NEW Burnley council leader Stuart Caddy, has issued a "Don't lose sight of your roots" message to the national Labour Party.

The postmen's union boss said that while he accepted Labour needed modernising, there was a need for the party to remember, at local and national level, that it was elected to represent those sections of society which most needed help.

In his first major speech since capturing the council leadership in a shock victory over former boss Kath Reade, Coun Caddy spoke passionately about the plight of pensioners and the fact that the £10 bonus would now be worth £70 had it kept pace with inflation.

He said he supported calls for pensions to be linked to wages.

Coun Caddy, who resigned from Burnley Council two years' ago over the ruling Labour group's decision to sell off Burnley and Pendle buses, agreed there was a need for a publicly controlled integrated transport system.

He said his election to the council leadership was a measure of the support that the Labour Party, the people of Burnley and the staff at the town hall had given him.

That support, he said, was also expressed in the wider Trade Union movement and that was demonstrated by the fact that the meeting was his first 'official' address as leader and it was being made because he was proud of his trade union links.

Delegates urged Coun Caddy to take with him the Trade Council's view that all trade unionists should receive recognition as of right, regardless of managements' points of view and that the Party's funding should be re-assessed by the union movement if New Labour forgets why it was elected.

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