‘Impressively professional journalist’ with a commitment to social justice was also European business editor

David Gow obituary

David Gow, a former Germany correspondent and European business editor of the Guardian whose strong commitment to social justice and to the EU project continued long after he left the paper, has died of a heart attack aged 80.

Gow joined the Scotsman as a graduate trainee in 1969 and became the paper’s first Europe correspondent, then labour correspondent and finally its London editor. After nearly 20 years there, Gow moved to the Guardian in 1989.

He was briefly education editor before going to Bonn to cover, for nearly six years, one of the most momentous periods in Germany’s postwar history, including its rebirth as a single nation with the reunification of east and west Germany in 1990.