Deserved apologies

• IN 1990, the Daily Mirror, then edited by Roy Greenslade, claimed that at the height of the miners’ strike (1984) National Union of Mineworkers’ president Arthur Scargill had taken money raised for strikers; for example, he had paid off the mortgage on his house with money donated by Libya.

In the Media Guardian (May 27 2002) Mr Greenslade took the cover and two inside pages to apologise for “The story that I got wrong”. 

In it he wrote that: “I am now convinced that (Mr) Scargill didn’t misuse strike funds and that the union didn’t get money from Libya. I also concede that, given the supposed wealth of Maxwell’s Mirror and the state of the NUM finances, it was understandable that (Mr) Scargill didn’t sue.”

The above was just a part of the accusations against Mr Scargill and the NUM by the Mirror and others in the media, including Central TVs’ influential Cook Report.

Mr Greenslade finished his long and detailed apology with these words “I regret ever publishing that story. And that is the honest truth.”

If, eventually, the British public gets the apologies it deserves from politicians, journalists, police, lawyers, media owners and controllers, over the News of the World affair, then the Media Guardian could provide a “confessional” for those “who have sinned” and run it daily instead of just one day a week.

RHD, WC1 

Published: 14 July, 2011