THE MURK hanging over Burnley Council after three members of the ruling Labour group were named in an official inquiry for allegedly helping people to jump the queue for council houses is something that must be dispelled.

Honesty, integrity and good local government demand that the system is fair and free of untoward influence - and is seen to be.

Yet, amazingly, more than a third of the town's Labour councillors turn their back on that ideal. It seems that, instead, they want the whole matter swept under the carpet.

For when their group met last night to approve the setting up of a new all-party investigatory panel to look into the findings of council chief executive Roger Ellis's probe into the queue-jumping claims, a whole bunch of them stormed out of the town hall. It may be that they feel the allegations are unfair, that the pressures councillors are claimed to have put on housing department staff to bend the rules were no more than humane attempts to help constituents in real need, and that this new investigation is going too far.

But that is not the point. By attempting to block it, they are not helping to clear the air, but only thickening the murk of suspicion that things are bent at Burnley.

And why? When the inquiry offers them the opportunity to put their views and their side of the story?

What they are forgetting is a vital aspect of a councillor's duty - accountability to the public. If they turn their backs on truth-seeking, they are failing in their duty as representatives of the public.

Council leader Kath Reade is quite right to press on with this probe.

But with such a large faction of her party in open rebellion she now has a difficult task ahead. That must not deter her.

Affairs in Burnley must be run by the rules. And, as she rightly says, the healing process cannot start until the boil is lanced.

What, then, must the voters conclude about those who would let it fester?

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