IN Keir Hardie country, it is said, placing a red rosette on a donkey would be enough to ensure election.

The truth of that claim may well be a matter for debate but what is beyond dispute is the outstanding quality of political representation the constituency enjoyed throughout the 20th century.

While the title "Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley" means little to the outsider, the very mention of "South Ayrshire", the constituency name until 1983, evokes memories of great radical Home Rule socialists following in the tradition of Keir Hardie who, though never an MP locally, is forever associated with Cumnock and the surrounding district.

While some within the Labour movement freely admit to drawing their political inspiration from Highgate Cemetery, where Karl Marx lies, many more look to Cumnock Cemetery and the final resting place of James Keir Hardie, the single greatest influence on the Labour and working class movement in the last 150 years.

His grave, and his former home, Loch Norris, on the road out to Auchinleck, remain places of pilgrimage for thousands while the name of the man regarded as the founder of the modern Labour Party is remembered in street names and a bust outside Cumnock Town Hall.

Most accept that the area"s political heritage has much to do with the mining industry which dominated life, socially as well as economically, for decades.

Coal may well have been "King" in the old South Ayrshire, until the mid 1980s, but there was a price to be paid and life in not only towns like Cumnock but the many villages which were home to mining communities was a constant struggle against poverty and ill health.

SUCH a scenario spawned a remarkable breed of political activists, many of whom combined radical, left of centre outlooks with a Christian commitment as well a belief that home rule for Scotland would ensure a Parliament which reflected their socialist aspirations.

The label "sermon on the mount socialist" certainly applied to the late James Brown who in the 1920s and 1930s was a political giant in the constituency.

Brown was not only an MP but a Sunday School teacher too, whose home boasted the only telephone in the village of Annbank! He would go on to be His Majesty The King"s Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, an honour no other MP for the area would be given.

Brown"s successor at Westminster was Alexander (Sanny) Sloan, Secretary of the Scottish Miners, who died in 1946, just before he was due to visit Belsen as part of a post-war Parliamentary delegation.

Sloan"s international contacts were astonishing and he counted among his friends and comrades many leading socialist leaders in Eastern Europe.

The family link with Ayrshire politics continues through his daughter Agnes Davies, an elected member of South Ayrshire Council and one of the most senior and respected female figures in Scottish labour politics.

Sloan was succeeded by one of the most colourful and charismatic personalities ever to appear on the constituency scene.

EMRYS Hughes would certainly never be asked to represent Royalty anywhere, at any time, and even if he had, would undoubtedly have refused.

A Welsh republication, his book, "The Prince, The Crown and The Cash" was written to co-incide with Prince Charles" investiture in 1967 and is a damning indictment of the wealth which Hughes believed was held by the Royal Family.

The fiery Welsh orator was a politician who painted with a broad brush, more at home pontificating on foreign affairs than housing. Indeed there was an endearing eccentricity about him and he once attended a political meeting one Sabbath afternoon wearing a pair of slippers!

At a by-election in 1970, Jim Sillars succeeded Hughes (who had married a daughter of Keir Hardie) and carved his own special niche in the history of the constituency.

Originally regarded as the "Hammer of the Nats", Sillars underwent a conversion to the Home Rule cause and, disillusioned by what he perceived as Labour"s prevarication, he set about forming his own Scottish Labour Party (SLP) in 1976 before eventually joining the SNP in 1981 and becoming MP for Govan between 1988 and 1992.

Even someone of Sillars" charisma (and he boasted arguably the most formidable intellect of them all) could not change the political habits of a lifetime and at the General Election of 1979 he was beaten by George Foulkes, who remains MP for the constituency.

Sillars is still remembered with respect and affection in many parts of the district.

IN the years since his election, Foulkes rose through the ranks, serving as deputy to Overseas Development Minister Claire Short before being appointed as number two at the Scottish Office to Secretary of State Helen Lidell. He is now Lord Foulkes of Cumnock.

Perhaps what would have pleased South Ayrshire"s political leaders most of all, stretching right back to Keir Hardie, was the fact the constituency now has an MSP because their longheld dream of Home Rule for Scotland became a reality in 1999 when the Scottish Parliament was reconvened in Edinburgh.

Cathy Jamieson was the first member locally elected to that body, albeit for the 'new' constituency of Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley, and she follows in the left of centre traditions of her predecessors.

Indeed, more than a century on from the days when he was first revered in this part of the world, James Keir Hardie would be proud of those who have inherited his mantle.

For now, as then, compassion, equality and patriotism, together with the internationalism that Keir Hardie believed was the only hope for real peace, are the guiding principles of our political leaders.

And a commitment to those principles is ever more sorely needed in our modern world.