'New Statesman' apologises for fake article about a Nazi rally in a Welsh pub

Britain's leading left-wing political magazine is having to apologise to a Welsh town for printing an article by a journalist who did not allow facts to spoil a good story.

An article headed "Weimar in Wales" in the New Statesman painted a graphic and disturbing picture of Nazism on the rise in a part of the country better known for its rural tranquillity and lovely rolling landscapes.

Jack Jameson, a previously unheard-of writer, claimed to have witnessed a gathering of neo-Nazis during an overnight stay in a pub in Welshpool, Montgomeryshire, after his car broke down. According to his account, the evening ended with a rendering of "Deutschland über Alles", with everyone in the pub on their feet executing the Nazi salute.

But the singing, the dialogue, the people and the pub were all invented. Only the name of the town, Welshpool, was real. Legal action has been threatened and the town will receive a printed apology in the next issue of New Statesman.

The New Statesman's editor, Peter Wilby, at first defended his decision to publish, telling the Cardiff-based Western Mail: "I can't be expected to go up and down the country checking whether a story is right."

However, on Thursday evening, Mr Jameson owned up on Welsh television to having invented the story. He claimed that it was not meant as "news" but as "an allegory".

"If the pub does exist, it is, indeed, no more than a composite - something which is put together from a number of different instances," he told the BBC Wales news programme Dragon's Eye.

Mr Wilby's angry reaction was: "We printed the story in good faith." But yesterday Mr Jameson told The Independent on Sunday: "Wilby is talking through his hat. It was perfectly clear it was an allegorical piece from the word go. If you read the piece, that is perfectly clear."

The Liberal Democrat MP for Welshpool, Lembit Opik, said yesterday: "[The piece] was full of libels against the people of Welshpool. The last thing you would find there is the behaviour described in the New Statesman."