AXED after 25 years along with eight other staff and morning opening hours at Blackburn Museum in the council's budget cuts, Head of Arts Adrian Lewis today questions the values that targeted the town's history and arts treasure house for such savage cutbacks - and expresses concern for its future.

He is, we think, right to do so.

For, about this worrying run-down, there is a smack if not of blatant philistinism, then, perhaps, of class-based politicking on the part of the council's ruling Labour group.

That is because, even accepting the stringencies and difficult choices they faced, it does seem that the council has undervalued the museum service both in the past and now with this savage climax.

For, as we learn from Mr Lewis, out of the spending of £49million over the last eight years on the community and leisure services department, its museum service arm has been allowed just £3.2million. In effect, the crumbs.

And in this year's budget, it is devastated by suffering 40 per cent of the cuts the department is experiencing despite being just six per cent of the department itself.

So how does a town, which is being elevated to the self-rule status of a unitary authority and, as a result, may well, we think, begin petitioning all over again for aggrandisement as a city, prioritise its cultural and heritage values in comparison with other services?

As a poor relation to its Waves water-fun pool and the King George's Hall entertainment complex, it seems, as Mr Lewis tells us that is where the department's money has gone. A cynic, of course, might sneer at aquatic larks and shows by adult comics and male-stripper dance troupes being of apparently greater values to those in charge of the policy and purse strings. But is there something other than cultural deficiency at work - and which, as Mr Lewis fears, may trigger a downward spiral towards eventual closure of the museum and the sell-off of its world-renowned treasures?

One wonders. For when we see that, taking priority over the museum in the Labour group's budget this year were the town's community centres - where Labour voters go to play - one must ask whether it was a case of the ruling councillors pandering, either subconsciously or deliberately, to their own supporters and not the museum-loving middle-classes with their supposedly higher brows and cultural values.

But, whatever, the sad fact is that a jewel in Blackburn's crown is devalued by this decision.

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