THE council elections in both Burnley and Pendle were dramatic and may herald historic new trends.

It looks as though Labour's long reign in Burnley is over.

If my Liberal Democrat friends take over the leadership of the council this year, with or without help from the small Tory group, they will need a lot of hard work and a little luck.

From the outside Burnley does not look like the easiest town to govern, and let's not forget that the borough council controls no more than five per cent of local public spending.

As a member of Pendle Council's controlling group I declare an interest and possibly a bias!

But one obvious difference between the two boroughs is the amount of rubbish in the streets.

If the new Burnley administration gets to grips with this problem alone as we have done in Pendle to more than a measurable extent they will have done well.

In Pendle, Naseem Shabnam from Brierfield is our first Asian woman elected to the council. We also have the first ever councillor from the fascist BNP.

Naseem's strong Liberal Democrat campaign was based on her firm belief in integration, "in people working together not apart".

I am sure that most if not all councillors across the three main parties would subscribe to that.

Yet now we have a councillor whose spokesman says in this newspaper: "We will represent the interests of the people who voted for us."

Most of us who are elected to public office find it slightly galling when we are asked for help by people who always try to vote us out - but it's part of the job!

Once elected, we represent everyone in our wards and we give help and advice to anyone.

If we ever have councils which only work for "the people who voted for us", representative liberal democracy will fall apart.

But perhaps that is what fascist parties want to see.