TEXTILE workers and, in particular, the thousands who have lost their jobs under successive Tory Governments, should take note of the millions of pounds in compensation that the Government is prepared to hand out to the farming industry to deal with BSE. The very same BSE which was caused by Tory deregulation and the greed of those who took advantage of it.

Government financial support for the European Union's RETEX scheme, which provides money for areas in this country where the textile industry is in decline, will total £33 million by next year. This may seem a large amount but, in the three years from 1991 to 1993 alone, government spending on subsidies to agriculture through European Union schemes amounted to £4390 million.

Contrast the callous indifference shown by this government to the textile industry, with the call by Agriculture Minister Douglas Hogg, for Europe to pay British farmers £4 billion in compensation to cover the cost of his BSE cattle culling plan.

The farming industry has been the most subsidised industry in the country and can look forward to a golden handshake as a consequence of the Government bungling which created the beef crisis.

Perhaps the one small consolation for those textile workers who avoided byssinosis (lung disease caused by cotton dust) or who escaped industrial deafness, is that the product of their labour never harmed or killed anyone outside the industry.

COUNCILLOR DON RISHTON, Chairperson, Lancashire South European Constituency Labour Party, Livesey Branch Road, Blackburn.

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