No 'secret deal' behind airport controversy - councilor
And Cllr David Walsh, the Labour leader of the authority at the time, believed the airport does have a future but wanted to dismiss the rumours surrounding the sale of the airport. He said: “There is no secret hidden at the bottom of this, it was a very simple issue faced by the local authorities at that time that would not alter one iota, if it was happening now we would have to take the same decision. There’s no Da Vinci code in the middle of it, there is no hidden horde of gold, there is no strange Masonic handshakes between Peel and the local authorities – people want to believe that sort of thing and that is what motivates quite a lot of this."