Who Pissed on Rochdale Labour Party's Chips?

by Brian Bamford

Damaging 'Off the Cuff' politics of Dancuk, Farnell & Brett

AFTER last Thursday's local elections, West Heywood's Labour Councillor Jacqui Beswick,  announced her bid to take over the leadership of Rochdale Council by standing against Allen Brett the current leader.  She said:  'I don't want to drag up the past difficult times', but 'the bad press' she insisted, won't have helped the Labour Party in Rochdale.

At this Sunday's AGM the future of the Rochdale Labour Party will be in the balance, when elections are to be held for leader.  Tellingly, Councillor Beswick told the Rochdale Online website:  'I believe in change!  Not from the top down', but from the ward membership upwards.

Councillor Beswick stood before for the leadership last November, when the disgraced Richard Farnell stood down, but she failed to get in.  What she didn't say yesterday, is that she didn't succeed because of opposition from her minority group opponents with special cultural interests within the local Labour party.  Northern Voices, at that time, was told by sources close to the Party, that she lost because she refused to parley with these minority  'clans' with unique influence in the party.

Yet it may well be to these forces, which Councillor Beswick may be eluding to below when she talks of 'an opportunity for a new broom to sweep out the old order instead it was consolidated with backers of the former leader who seemed in denial'.

Yesterday, in her Rochdale Online interview, Councillor Beswick declared:

'Recent events in Rochdale have shown there is a need for change in Leadership.  Some of us tried to make this make this point when the national party asked the previous leader to step down last November following his evidence to the IICSA enquiry.

'This should have been an opportunity for a new broom to sweep out the old order instead it was consolidated with backers of the former leader who seemed in denial.

'Timescales were deliberately short and instead Richard Farnell's close ally and deputy [Allen Brett] took over. 

'At this time the level of change at the top was not sufficient, which is why a number of cabinet members and a deputy resigned last December.

'Rochdale and its residents deserve better than this and especially after the IICSA report that has identified historic failings 

'I believe fresh Leadership is important to take the Borough forward. For this reason I am putting my name forward at the next group AGM with an agenda for change that says the old ways of doing things are not good enough for Rochdale.'

With Allen Brett as the Labour leader, and with the former disgraced leader still in the wings as a Rochdale councillor, the Rochdale Labour Party is tainted by the political ghost of the disgraced former Rochdale MP, Simon Danczuk, to whom both were close.  All Danczuk's sexual peccadilloes, and the misdemeanours with regard to his expenses, have over the years soured the political atmosphere in the Rochdale Labour Party.  But, Councillor Allen Brett hasn't helped to clear-the-air by recently trying to dissemble his way out of what he said about being selective favouring Labour wards in spending the £12 million government grant on local road improvements, and then when caught out claiming this was just an 'off the cuff' remark.

This terrible triumvirate Danczuk, Farnell and Brett, all in the end pissed on the chips

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