Mayor’s column

IT’S been a busy month for the Mayor and Mayoress.

Following the wellattended Great Harwood Fair we had an outstanding Accrington Food Festival, which had the town buzzing with the chance to sample goods ranging from ostrich burgers to beer, and saw a Second World War re-enactment which frightened the life out of the Town Hall pigeons.

The following day it was Clayton’s turn for the big event when we celebrated 100 years of Mercer Park by me leading a parade but it was 12.30 in the afternoon and I opened my speech “Good evening ladies and gentlemen”. I put it down to the intense heat.

The following Sunday I opened the Oswaldtwistle Carnival, which was a great day and well attended too.

Numerous other events included the impressive first ever Hyndburn Business Awards which gave us the chance to recognise the fantastic range of products and talent of local business people. A special mention goes to Evonne Harwood, on being voted Enterprising Person of the Year.

Late June we celebrated Armed Forces week which saw the Mayoress open it with an accordion version of Mike Harding’s Accrington Pals and at the Prom Concert in the evening we danced to music supplied by the East Lancs Concert Band and the Rossendale Ladies choir who had never played together before!

Turning to more sombre matters, we were honoured to represent the borough in France and Belgium to commemorate the centenary of the first day of the Battle of the Somme where so many lost their lives, including huge numbers of our own Accrington Pals.

We visited the Menin Gate at Ypres, where the Accrington wreaths were given precedence by the Belgian officials there, and we toured all the cemeteries where the Accrington Pals lay. In each cemetery I signed the registers as the Mayor of Accrington in recognition of the Pals.

The service on the Somme was poignant and well attended. We could hear the skylarks singing and moving about at the start of the service and you could have heard a pin drop when the whistles sounded to advance into no man’s land.

We were received by the Mayors of Puiseaux and Bapaume who had schoolchildren thanking the Pals for their freedom by reading poems by the Pals.

We rounded off the tour with a visit to Lochnagar crater, where I spotted a plaque to one of the Pals. One hundred years on and we remembered the Pals with the dignity they so richly deserved.