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The Galloway saga has eerie echoes of the Scargill affair of 1990

• 
• • Roy Greenslade
  • The Guardian, Thursday 8 May 2003 02.32 BST
  • Article history

A bell rings faintly somewhere in the back of my mind. King Arthur and Gorgeous George. Scargill and Galloway. Both larger-than-life leftwingers, guys who stand out from the crowd, controversial, iconoclastic, with a gift for rhetoric, a talent to amuse, enemies of the status quo.

Galloway is accused of taking funds from a pariah Arab regime. He immediately suspects that the documentary evidence, having fallen so fortuitously into the hands of a newspaper, is forged. Is he the victim of a plot by the secret services?

Now the bell won't stop and it is getting louder, prompting memories of 1990 when I was editor of the Daily Mirror. It accused Scargill of using miners' strike funds - allegedly donated by a pariah Arab regime - to pay off his mortgage. Despite Scargill's vehement denials, I was convinced we had the evidence.

Sue us, Arthur, I said. But look out, you're about to be covered in buckets of manure while you make up your mind. The Libyan money is only the start.

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