A LARGE section of Colne's popular Luther Greenwood Memorial Festival could be axed next year if volunteers can not be found to run it.

This year's event will go ahead as planned but the festival's speech, drama and music section may come to an end in 2002 because of a lack of organisers.

General secretary of the festival, Muriel Waite, has put out an urgent appeal to find anyone who is interested in music and drama and would be able to offer their time to save the competition.

Mrs Waite, who at the age of 78 feels she is getting too old to continue, hopes to resign from the committee after this year's festival and chairman of the section, Ronald Crossley, also intends to stand down this year.

The committee will hold their annual general meeting at the Peter Birtwistle Centre, in Keighley Road, Colne, on Tuesday where the future of the festival will be discussed and anyone who would like to be an official is invited to go along at 7.30pm.

Mrs Waite, who has been involved with the festival since 1982, said: "Arrangements for this year's festival are well in hand with the ballet section taking place on June 2, 3 and 9 and the speech, drama and music on November 24 and December 1.

"Unfortunately unless new officials come forward for the speech, drama and music, this part of the festival may be unable to continue in future years. Surely there are a few lovers of music, speech and drama in Pendle who would like to see it continue.

"Financially we are sound and we have still got a lot of interest from entrants but unfortunately the average age of the committee for this section is around 70 years and there is a limit to what we can do.

"We really need someone who is newly retired and has time to spare. The ballet section is fine because the committee members tend to be mums and are around 30 to 40 years old."

The Luther Greenwood Memorial Festival has been going since 1947 and the speech and drama section receives around 100 entries with even more in the music categories.

Mrs Waite said: "This year I have had phone calls from a high school choir in Preston and other people who have never taken part before. The interest is still there but it is just going to fall apart if we can't find people to help."