When local democracy was alive and well and living in Farnworth

However, it is quite wrong to be blaming the council and councillors. They no longer have either the power or money to provide the services they would all like to give.

It was not always so. Take as an example Farnworth.

When I first became active politically in the 1930s it ran its own education. I well remember the chairman of the education committee, George Tomlinson, later to become MP and Minister of Education, Father of Remploy.

At that time, education in Farnworth was available for all three-year-olds, and Farnworth was experimenting with comprehensive education at the Central School -- now Harper Green.

The council generated its own electricity, and sold it to the locals at a profit to keep the rates down. It also ran a shop in the town centre selling electrical equipment.

It ran its own public transport, being the first council in the country to own and run its own tramcars. It owned and ran its own market, at a loss, to keep prices down and attract shoppers to the town.

Farnworth was of course the first council to carry out a slum clearance programme, but not only that -- if an owner occupier needed sheltered accommodation or needed a house with more bedrooms because of a mixed family, they were removed provided they sold their house to the council.

It also built and let shops on the estates, and if any land became available in the town, the council bought it in the old-fashioned belief that Farnworth should belong to Farnworth people. Most of the property and land has now been sold and the money spent elsewhere in Bolton.

The town got rid of its own sewage, over the border into Bolton at the site of what is now the gipsy camp.

It then owned its own hospital, museum, fire service, three public libraries; it repaired the holes in the roads and had play streets banned to traffic for much of the day -- a rarity according to your leader writer recently.

It had well-maintained parks and sports facilities -- many now gone. It organised concerts, bands in the park, an annual gala, firework displays etc.

It had the policy, unusual these days, of looking after its property with full-time park keepers, groundsmen, caretakers, nightwatchmen, street patrols, school child attendance officer etc, and of course there were bobbies on the beat.

There was a central police station, then open every second of the year, and a police station on every estate.

The beat bobby lived on his beat with the words 'Police Station' over his front door. As a bit of a tearaway in the late '20s early '30s, I recall with affection Bobby Brash and Bobby Jock who used to join in our football games etc.

I ask your younger readers to go through the above list again and they will realise how much power has been taken away from local councils.

Older citizens of the other seven councils that joined with Farnworth to make the present Bolton could list similar achievements of their councils in the past, and like me deplore the reduction of local citizen power.

Local democracy has been dying over the past 60 years, and continued to do so.

Furthermore, most councillors will have even less power when the proposed 'cabinet' system sitting in private starts. Some people even advocate a local dictator known as an elected mayor.

His or her knowledge of education, social services, finance, seem to them to be of no importance. I do not suppose it matters anyway -- they will be under the control of Dictator Blair or Dictator Hague. No wonder the majority no longer vote at local elections.

Am I the only Boltonian concerned about the slow death of local democracy? Local politicians, councillors, MPs etc, irrespective of party, should get together and demand the return of power and cash to Bolton. Let us modernise local government back to the 1930s.

Better still back to the Victorian days when our local dignitaries had the power to improve the lot of Lancastrians, and did so.

Long live democracy! Death to Dictatorship!

George K Brown

Barncroft Road

Farnworth