LEADING Liberal Democrats in Blackburn and Darwen have slammed the Labour council for ignoring their calls for two councillors to resign.

Chris Thayne, the chairman of the Liberal Democrats in the borough sent a letter to Labour leader Coun Malcolm Doherty a month ago telling him he should call on Couns Mohammed Khan and Dave Hollings to withdraw from the council.

The pair resigned their high ranking committee jobs on the authority over a £22,000 race watchdog scandal in July.

Mr Thayne called on Labour to go one step further and remove the pair from the council altogether.

In his letter to Coun Doherty he said: "Your party has made it quite clear nationally that it will not tolerate malpractice.

"As the leader of the council we would expect you to take the lead in calling for the resignation from the council of Coun Khan the other councillors involved..

Mr Thayne also attacked Labour for its handling of new appointments to the borough transport board and what he described as "public disquiet with housing, school selection, special schools and residential homes."

He added: "In the long term interest of democracy we hope you will give full consideration to concerns which reflect an interest in good government rather than party politics." "The national leadership of the Labour party may call for a revival of morality in society but its achievement needs communities such as Blackburn and Darwen to see that integrity and fairness will be basic to the rules by which our present society is operated."

Coun Doherty said he had tried on four occasions in the past month to get in touch with Mr Thayne, including two messages on an answering machine which were not replied.

He said: "I would prefer to sit down and talk about this with Chris Thayne rather than exchanging letters."

"If they want to make this a public issue then they can.

"But if they think about it carefully they would not want the issue of councillors' behaviour to be in the public arena."

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.