A CALL for unity was made by the new chairman of Burnley and Pendle's troubled race harmony group which has seen three executive members quit in the last week.

The plea by Dr Qazi Jehangir comes in the wake of County Councillor Joe French walking out of the Racial Equality Council's meeting last night after he failed to get the recent results of the executive committee elections discussed.

In 'urgent business' County Coun French brought up the problems experienced by the REC in the last fortnight and said that in his opinion it should be renamed the Racial Inequality Council.

As he was speaking he was interrupted by other members saying he could only discuss a topic.

County Coun French said: "You are playing with public money. I am quite in order raising this topic because in my opinion what happened was racist, no indigenous person was elected."

As he left the meeting, calls of 'ignorance' echoed round the room and the chairman at that stage Dr Aziz Khan said a proper election had been held and the topic was not urgent business.

After being elected chairman, Dr Jehangir explained the elections had an 80 per cent turnout and the results were very close.

He said: "We must look forward in a very positive manner. We will try to do our best and need more people to come along whether indigenous, Asian or from whatever community.

"The sooner we drop these titles the better for all of us because we are all British first and anything else later and I am proud of it."

He praised a newspaper article which showed an English and an Asian child from Edge End High School who said they wanted to live together and not be labelled English or Asian.

He said: "This boy and this girl have a positive attitude and are the future of tomorrow."

A letter is being sent to the three executive members who tendered their resignation, Coun Abdul Aziz, REC treasurer Rashid Qadri and Mian Khan, asking them to reconsider their decision.

After the meeting Dr Jehangir said: "Members of the indigenous and ethnic population both voted in the executive committee elections and people lost or won by just a handful of votes which shows it was a fair election."

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