LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Town’s festering sore

But how long will it be before Beck and Hoddinott are removed from the cabinet and the council together with all those who attended the 2005 CSE seminar? They should not hold public office in our town one moment longer.

Starmer and his colleagues are well aware of the damage being done but seem as though they are all ducking for cover.

The councillors have been challenged both directly at meetings and formally through the Labour Party structures. The result has been the same, silence, at least publicly.

Councillors who were not involved in the Jay and Casey reports, or who weren’t serving councillors at the time, have soiled their position and wrecked their reputations by being gutless, not speaking out but supporting them.

The longer this goes on the worse it will be for the Labour Party. Beck’s recent public exposure and the public backlash proves people haven’t and will not forget! It’s like a festering sore at the heart of our local politics.

Why have our local Labour MPs endorsed councillors, who have previously brought shame to our great town, as candidates for public office?

Let us not forget what is at the heart of this. Our community. The fact that the CSE survivors are our fellow citizens. We owe it to them to keep speaking out. They were born into our community. They were neighbours’ children, grandchildren, sisters, brothers or mothers.

They are not collateral damage or just there for warm words and platitudes from politicians.

They have to live with broken lives and mental torture for life.

The councillors and all those who failed the victims should be removed from public office with immediate effect. The MPs as parliamentary representatives should speak out!

They must start to show leadership on this now.

These councillors and officers must all go at once.

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter”— Martin Luther King Jr.

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