I ALMOST feel sorry for Tom Hanley in his lonely attempts to represent the ‘working class’ by promoting a socialist utopia as the solution to everything. Letters 'UKIP sows division' October 21.

As is usual for the left when on the losing end of an argument, they revert to spraying around the word racist — in this case the target being UKIP.

The ‘Breaking Point’ poster was a Getty Image taken by their staff photographer in October 2015 in Slovenia. The message was an anti-EU one inasmuch that the EU was letting everybody down by being unable to handle the massive surge of migrants into Europe. The potential was that the problem could, and still can, eventually spill over into the UK. Many if not most of the migrants have been shown not to be from Syria. Many are economic migrants as opposed to being refugees and it is interesting to notice that there are very few women or children in sight.

In any event, the same image had in fact appeared some weeks before in several UK newspapers with little negative comment.

I organised Nigel Farage's visit to Victoria Square and was with him from his arrival to his departure. At no time did I hear any ‘racist’ chants or see any abuse of the few anti-UKIP protestors that were there.

The voting intentions of those in the public gallery at the council meeting in the town hall are not known to me although I did state in the ‘Elephant in the Town Hall’ document that “The danger for us is that although there are many hundreds of votes to be picked up as a consequence of this issue (The Astley Bridge Mosque), we have to avoid being associated with most of the sentiments expressed by these people.”

We do, in no uncertain terms, dissociate ourselves from any extreme views from whatever direction they come.

What Tom has to come to terms with is that amongst the four million people who voted UKIP in 2015 there are very large numbers of ‘working class’ people who see us voicing their concerns after Labour stopped listening to them.

I suggest that Tom puts himself up for election in 2018 under whatever banner he chooses and joins in the fight against a Labour Council who week by week makes decisions that go against everything he believes in.

Councillor Paul Richardson

Ripon Close

Little Lever