AS one of those included in your photograph of “disruptive protesters”, Wednesday, January 13: "Council gets tough on disruptive protesters."

I should point out that the reason for the disruption is the refusal of the council to hold a full council meeting on our Bedroom Tax petition in breach of its own guidelines.

Bolton Against the Bedroom Tax handed a petition with over 4,000 signatures to leader Cliff Morris calling for the council to adopt a “no evictions” policy. This is sufficient to trigger a debate in full council, with the petition organiser being afforded the right to make a formal address. This has been consistently denied. The petition has instead been shunted off to various committees and in effect parked in the long grass.

We assume this is to save the council leader having to explain its enthusiasm for the Bedroom Tax to the Tory opposition on the council, whose policy it is. So the campaign’s disruption of council’s democratic procedures is a wholly appropriate response to the denial of democratic process to the campaign group.

Leading members of the Labour group have consistently expressed their abhorrence of the Bedroom Tax yet refuse to offer even token resistance to it. Instead members of the campaign group, most of whom have never been involved in any previous political activity, are disgracefully described as “Trots” and “scum. I am proud to be associated with a campaign that supports the most vulnerable people in the Bolton community and can assure the council that, such is the determination of the group, the protests won’t be stopping.

Chris Chilton

Media Officer

Bolton Against the Bedroom tax