Burnley BNP in ‘Dark Ages’

Sonia Gable | Wednesday, 13 December 2006 Source: Searchlight

A Burnley BNP councillor has been accused of putting funding for Burnley schools at risk after she attacked the town's Building Schools for the Future programme in a video posted on the internet.

Burnley council is fighting for government money to improve the town but Cllr Sharon Wilkinson objects that the new schools will force children to integrate. She would prefer "small schools serving each community".

Council leader Gordon Birtwistle said BNP members had to "accept and embrace" the fact that they live in a multicultural society. "If we are an experiment in integration and it works then so be it, because the community needs to integrate.

"Their party seems to be objecting to anything new coming to Burnley – they seem to want to be back in the Dark Ages."

"When people like Cllr Wilkinson keep portraying the bad things about Burnley and not putting forward the good bits it looks like they want the decline to continue.

"The government will be looking at what reactions the new schools get when they look at funding for the future, and if people keep condemning them, that could affect what we get."