Here is a letter written by Respect MP George Galloway to the editor of The Independent newspaper after its story this morning alleging that George was no longer part of Respect.
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To the editor
The story which you run on Page 17 of The Independent today alleging I have split from Respect is deliberately inaccurate and unless a prominent retraction is printed by you tomorrow I intend to refer it to the Press Complaints Commission.
Your reporter James Macintyre made no attempt to contact me or my office (all of my numbers and those of my colleagues are widely known to your staff and easily obtainable and I had no missed calls on my mobile phone at any time yesterday from whoever James Macintyre is)and it is entirely based on a totally fallacious story which ran,briefly, on the BBC website before being replaced with the accurate version.
I have not split from Respect and have no intention of doing so. It is the anti-democratic Socialist Workers’ Party faction which has left Respect but is trying to claim custody of the party name. The ownership of the name Respect legally resides with my close colleague Linda Smith – as the Electoral Commission can confirm – who is supporting my Greater London Assembly candidature.
The proposal to stand a list broader than Respect in the GLA elections is not new and was first raised by me in an article in the Morning Star last November. The proposal is to have a slate which is not an alternative to Respect but is more than Respect. Respect plus. To achieve such a slate it will, for legal reasons, have to run under a different name.
Splits in Respect do not go back to 2005. The division within Respect came to a head over a letter sent by me to Respect’s National Council last August about the way that National Secretary John Rees was running the organisation. In particular it was over his acceptance of a $10,000 donation from a foreign businessman which I referred to the Electoral Commission who will now decide if it was illegally accepted.
I am not rarely seen at Westminster. I attend my office every day including weekends, as any lobby correspondent can testify. This is a deliberate smear.
All of this would have been made clear to the reporter had he made genuine attempts to contact me or my spokespeople. He preferred, instead, to concoct a totally fabricated tale plagiarised from a fleeting and wrong BBC internet account. I therefore demand an apology and a correction to this smear story.
George Galloway MP
Liam redux 
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