Falling-out leads to defection!

KATHLEEN Nickson, a Labour councillor for Balderstone & Kirkholt, on Rochdale Town Council, left the Labour Party and joined the local Liberal Democrats last week.

Party bulling was given as the reason for her departure.

She claimed:  'I simply could not go on working in an undemocratic party manner.  I was being told how to vote, being threatened and effectively blocked from being able to do my job as an elected member in the Labour Party.'

The Leader of Rochdale Labour Party, Cllr. Allen Brett, thanking Cllr. Nickson for her service, said:  'Her relationship with the [Labour?] Group executive was becoming increasingly untenable which was only ever going to end one way'.

It cannot have gone unnoticed that Cllr. Nickson lives up Newhey; an area where in an outburst only last year Cllr. Brett had threatened to withold funding from road repairs if he didn't get the election result he wanted.

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