[Graham Jones]

George should have gone gracefully. It was bad enough trashing the people who had either supported you over many years or others and the party for whom he had claimed to be great passionate leader and intergral part of.

However to target the release of the information to undermine tactically Claire Hamilton on the day of the Rishton by-election, a 21 year old he has never met, was dispicable. [George timed his press release so he grabbed the front page on the night voters went to the ballot box]. You couldn't possibly print what I actually said down the pub.

He was always as long as I knew him and spoke with him, a dillusional walter mitty character who thought he walked on water and who he thought would be remembered as a great visionary of Hyndburn.

Even as socialist thinker I would caution anyone facing the onslaught of Blairites to see George as something alternate from the past. In my view he wasn't a socialist, or a labour man, or any other tag he is identified with. He was just a muddled thinker who believed in no one else but himself and always judged everything he did as brillant and that the other 40 Labour councillors then should be grateful for his brilliance.

As for Labour now in Hyndburn its neither old labour and definately not new labour bob. I think you'd find it pragmatic labour in line with what most residents are thinking because most of us live in houses in the poorer areas of Hyndburn and have a healthy relationship with daily reality.