THE old adage, ‘Britain’s bread hangs by Lancashire’s thread,’ was about the importance of the Lancashire cotton textile industry to the British economy, and it was true. Three quarters of all jobs in East Lancashire were in cotton or cotton-related industries. Lancashire cotton magnates were a power in the land.

Our production and export of finished cotton goods around the world supported a host of other industries, in transport, engineering, energy and banking.

But that extraordinary dominance began to end with the First World War, and though there was something of a revival for two decades after the second war, the writing was on the wall. So the power, and much of the big money, moved elsewhere. But the towns of Lancashire couldn’t move, and much of the last half-century has been preoccupied for our area with coping with the aftermath of this industrial heritage.

In some other countries – the US, and Russia come to mind – the communities of the textile towns might just have been written off. East Lancashire’s story has been a different and better one; far from the area dying, in most people’s eyes it’s got a much better present and future than the past of previous generations.

But we’ve had to pay a price for constantly having to re-invent ourselves, not least in dealing with the legacy of the past, in terms of the area’s economic and social infrastructure. That’s why for example East Lancashire has been a priority for the ‘Housing Market Renewal’ money to replace or renovate so much of the old terraced mill housing, why there’s been such a pressing need for wider public investment, and why, despite good progress, East Lancashire can be found at the wrong end of tables of deprivation.

All this therefore makes astonishing the first significant announcement from the new Government about where the cuts for this year are going to fall. Far from East Lancashire’s needs being recognised, one may be forgiven for thinking we’re going to be punished for them. These in-year cuts are ones to which I objected before the election. So did Nick Clegg and his party. He’s now changed his mind, I haven’t. And the latest projections for the deficit and the total national debt show that the estimates are now lower than they were before the election, so there’s less not more justification for them now.

But leave that aside for a moment. One might have least expected that cuts could be done on an equitable basis.

The average cut in grant is 0.7 per cent. So is East Lancashire simply being required to cut by this percentage? No such luck.

The four boroughs in East Lancashire which bear the greatest scars of our industrial past are all being required to cut well over twice that proportion. Burnley, Hyndburn, and Pendle all by 2.0 per cent – almost three times the average – and Blackburn with Darwen by 1.7 per cent, in cash over £4million. Meanwhile a host of authorities, almost all in much more prosperous areas, have escaped without any cuts at all.

There’s no explanation offered for this unfairness. So I’ll have to leave readers to decide the reasons for themselves. It does however make all that talk about ending regional and personal inequalities sound rather hollow, doesn’t it?