07.02.2013

An unreserved apology to Unite regional officer Wayne King

In an article in the January 12 2012 edition of the Weekly Worker entitled ‘Sovereign busworkers fight back’ untrue and highly defamatory allegations were made about Unite regional officer Wayne King: viz that Mr King lied on behalf of London Sovereign Ltd and that he lied to support London Sovereign Ltd upon issues that conflicted with Unite members’ interests. These allegations could be read as leading to the inference that Mr King was corrupt in his role as a Unite regional officer.

We published these allegations without checking the sources of them, which we now regret. We accept that these allegations and any inferences that could be drawn from them were untrue. We wholeheartedly regret publishing the article in that form. It was an unfounded attack on Mr King, although we did not realise this at the time of publication. We retract the allegations completely.

We are happy to confirm that we accept that Mr King acted entirely with a view to what he saw as Unite members’ best interests and we apologise to Mr King for any distress and embarrassment that the allegations may have caused him.