THE letters regarding the proposed statue of Barbara Castle took a peculiar twist on Friday, May 21 when a contributor suggested the council erect a statue to a former mill owner for organising a demonstration against the Labour Government because of textile mill closures in the 1960s.

This in a town littered with memorabilia to mill owners, not least of all the statue portraying former mill owner Conservative MP and Mayor of Blackburn Sir William Henry Hornby in the prime position outside the Town Hall.

The writer should be aware of the damage inflicted on the textile industry in the late 1950s and 60s when the then Conservative government gave huge handouts to employers for scrapping machines. Some unscrupulous employers managed to close their factories twice in order to double up on the compensation and that was before a Harold Wilson-led Labour Government including Barbara Castle brought into being the 1965 Redundancy Act, which was unfortunately too late for the thousands of textile workers.

Some textile trade union leaders felt threatened by Barbara Castle's robust socialist politics and under the banner of protest against mill closures encouraged members to opt out of paying the political levy to the Labour Party. But to imply she did not try on behalf of the textile industry is a gross distortion of the facts.

It was Barbara Castle as Social Security Minister that introduced legislation to deal with the debilitating chest disease known as Byssinosis, acquired through inhaling cotton dust, as a statutory disability benefit and repeated the exercise for employees in the weaving sheds who were made deaf caused by the deafening din.

The irony of the arguments to erect a statue to Barbara Castle and the bizarre proposals, which have preceded it in this column, miss the point about Barbara Castle. She was a practical politician who through her beliefs enacted numerous items of legislation. Every one of benefit to ordinary working people.

When she struggled to the platform of a Labour Party conference at the age of 90 in ill-health and frail it was not to hog the limelight, but to articulate the argument for restoring the value of State Earnings Related pension, end means testing benefits, and link the basic pension to earnings. Restoration of that pension legislation would be more of a fitting tribute to the life and work of Barbara Castle than a dozen statues.

DON RISHTON, Livesey Branch Road, Blackburn.