Events At The Daily Mirror

EDM number 1587 in 1992-93, proposed by George Galloway on 11/03/1993.

That this House marks the retirement of the Daily Mirror's Industrial Editor, Terry Pattinson, who won the hitherto prestigious British Press Association Reporter of the Year Award for his work in smearing NUM President, Arthur Scargill, and General Secretary Peter Heathfield; recalls that his assignment spared no expense, paying disgraced former NUM official, Roger Windsor, ú80,000 and former NUM chauffeur, Jim Parker, ú50,000 which payments have never been reported to Mirror readers asked to believe the testimony of these hired witnesses; recalls that this sordid smear, which accused the miners' leaders of stealing money from their striking members' families, was ordered by and personally supervised by Robert Maxwell, one of the greatest thieves of the 20th century, who was at the time of the articles stealing the same Mr Pattinson's pension; and calls on the Daily Mirror now to acknowledge that the allegations in Pattinson's story are now discredited, that aside from the vast payments to Windsor and Parker, Pattinson published false testimony from two Pakistanis whom he knew to be convicted fraudsters, one of whom is wanted for murder in Cairo, that the courts and the Inland Revenue have accepted that the NUM leaders are innocent of any dishonesty, and that Maxwell and Pattinson's smear was connected to a dirty tricks campaign against the NUM by elements of the security services as revealed by employees of the GCHQ in The Guardian newspaper last year.

This motion has been signed by a total of 23 MPs.