George Galloway is consulting his learned friends again. This time the target is Times journalist Julie Burchill.
It appears her Saturday column has been pulled from the Times website as I can’t seem to find it online today.
From what I can remember from my dead-tree version Burchill accused Galloway, amongst other things, of breaking and entering an ex-girlfriends flat and making off with an item of her (the ex-girlfriends) underwear as a souvenir.
Galloway claims the events were carried out by someone else.
The expelled ex-Labour MP is spitting tacks on the Respect Coalition website
“This is a deliberately malicious, malignly-motivated smear, on a Goebellian scale. It’s unbelievable that such gross untruths could appear in the newspaper without, apparently, being checked by anyone – certainly not a lawyer – for veracity. I will be seeking an apology and substantial damages”
Also wading in is fellow Respect member Lindsey German who wrote (see the section under Galloway’s on the Respect site) to the Times to say
Your columnist Julie Burchill (Saturday, March 13) makes grave and fallacious allegations against Respect Member of Parliament George Galloway which will be the subject of legal action.
Can this be the same Ms German who lost a libel case last year after falsely claiming two fellow-socialists were supporters of holocaust-reviser Franco Tudjman ?
Can it be the same Ms German who was the subject of the begging letter by fellow Socialist Worker Paul Foot referred to here in which he states
It has been a long tradition in the labour movement that arguments between socialists should be conducted openly and should not, except in extreme circumstances, be tested in the courts by the libel laws.
Let’s see if I understand this properly. Call two left-wing historians apologists for holocaust-revisionist Franco Tudjman and when you are caught out claim socialists shouldn’t go to law – but start talking about damages as soon as Julie Burchill has a pop at a leading figure in your organisation.
No further questions.