Mark MacGregor, the former chief executive of the Conservative Party, has accepted a public apology and “substantial” but undisclosed libel damages at London’s High Court over a Mail on Sunday article headed: “The man who campaigned for incest.”
The headline was changed in later editions of the paper, which was published in October last year, to: “Man who paid the price for ‘rampage’.”
Kate Macmillan, counsel for MacGregor, told Mr Justice Eady that the piece suggested that MacGregor, while chairman of the Federation of Conservative Students during the Eighties, had campaigned for the legislation of incest and hard drugs and for the privatisation of the Royal Family. She said it also suggested that he had supported a “Hang Nelson Mandela” campaign.
But she continued: “There was no basis for the claim in the ?rst-edition headline. The four suggestions in
the article were also false, in that MacGregor has never been party to any such campaigns. Nor has the Federation of Conservative Students ever been party to such campaigns, under MacGregor’s chairmanship or at all.”
She said the MoS apologised and had agreed to pay damages and MacGregor’s legal costs. Alexander Vaughan, counsel for Associated Newspapers, told the judge the paper accepted the allegations were false.
Roger Pearson
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