Music magazine NME apologises to Morrissey

Music magazine NME has apologised to Morrissey over an article he said accused him of racism.

The former Smiths frontman was suing NME over a November 2007 interview, claiming that the magazine deliberately tried to characterise him as a racist.

Yesterday’s statement comes after a ruling last year that Morrissey could continue with his action over the article after NME sought to strike out his claim on grounds of a lengthy delay.

The singer was claiming damages over an item headlined “Morrissey: Big mouth strikes again”, which included a quote from him saying: “The gates of England are flooded. The country’s been thrown away.”

He said it meant that, despite his protestations to the contrary, he was a racist who insisted on espousing shockingly extremist right-wing views. An NME spokesman said the case has now been settled with the publication of the statement in this week’s magazine.

The statement reads: “In December 2007, we published an article entitled ‘Morrissey: Big mouth strikes again’.

“Following this, Morrissey began proceedings for libel against us. His complaint is that we accused him of being a racist off the back of an interview which he gave to the magazine. He believes the article was edited in such a way that made him seem reactionary. We wish to make clear that we do not believe that he is a racist; we didn’t think we were saying he was and we apologise to Morrissey if he or anyone else misunderstood our piece in that way.”