IAGREE with Councillor Peter Greenwood's condemnation of the 'cotton plant' sculptures proposed for Church Street, Blackburn, on account of them "honouring slavery and greed."

What knowledge have the council leader and his regeneration spokesman Councillor Ashley Whalley of the cotton industry, of the infamous past and the terrible conditions workers had to endure?

As an octogenarian, I well remember, as the eldest child of six, my mother leaving her young family with the childminder, as most familes had to, in order to get to work before the seven o'clock whistle went.

When it stopped, the mill manager closed the main gates and left a small one open alongside the watch house.

When Mrs Brown came in late at 7.10am her name went into the late fines book. If Mrs Green came at 7.30am hers would be a bigger fine. But the reason for the lateness was invariably because of a child problem during the night.

As a child, I had at times to go to the mill to see my mother and when I entered the weaving shed, the noise was horrendous and the smell was awful as mills were deliberately built without roof ventilation to keep the weaving conditions correct.

Coun Greenwood's jibe of slavery and greed is absolutely correct.

In the mid-1970s I went to work at the beautiful mansion in Whalley taken over by the NHS as the Bramley Meade maternity home and was told by an elderly locally-born resident that the building was only known by them as the 'Fines House,' after the money obtained from the fines that the owner, Richard Thompson, took from workers at his mills.

I think the sculptures are an insult to the cotton workers' slavery in the past and at least I have personal knowledge of it.

ARTHUR WILSON, Leacroft, Lower Darwen, Blackburn.