no mistake, I feel a great empathy with what is happening in the countryside at present. It may have been in different circumstances but I have been there myself."

To win this election, he has a mountain to climb. But all political parties have a policy of putting up bright young candidates in tough constituencies to test their mettle. Then, if they're good enough, they get a nice safe seat somewhere.

I have a feeling that we will see and hear a lot more of Michael Dugher in the future.

o Next week: All four candidates address the electors