WHEN the procedural parlance is swept aside, what is clear about the resignation of Councillor Michael Barrett as secretary of Rossendale and Darwen Labour Party - in yet another twist in the murky affair of how colleagues offered Blackburn's housing chairman, Coun Mohammed Khan, a £22,000 race relations job - is that the lid is being put on free speech in the party and the council's Labour group.

For Coun Barrett's departure from his post - prompted by a vote of no confidence in his position - was all because some people within the party evidently believed that not enough had been done over the scandal.

Coun Khan has resigned as housing chairman and he is no longer chairman of the Blackburn with Darwen Racial Equality Council, whose well-paid post of racial harassment officer he sought and was offered.

His deputy Coun Dave Hollings, who sat on the interview panel, has also stood down.

But, if like us, some members of the Labour Party think this is not sufficient atonement, should they not be free to say so? Coun Barrett's ousting for simply conveying that call is a telling insight into the mentality of those who have no confidence in him - that by shooting the messenger they can shut up its senders and keep the lid on this mess.

Yet, all they expose is their lack of integrity and increase the suspicion that the Labour group consists of slavish followers of the leadership's line - which seems to be that of hoping that this affair will blow over with the quasi-contrite councillors involved in it still sitting as public representatives and drawing their allowances with their integrity still in shreds.

But, as they find again today as they try to keep the lid on a festering mess, the opposite effect is achieved - the stink simply increases.

And the lily-livered Tory group is no better.

Its tactics stink even more.

For while we have had token acts of contrition from the Labour guilty, there has been not one word of explanation or apology from them over their representative on this illicit interview panel, Coun Edna Arnold, who actually presided over this unethical affair.

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