BACK in 1967, a government minister was jeered and slow hand-clapped into silence by angry mill workers, including hundreds from East Lancashire.

Antony Greenwood, also MP for Rossendale, appeared at a demonstration and pageant, organised by Lancashire weavers, protesting at the decline of the cotton industry.

He was forced to abandon his speech halfway through as he explained the policies of the government, led by Prime Minister Harold Wilson.

Mr Greenwood faced many of his own constituents who had travelled to Belle Vue by coach cavalcade, who were on shifts and had to go back to the mills afterwards.

During the pageant, the textile workers, many of them mill girls in mini skirts, cheered, booed and hooted as actor Desmond Cunliffe, of Holcombe Brook, played the role of Foreign Secretary George Brown and was crowned King Cotton, with a cloak bearing the words ‘Made in Portugal’.

The 6,000 operatives represented what was left of a cotton labour force, which had stood at 650,000 in 1914.