A PETITION has been launched to try and stop the Morecambe Bay cockling disaster from being made into a musical.

‘Sinking Water’ is to tell the tragic story of the 23 Chinese cocklers who lost their lives in the Bay off Hest Bank in 2004.

It will be developed and staged over the next 12 months after being selected from nearly 200 potential new musicals for the £12,000 Perfect Pitch Award.

Written by Daniel York Loh and Craig Adams, the piece has been described as ‘beautifully thoughtful’ by the prize organisers, but has come up against opposition from some residents around Morecambe Bay.

A Change.org petition attempting to halt the project has garnered more than 120 signatures.

Calling the musical ‘a horrible display of crass insensitivity’, it says: “We believe a musical will trivialise and sensationalise what happened and will be an insult to the memory of the victims, the many rescue workers and support workers and the people of the Morecambe Bay area who clearly remember that fateful and horrific night.

“We urge Perfect Pitch and The Theatre Royal Stratford East to withdraw the award and reconsider what subject is suitable to be given the West End treatment.

“Mr York compared his idea to the show 'Les Miserables' being about poverty and desperation but 'Les Miserables' is set in 1832 not in the very recent memory of the victims and witnesses to the disaster.”

Among those who signed the petition was Morecambe town councillor Josh Brandwood, who said the idea was ‘incredibly sensitive’.

Another e-petition supporter from Heysham said: “Sensitive documentary, yes – musical, no.”

York Loh, the British Chinese writer and actor who had the idea for the musical, was paired with composer Adams for the competition.

He said: “I think there is a tendency, and I don't think it’s people, but the media, to see non-Western tragedies and deaths as statistics. I wanted to humanise that.”

York Loh, who campaigns for equal rights for creative East Asians, added: “Theatre is at its best when it takes risks like that. I think musicals are a powerful medium and we can use it to explore real issue. I think it’s there as a genre to have its boundaries explored.”

Kerry Michael, Artistic Director at Theatre Royal Stratford East, who organised the award, said:“York Loh and Adams have used those terrible events as the framework while exploring other characters around the tragedy, the local councillors, journalists and economic pressures that were brought to bear on the Chinese protagonists.

“This is a stirring and emotive piece of theatre which asks bigger questions of the British psyche, our attitude to cheap labour, migrants and foreign deaths.”

Sinking Water takes its name from an emergency call made by one of the cocklers on February 5 2004