Saturday, March 02, 2024

PRO PALESTINE CAMPAIGN 
Left-wing firebrand George Galloway wins UK by-election
WORKERS PARTY OF GB WIN!

AFP Published March 2, 2024 
George Galloway celebrates after winning the by-election, at his campaign headquarters, in Rochdale, near Manchester.—Reuters

ROCHDALE: Left-wing firebrand George Gallo­way was elected to the UK parliament on Friday after tapping into anger over the Israel-Hamas war in a by-election.

Galloway, 69, first became an MP in 1987 and will return to the House of Commons for the first time since 2015 after winning the seat of Roc­hdale, in the north of England, by nearly 6,000 votes.

The vote saw the main opposition Labour party withdraw its candidate, Azhar Ali, after he touted a conspiracy theory that Israel had allowed Hamas to carry out its attack on October 7.

Galloway put the Gaza conflict front and centre of his campaign in Rochdale, which has a 30 per cent Muslim population.


Workers Party leader put Gaza conflict front and centre in his campaign

“Keir Starmer, this is for Gaza,” Galloway, leader of the Workers Party of Great Britain, said in his victory speech, referring to the Labour party’s leader.

“You have paid, and you will pay, a high price for the role that you have played in enabling, encouraging and covering for the catastrophe presently going on in occupied Palestine in the Gaza Strip,” he added.

The Scottish-born Gall­o­way, nicknamed “Gorge­ous George”, has had a long and chequered political career, in which he has represented several parties, including Labour.

He sparked controversy in the 1990s when he visited then-Iraq leader Saddam Hussein, telling him: “Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability”.

Galloway gained international attention in 2005 when he was called to testify over Iraq in the US Senate. He had earlier been expelled from Labour over his stance on the war.

His majority of 5,697 votes in Rochdale amou­nted to 18.3 per cent of the total, on a turnout of 39.7 per cent.

The surprise runner-up was David Tully, a local businessman and independent candidate.

It is very rare for none of the main parties to finish in first and second place.

Published in Dawn, March 2nd, 2024


How Labour has reacted to George Galloway’s by-election win in Rochdale

Galloway overturned Labour's 9,668 majority to win the by-election in the previously Labour safe seat with a majority of 5,697, securing 12,335 votes overall.




The Labour Party has slammed George Galloway for only being interested in ‘stoking fear and division’, after his victory in the Rochdale by-election.

Galloway overturned Labour’s 9,668 majority to win the by-election in the previously Labour safe seat with a majority of 5,697, securing 12,335 votes overall.

The by-election was triggered when veteran Labour MP and former interim Manchester mayor, Tony Lloyd, died in-post at the age of 73 in January.

The Labour Party had withdrawn support for its own candidate, Azhar Ali, after he was found to have made anti-semitic comments. Despite Labour suspending its former candidate, he still appeared on voting papers in Rochdale under the party banner, because electoral law meant ballot papers could not be changed after publication.

Following Galloway’s victory, the Labour Party said it deeply regretted being unable to field a candidate in the by-election.

A spokesperson said: “We deeply regret that the Labour party was unable to field a candidate in this by-election and apologise to the people of Rochdale. George Galloway only won because Labour did not stand.

“Rochdale deserved the chance to vote for an MP that would bring communities together and deliver for working people. George Galloway is only interested in stoking fear and division. As an MP he will be a damaging force in our communities and public life.

“The Labour party will quickly begin the process to select a new Labour candidate for the general election, and will be campaigning hard to deliver the representation and fresh start that Rochdale deserves.”

Labour MP and deputy national campaign co-ordinator Ellie Reeves apologised on BBC Radio 4 on Friday morning for not having stood an endorsed candidate.

“If Labour had stood, I don’t believe George Galloway would have won. Our job now is to select a Labour candidate for the general election…someone that can work with all the communities in Rochdale to rebuild trust.”

“We ran no campaign there in support of Azhar Ali. We regret that we weren’t able to have a candidate…but it was the right decision.”

A full breakdown of the Rochdale 
by-election results

Galloway overturned Labour’s 9,668 majority to win the by-election



George Galloway has returned to Parliament after winning the Rochdale by election. The by election was triggered when veteran Labour MP Tony Lloyd died in-post at the age of 73 in January.

Galloway overturned Labour’s 9,668 majority to win the by-election in the previously Labour safe seat with a majority of 5,697, securing 12,335 votes overall.

The Labour Party has slammed Galloway for only being interested in ‘stoking fear and division’ after his victory saying that it deeply regretted being unable to field a candidate in the by-election.

An independent candidate, David Tully, finished second on 6,638 votes. The Conservative candidate Paul Ellison finished third on 3,731 votes.

Labour’s former candidate Azhar Ali, who the party withdrew backing for during the campaign because of anti-semitic statements he had made, but who it could not take off the ballot, finished fourth behind the Tories with 2,402 votes – just 7.7% of the vote.

For a full breakdown of the results, see below:

Workers Party: George Galloway – 12,335

Independent: David Tully – 6,638

Conservative: Paul Ellison – 3,731

Labour: Azhar Ali – 2,402

Liberal Democrats: Iain Donaldson – 2,164

Reform UK: Simon Danczuk – 1,968

Independent: William Howarth – 523

Independent: Mark Coleman – 455

Green: Guy Otten – 436

Independent: Michael Howarth – 246



Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward



Rochdale by-election: Results breakdown and analysis as George Galloway says ‘this is for Gaza’

John B Hewitt / Shutterstock

George Galloway has won a landslide victory in the Rochdale by-election, saying his victory showed Keir Starmer has paid a “high price” for his stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict as Labour’s suspended candidate slumped to fourth in its former seat.

The controversial politician, standing for the Workers’ Party, got 12,335 votes after a campaign dominated by Gaza, pulling off another insurgent campaign against his former party over its foreign policy by winning a majority of almost 6,000.

An independent candidate, David Tully, finished second on 6,638 votes. The Conservative candidate Paul Ellison finished third on 3,731 votes.

Labour’s former candidate Azhar Ali, who the party withdrew backing for during the campaign but too late to take him off the ballot, finished fourth behind the Tories with 2,402 votes – just 7.7% of the vote.

Former Labour Rochdale MP Simon Danczuk, standing for the Reform Party, got 1,968 votes. He represented the Rochdale constituency between 2010 and 2017.

‘Keir Starmer, this is for Gaza’

The constituency in north-west England was previously seen as a safe Labour seat. The by-election was triggered by the death of local MP Tony Lloyd.

Galloway said in his victory speech: “Keir Starmer, this is for Gaza. You have paid and you will pay for the role you have played in enabling, encouraging and covering for the catastrophe presently going on in occupied Palestine in the Gaza strip.

“The plates have shifted tonight…Keir Starmer’s problems just got 100 times more serious than they were before today.

“This is going to spark a movement, a landslide, a shifting of the tectonic plates in scores of parliamentary constituencies, beginning here in the North West, in the West Midlands, in London, from Ilford to Bethnal Green and Bow, labour is on notice that they have lost the confidence of millions of voters.”

He claimed Muslim voters were “bitterly angry” about Labour, but it would be “foolish” not to think “millions of other citizens” are too.

Ed Owen, a former adviser to New Labour minister Jack Straw, said Galloway’s speech was “full of self-serving arrogance and pomposity” and “overblown rhetoric”.

He said the “poor people of Rochdale” both “can and will get shot of him at general election.

Galloway vowed to ‘make Rochdale great again’

Highlighting the upcoming local elections, he added: “Rochdale town councillors, I put you on notice that I plan to put together a grand alliance…the councillors have to go.”

Galloway put his victory down to both international and local issues, and called Starmer a “betrayer”.

He said the “heart has been piece by piece removed” from Rochdale, including the 2011 closure of its A&E and ongoing threat to its football club’s future.

One campaign letter to voters pledged to “make Rochdale great again” by bringing back “big names” to the high street and campaigning for health services and Rochdale AFC. It said he believed in “law and order”,  family and Brexit, had “no difficulty defining what a woman is” and would ensure there were “no grooming gangs on my watch”.

‘The lesson is about candidate selection’

Luke Tryl, UK director of More in Common, said it was a “terrible result for main parties”, but “the circumstances mean it is far more likely the lesson here is one about candidate selection and due diligence than about public opinion more broadly”.

Labour MP and deputy national campaign co-ordinator Ellie Reeves apologised on BBC Radio 4 on Friday morning for not having stood an endorsed candidate.

“If Labour had stood, I don’t believe George Galloway would have won. Our job now is to select a Labour candidate for the general election…someone that can work with all the communities in Rochdale to rebuild trust.”

“We ran no campaign there in support of Azhar Ali. We regret that we weren’t able to have a candidate…but it was the right decision.”

“It is impossible to know how Labour would have performed with another candidate that had the party’s backing (although one can reasonably assume a lot better than they did), whereas the Conservative candidate appears to have been the victim of the national swing.”

Pollster Joe Twyman of Deltapoll said the decline of the Labour, Tory and Lib Dem vote marked a “stunning change”, falling from 89.8% in 2019 to just 26.7%.

A contest between former Labour politicians

Galloway compared himself to former prime minister Winston Churchill in winning in multiple constituencies, saying he had “bettered” his record by being elected three times “outside the parameters of the great parties of state”.

Galloway, a prominent critic of former Labour prime minister Tony Blair over the Iraq war, served as a Labour MP between 1987 and 2003, representing Glasgow Kelvin. He was elected for the Respect Party in 2005, representing Bethnal Green and Bow until 2010, and was again elected to parliament at the 2012 Bradford West by-election, but lost the seat in 2015.

Azhar Ali’s suspension from Labour mid-campaign came after he apologised “unreservedly” when the Mail on Sunday alleged he told a meeting last year that Israel “allowed” Hamas’ attack on October 7th in order to get a “green light to do whatever they bloody want”.

The comments by the former Lancashire Labour group leader sparked heavy criticism, including from Labour itself. Shadow minister Nick Thomas-Symonds told broadcasters Ali’s words were “completely wrong”, and “in no way represent” Labour’s views. The Jewish Representative Council of Greater Manchester called the reported comments a “conspiratorial narrative”, “highly offensive” and “completely fictitious”.

The comments emerged on February 10th. On February 12th Labour announced that it would not support Ali at the by-election, leaving it without a candidate as it was too late for a new one to be added to ballot papers. A spokesman for the party said it followed “new information about further comments made by Azhar Ali coming to light”, but the decision not to act earlier sparked heavy media criticism.

GEORGE GALLOWAY BANNED FROM CANADA 
BY TORY GOVERNMENT  

Theguardian.com

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2009/mar/20/george-galloway-banned-canada

Mar 20, 2009 ... ... government, institution or process as they are understood in Canada;. (b) engaging in or instigating the subversion by force of any government ...

Cp24.com

https://www.cp24.com/mobile/canada-bans-outspoken-british-mp-1.381372?cache=yesclipId10406200text/html;charset=utf-80404/7.549035

Mar 20, 2009 ... ... George Galloway from Canada despite opposition claims of censorship. ... Harper's government has also waged a long-running battle with Arab ...

Theglobeandmail.com

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/british-mp-takes-canadian-ban-to-court/article20442095

Mar 25, 2009 ... Supporters of George Galloway say the ban has no legal justification ... Harper's government's direction on war," said Ms. Chow, an NDP MP ...


ON THE OTHER HAND

Opinion Byelections


After George Galloway’s triumph in Rochdale, urgent questions loom for Keir Starmer – and the left, too

Labour’s leader has left Muslim supporters disenchanted. And the left must think hard about what happens when his approach unravels


THE GUARDIAN
Fri 1 Mar 2024 

When Keir Starmer’s political project comes crashing down, as one day it will, George Galloway’s Rochdale triumph should be remembered as a portent. For hardcore Starmerites, this assertion is easily dismissed. Courtesy of the Tories’ comprehensive self-immolation, Labour is heading for a crushing landslide victory. With an average 19-point lead – an undeniably stunning turnaround from the party’s 2019 rout – there is no sign of the usual polling swingback a government enjoys in election year. Rishi Sunak is an inept prime minister leading an intellectually exhausted government, devoid of any ideas except doubling down on the same policies that left Britain with an unprecedented squeeze in living standards, stagnant growth and a shrivelled public realm. When Starmer becomes prime minister in November, as he almost certainly will, he is unlikely to be worrying much about Rochdale, which may well return to the Labour fold in a general election anyway.

Well, such complacency may prove a mistake. The Labour candidate was, of course, belatedly disowned by the national leadership after claiming that Israel deliberately allowed the 7 October atrocities to happen, and deploying a crude antisemitic trope about the influence of “certain Jewish quarters” in the media. Labour – which has today apologised to the people of Rochdale for failing to offer a viable Labour candidate – will easily dismiss the candidate’s derisory vote, and yet overall turnout – nearly 40% – was actually higher for than the last three byelections. This means that, despite some demoralised voters staying at home in a farcical election, Galloway won far more votes than the Labour, Tory and Liberal Democrat candidates combined: that is, he clearly enjoyed an enthused turnout, many rallied by the message summed up at his victory speech: “Keir Starmer, this is for Gaza.” Labour says Galloway won because there was no Labour candidate. That is highly debatable.

This is all despite the fact that Galloway – despite being a compelling orator and a formidable campaigner – is, to say the least, a controversial figure, bitterly rejected by most of the left (myself included) on account of, say, voting Conservative in Scotlandappalling comments about rape, sidling up to Nigel Farage in the Brexit referendum campaign, and issuing statements such as: “As a father of six children, I’m socially conservative. I don’t want my children taught the kind of things Labour wants to teach them in schools.”

Undoubtedly, many who plumped for him are Muslim – understandably more aggrieved than the average Briton about Israel’s slaughter of mostly Muslim Palestinians. But Rochdale has a significantly smaller Muslim population than other seats Galloway has successfully contested, and he won wider support, too. That he specifically sought support from Muslim voters has been portrayed as somehow tawdry: this itself is testament to how mainstream Islamophobia is in Britain, as though seeking to address specific concerns of Muslim voters were not legitimate.

The truth is that Muslim voters are an important and growing plank of Labour’s electoral coalition, but the party treats them with contempt – as voting fodder who are otherwise an embarrassment to it. Consider the case of the former Labour minister Phil Woolas, who in 2010 had his victory in Oldham – 6 miles from Rochdale – overturned by a court when he was found to have stoked religious tensions to win by distributing a deeply Islamophobic leaflet. Some parliamentary colleagues leapt to his defence. In the brutal Batley and Spen byelection in 2021 – in which Labour defeated Galloway – party sources reportedly briefed that antisemitism among Muslim voters was losing Labour support, and boasted that they’d won Tory voters at the expense of the “conservative Muslim vote over gay rights and Palestine”. According to a survey of Muslim Labour members in 2022, 46% felt Starmer had handled Islamophobia “very badly”, with a further 18% opting for “quite badly”. When predominantly Muslim councillors resigned in disgust at Gaza, a party source reportedly bragged they were “shaking off the fleas”.


What are the main U-turns Labour has made under Keir Starmer



But it’s not just about Muslim voters, important though that is. It was Iraq that toxified Tony Blair among swathes of Labour’s natural electoral coalition. That was after he had been prime minister for many years. For Starmer, this has happened in opposition: 52% of voters think Starmer is doing badly as Labour leader, with just 33% saying he is doing well: remarkable for a man almost inevitably destined for No 10. Why? Because Starmer deceitfully abandoned his solemn promises – “pledges”, he called them – in his leadership campaign, such as taxing the rich, public ownership of utilities, scrapping tuition fees and much else. He failed to then develop an alternative vision, even going so far as to trash his more recent flagship £28bn green investment fund. He has promised to keep Tory policies that drive children into poverty, while refusing to reintroduce the bankers’ bonus cap, and has locked the party into keeping arbitrary fiscal rules that spell continuing austerity. In comments on Gaza, Starmer said that Israel had a right to cut off water and energy; he later said that he did not believe that. He has presided over mass resignations and sackings of opponents, and he sabotaged an SNP motion condemning Israel for collective punishment.

Labour’s support is soft and superficial, driven almost entirely by revulsion at the Tories’ calamitous spell in office. We can see in Germany and the US how similar political projects came to power with the promise of offering stability, but both countries face acute political crises. And so the left – hounded by the Labour leadership as it is – needs to make tough decisions. Does it wait for either the likes of Galloway or the far right to fill the vacuum when mass disillusionment with Starmer’s government inevitably kicks in? Better to start asking some tough questions about what to do next.



Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist


Opinion  George Galloway

George Galloway stands accused of profiting from the pain of Gaza – and rightly so. But he is not the only one

The new Rochdale MP is hardly unique. He is just highly adept at swimming in the toxic swamp that is so much of our politics


Jonathan Freedland
THE GUARDIAN 
Fri 1 Mar 202


You’re going to hear a lot of talk about George Galloway in the coming days, much of it negative and almost all of it true. But there will be one charge thrown at the new member for Rochdale – winner of a byelection victory yesterday as sweeping as the triumph he recorded in Bradford West more than a decade ago – that will be false and unfair.

Start with the accusations that stand up. Galloway poses as a man of the left – his latest vehicle is called the Workers party of Britain. But he backed Nigel Farage’s Brexit party (now Reform) in 2019 – the pair had appeared together, during the 2016 referendum campaign, laughing and smiling – and the Conservatives in Scotland in 2021. You did not misread that sentence: George Galloway voted Tory only three years ago.

The right are more comfortable with Galloway than you might expect. In Rochdale, he won the warm endorsement of Nick Griffin, the former leader of the British National party. “George Galloway isn’t just right on keeping us out of Zionist wars,” wrote Griffin. “He also understands the position of working class white Brits on immigration.” Offered the chance to reject that support on Radio 4’s Today programme yesterday, Galloway’s deputy – the former MP Chris Williamson, who was suspended from Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party over comments he made about antisemitism – pointedly refused. You may also have seen the photographs of Galloway apparently bonding with Steve Bannon, a one-time Trump lieutenant and current peddler of online conspiracy theories.

Others will remind you of Galloway’s employment history, and those facts will also be true. He did serve as a well-remunerated presenter for Press TV and Russia Today (RT), mouthpieces of Tehran and Vladimir Putin respectively – hardly a surprise given his admiration for a string of tyrannical regimes. In 1994, he stood before Saddam Hussein of Iraq, the man who had jailed, tortured and killed so many of his own people, and declared: “Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability.” In 2002, he told this newspaper that “the disappearance of the Soviet Union is the biggest catastrophe of my life.” When an estimated 1,300 Syrians were killed by chemical weapons in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta, Galloway did not, as most did, blame Bashar al-Assad – who he had long praised for his “dignity” – but rather pointed the finger at an imagined, if improbable, alliance of al-Qaida and … Israel. He offered no evidence, but that was his “theory”.

Indeed, given his determination to cast himself as a defender of Muslims – a pitch that paid great dividends in Rochdale – it’s striking how often he lines up behind those who kill, maim or oppress Muslims, even in their hundreds of thousands. In 2020, Galloway used his platform on RT to dismiss the copious evidence of China’s persecution of an estimated one million Uyghur Muslims: “There are no concentration camps in China,” he said, merely “re-education centres” for terrorists that humanely seek to draw them away from the path of extremism.

So he should not be confused for any kind of progressive. Doubt over that question was surely set aside in 2012 when he defended Julian Assange, then facing allegations of rape, by announcing that any accusation would be rendered absurd if there had first been an act of consensual sex. As he memorably put it, “I mean, not everybody needs to be asked prior to each insertion.” If campaigners against sexual violence disliked that, LGBTQ+ advocates might similarly recoil from some intriguing lines that appeared in Galloway’s election literature in Rochdale. “I believe in family … I believe in men and women. God created everything in pairs.”

He likes to boast that he is an implacable foe of racism. Yet he was fired by Talk Radio in 2019 over a tweet the station deemed antisemitic. After Tottenham, a north London club with a strong Jewish following, lost in the Champions League final, Galloway posted: “No #Israël flags on the Cup!” (Note the umlaut with its whispered hint of Germany, scarcely a shock from a man who’s long been fond of comparing Israel to the Nazis – a comparison that is specifically cited in the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism.)

In short, much of what you hear about Galloway from his detractors will be true. Where, then, is the falsehood? What is the unmerited charge laid against him?

It is the claim that he is somehow uniquely guilty of exploiting the pain of Gaza for political gain. Don’t get me wrong, he is certainly using that agony for his own advantage. He targeted the Muslim voters of Rochdale, sending them a flyer that did not mention re-opening the local maternity hospital, securing the future of the local football club or luring Primark to the town – all of which featured on the leaflet aimed at everyone else – but instead focused solely on Gaza. No, the flaw in the claim is the notion that Galloway is unique in what he’s doing.

He’s louder than others and his rhetoric is more florid – but the grim truth is that, when it comes to using the horror of the Israel-Hamas war, and all the fear and loathing that has stirred up in this country, Galloway is far from alone.

The former Conservative party deputy chair Lee Anderson was playing the same game when he baselessly accused Sadiq Khan of being so in thrall to his Islamist “mates” that he was failing to police pro-Palestinian demonstrations in London sufficiently harshly. Anderson was trying to whip up anti-Muslim sentiment, following a lead set by Suella Braverman when she spoke of “hate marches” and “mobs” – and followed again, if codedly, by Rishi Sunak in his address outside Downing Street late on Friday. He, too, attacked the marchers, warning against the threat extremism and bigotry pose to democracy – a bit rich given his indulgence of extremism and bigotry within his own party and his inability to call Anderson’s anti-Muslim prejudice by its name. Still, the prime minister can glimpse some favourable battlelines for the coming general election campaign and didn’t want to let the opportunity slip. Sunak, Braverman and Anderson all affect to have the purest motives – offering themselves as protectors of British Jews in particular, as that community faces a record surge of antisemitism – but, like Galloway, they’re in the exploitation business. Others’ pain is their gain.

They are the crudest practitioners, but they are not the only ones. The MPs of the Scottish National party are, of course, sincere in their outrage at the plight of Gaza. But few would argue that the ceasefire motion they tabled last week – which triggered such ructions in the Commons – was aimed solely at helping Palestinians in need. It was also designed to expose and widen the rift within the ranks of their electoral rivals, Labour. Meanwhile, Labour and the Conservatives plotted their own procedural moves thinking less of the Middle East than of the great Westminster game.

As it happens, this week a few members of the Commons foreign affairs committee sat in a modest room and took evidence from Israelis and Palestinians about how Britain might actually do something useful to end the bloodshed. The discussion was serious and practical – and delivered precisely zero attention or political benefit to those involved. If you want to profit from all this death and destruction, it seems the trick is not to try to solve the problem – it’s to capitalise on it, to take all that grief and heartache and trade on it.

So, yes, Galloway has a record that brims with poison. But he is not quite the outlier we might wish him to be. He was always a demagogue and a populist, and now our politics is crammed with such people: “Make Rochdale Great Again” was his slogan, a knowing, admiring nod to Donald Trump. As for what looks like a habit of swooping down to prey on those in pain, pitting community against community – well, maybe that once set him apart. But vultures are all around us now.


Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist


Being anti-Labour doesn't put Galloway on the left
 28 February, 2024 - Author: Simon Nelson



The Trade Union and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) and the Socialist Party have endorsed George Galloway in the Rochdale by-election. Galloway’s former allies and bag-carriers in Respect, the SWP, have refused to do so.

Already, in 2022, the TUSC steering committee gave “observer status” to the Workers’ Party of Britain (WPB), formed as an alliance between Galloway and the Stalin-Society-supporting Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist). They have since fallen out.

Former MP Chris Williamson had already been wooed by the SP when he had his own vehicle, Resist. He is now in the WPB.

Clive Heemskerk of the SP and TUSC notes that “some on the left” criticised TUSC when the WPB gained observer status. Workers’ Liberty supporters in the RMT union, which was then affiliated to TUSC, had also criticised TUSC for taking in Williamson and Sian Bloor, a conspiracy theorist from Resist. RMT disaffiliated from TUSC in 2022 (and had been little involved for a while). SP and TUSC seem desperate to find others to link up, as bad as Galloway and Williamson, as long as they are anti-Labour.

Very little of what the WPB stands for is in tune with the SP’s proclaimed policies. The WPB is “for the workers not the wokers”, a tagline that can only put candidates on the wrong side of the “culture wars” on trans rights or the “Black Lives Matter” protests. It offers up “a migration policy that reflects the anxiety felt among the working class about an influx of migrants which appears to be out of control”. It warns against “apocalyptic Green hysteria that floods our media” and says there is “no need to be rushed” into a green economy.

The Socialist Party repeats the idea that Galloway is an “anti-war” candidate. What about Ukraine or Syria?

The SP claims a victory for Galloway would send an important message to the pro-capitalist parties in Westminster. Galloway himself confesses to a lavish lifestyle, pocketing hundreds of thousands when he was on an MP’s salary. He is far from the “workers’ MP on a worker’s wage” as which TUSC national chair Dave Nellist won respect.

The SP endorsement also comes dangerously close to backing the very same conspiracy theory as Azhar Ali used while still a Labour candidate, endorsing the idea that Israel deliberately had lax security at the Gaza border before 7 October in “the hope of a pretext to go to war”.

Charging Netanyahu with overconfidence and complacency before 7 October is one thing: this claim is quite another. It suggests that the SP is falling into the sphere of influence of Williamson and Galloway further than they realise.

Who is George Galloway?


20 February, 2024 -Author: Simon Nelson



As we go to press, George Galloway is the bookmakers’ favourite for the Rochdale by-election (29 February), and has been backed by the Socialist Party. But he is not fit to become an MP yet again.

He first became an MP for Labour in 1987. He was at best soft-left, by no means an outstanding rebel, with a strong Stalinist tinge such as had been relatively common among MPs for some time. As he has developed a distinctive individual profile as an “anti-imperialist”, he has become a bad smell the left seems unwilling to get rid of.

While on a delegation of European MPs to Iraq in 1994 he spoke the words that should follow him to his death, to Iraqi dictator and butcher Saddam Hussein. “Sir, we salute your courage, your strength and your indefatigability.” While presenting Hussein with a pennant from Palestinian youth in the West Bank he added “we are with you” and then in Arabic, “Until Victory! Until Jerusalem”.

We called for his local Labour Party to dump him. But he and others portrayed his pro-Saddam war-mongering rhetoric as a matter of being a great fighter for the Palestinians and a trenchant critic of Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq.

In reality Galloway has been a mercenary self-promoter, serving different imperialisms of his choice against others: Iraq and Iran against Israel and the US. Russia against Ukraine.

From 1996 he got money from two successive Pakistani governments to run a newspaper in London (East) aimed to back Pakistani policies in Kashmir. The paper folded after a Newsnight exposé.

He was kicked out of the Labour Party in 2003 for calling for troops to defy orders in Iraq. In 1998 he had launched the Mariam Appeal, notionally to pay for the cancer treatment of an Iraqi child and then provide other medications to Iraq. Galloway was able to spend much of the money raised on overseas trips by himself, which included Christmas lunch with Saddam Hussein’s foreign minister Tariq Aziz. When challenged about the funding, he said that most of it came from the United Arab Emirates or from a businessman trading with Iraq, and he didn’t know the businessman got money from the Iraqi regime.

Even before he became an MP, his time as general secretary of War on Want, 1983-7, ended with criticism of his spending. Later, when he became MP for Bradford West (2012-5) he pocketed another £265,000 from TV presenting. He earnt £150,000 from a previous appearance on Celebrity Big Brother.

His prominence in the Stop the War coalition was at its height in 2003, and then he helped to break up the Socialist Alliance, a short-lived coalition of almost the whole radical activist left. The SWP, which was the biggest component in the Alliance, wooed Galloway. Workers’ Liberty denounced that wooing. At the time, almost all other left groups denounced us as “sectarian” for doing so, but we believe we have been vindicated.

With a new electoral vehicle, Respect, or rather, “Respect (George Galloway)”, Galloway won Bethnal Green and Bow in the 2005 general election. He turned against the SWP, which had provided foot-soldiers for Respect, in 2007. The rump Respect which he ran after that wound up, after scandals, in 2016.

While a Bradford MP he also suggested that Julian Assange could not have been guilty of rape because these allegations were not rape, “as anyone with an sense can possibly recognise it”. He added: “I mean, not everybody needs to be asked priort to each insertion”. He has long been opposed to abortion rights and has proudly used his stance to show that he is “not as left wing as you think”.

He had paid little attention to Bradford or to parliament since being elected. Losing the seat to Labour in the 2015 general election. He has been active as a media figure on RT, the Russian state international broadcaster, and since 2019 as the head of the “anti-woke”, Stalinoid Workers Party of Great Britain.

We hope he will not be able to reactivate his parliamentary career from Rochdale. Whatever about that, he has no place in the left.



The Alliance for Workers’ Liberty: who we are, what we do

Contact us
Alliance for Workers' Liberty
20E Tower Workshops
Riley Road
London SE1 3DG
Phone: 020 7394 8923
Email: awl@workersliberty.org

What we stand for

Today one class, the working class, lives by selling its labour power to another, the capitalist class, which owns the means of production.

Capitalists’ control over the economy and their relentless drive to increase their wealth causes poverty, unemployment, blighting of lives by overwork; imperialism, environmental destruction and much else.

The working class must unite to struggle against the accumulated wealth and power of the capitalists, in the workplace and wider society.

The Alliance for Workers’ Liberty wants socialist revolution: collective ownership of industry and services, workers’ control, and a democracy much fuller than the present system, with elected representatives recallable at any time and an end to bureaucrats’ and managers’ privileges.

We fight for trade unions and the Labour Party to break with “social partnership” with the bosses, to militantly assert working-class interests.

In workplaces, trade unions, and Labour organisations; among students; in local campaigns; on the left and in wider political alliances we stand for:
• Independent working-class representation in politics
• A workers’ government, based on and accountable to the labour movement
• A workers’ charter of trade union rights — to organise, strike, picket effectively, and take solidarity action
• Taxing the rich to fund good public services, homes, education and jobs for all
• Workers’ control of major industries and finance for a rapid transition to a green society
• A workers’ movement that fights all forms of oppression
• Full equality for women, and social provision to free women from domestic labour. Reproductive freedoms and free abortion on demand.
• Full equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people
• Black and white workers’ unity against racism
• Open borders
• Global solidarity against global capital — workers everywhere have more in common with each other than with their capitalist or Stalinist rulers
• Democracy at every level of society, from the smallest workplace or community to global social organisation
• Equal rights for all nations, against imperialists and predators big and small
• Maximum left unity in action, and full openness in debate




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