SO, finally, Blackburn's battle for self-rule is won. And the long and acrimonious war with its County Council overlord is over.

The town has been granted unitary status along with Blackpool.

The breakaway from county control becomes a reality in 1998.

Blackburn and its sister town of Darwen have nearly 140,000 inhabitants so it is only right that a borough of such size and importance should manage it own affairs instead of having virtually no more power than an old-time rural district council.

And the confirmation of this by local government minister John Gummer, after more than two years of costly and tortuous consultation and dispute, is recognition of that simple fact - and of this newspaper's belief that management of local services was too-remote, at county hall, from the people using and paying for them.

Now, in Blackburn, local government will be brought back closer to the people.

And, of course, proof of the town's viability as an independent local authority existed already in its record of more than a century of self-rule prior to its loss of county borough status in the 1974 shake-up of local government.

However, this is far from just a matter of at last putting right that mistake.

Blackburn must now prove all over again that it is up to the task of delivering local government services right across the spectrum efficiently, responsibly and economically,

And in its bid to win unitary status and in its civil war with Lancashire County Council, the town's councillors and officers have, in effect, spent two years promising this utopian ideal.

Let them, then, come up with the goods.

For, as they celebrate their newly-won freedom, it is no time for them to dismiss the warnings, reiterated by County Council leader Louise Ellman today, that for Blackburn's council tax payers this breakaway will mean rocketing bills and worse services.

Rather, they should be more determined than ever to prove the doubters wrong.

And we will be watching keenly how they perform.

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