A FORMER councillor and college lecturer was arrested for being drunk and disorderly after a late-night run in with police.

Magistrates heard Noel O'Brien, a former Rossendale Labour councillor and County Council election candidate for Arthur Scargill's Socialist Labour Party, abused officers in Blackburn town centre.

Ex-Blackburn College lecturer O'Brien called officers names and said they should be out catching burglars. He then said they were "Nazis", and "only had one brain cell".

O'Brien, 55, of Mercer Crescent, Haslingden, pleaded not guilty to being drunk and disorderly, but was convicted after a trial. He was fined £200 with £150 costs.

After the hearing, O'Brien - who demanded to know if the bench chairman was a Tory - claimed it was a travesty of justice and said he will appeal.

The conviction came just two years after O'Brien was prosecuted for using threatening behaviour towards a traffic warden and female police officer. The judge who sentenced him on that occasion branded former Blackburn College lecturer O'Brien a bully.

In the latest incident the court heard O'Brien was abusive and smelled of alcohol after he approached a police van on Northgate. A police sergeant who got out of the van said O'Brien squared up to him leading him to believe he may become violent.

O'Brien was arrested and taken to the police station where he knocked an officer's cap off his head and was obstructive.

O'Brien claimed he had been making a point about the use of police resources and claimed it was his right as a tax payer and county police charge payer to make that point. He claimed he had only drunk three pints of beer between 8pm and 11pm while out with former colleagues at the college where he had worked for eight years.