A FORMER mayor of Blackburn with Darwen has accused council bosses of "honouring slavery and greed" with plans to build five sculptures relating the town's links to the cotton industry.

His comments follow the announcement that the council has commissioned a series of sculptures for Church Street when it is pedestrianised as part of a scheme to boost the town centre.

The £240,000 sculptures relate the growth of the town to the growth of a cotton plant through a series of five separate art works ranging in size from one to four metres high.

Coun Peter Greenwood, the mayor in 1997/98, said "cotton has as much against it as for it" and described the sculptures as "a tribute to the slave trade".

Coun Greenwood, who was awarded a CBE in 1998 for his service to local government but has recently been de-selected by the Labour party in Audley, slammed the council's plans and said: "This Labour council should not be putting up a tribute to greedy mill owners."

And former Labour councillor Michael Madigan of the Ethnic Minorities Development Association echoed some of Coun Greenwood's comments.

He said: "Voluntary groups have certainly not been consulted about this and my view is our group would have rejected it.

"I don't think we can take any particular pride in the exploitation of our forbears."

He said he was "in favour of artistic freedom" and the sculptures were "not a priority with the most disadvantaged groups in our society". But leader of the council Malcolm Doherty said he did not think this was the subject people wanted to talk about.

He said: "The issue about the public art is whether it is suitable and appropriate for a town whose early wealth came from the cotton industry.

"We should be debating whether the public art that has been suggested represents what it's supposed to represent and looks good in the town - and I think it does."

Abdul Hamid Chowdry of Blackburn's Racial Equality Council said that although he respected Coun Greenwood's point of view it was important people remember their history and learn from it.

He said: "There were a large number of people who built mills and carried out work which would not be allowed today, but it happened and we know about it.

"I don't feel strongly about the council wanting to put sculptures up and remind people what happened."

And regeneration chief Coun Ashley Whalley said he thought Coun Greenwood was "well wide of the mark."

He pointed to Liverpool and Bristol which both had historical links to the slave trade and had accepted their history and tried to move forward.

He said the sculptures "emphasise that Blackburn had a past which was built around the textile and cotton industry".

Coun Whalley said: "Whatever we think as individual councillors we cannot deny Blackburn's past nor its relationship with 18th, 19th and 20th century economic trade and wider global relationships.

"You cannot separate the cotton and textile industries from the history of Blackburn."