'Respect' and George Galloway

The Stop The War Coalition enjoyed its heyday around the time of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, but has regained some prominence since David Cameron’s government first proposed the bombing of Syria in August 2013. Feeding on perceptions that UK involvement in the Middle East has led to prolonged campaigns of bombing, loss of life, and the creation of unstable regimes, with very little of the humanity supposed to exist in “humanitarian intervention”, the STWC has called a number of demonstrations and got some media coverage for its opposition to the UK and US involvement in coalition bombing of...

Pretty much all the left press other than Solidarity has denounced the election court decision against Lutfur Rahman, mayor of Tower Hamlets in East London, and most of the left has backed Rabina Khan, Rahman's ally, for the new mayoral election on 11 June. Does the left press reckon that Rahman didn't do what the court disqualified him for doing? Or that he did do it, but it was all right? It's hard to tell. I don't know if the writers in the left press even read the judgement. If they did read it, then probably, like me, they were annoyed by the style of the judge, Richard Mawrey - pompous...

None of the socialist organisations politically defending ousted Tower Hamlets mayor Lutfur Rahman seriously analyse the judgement made against him by election commissioner Richard Mawrey. None mention George Galloway previously hailing a judgement by Mawrey (against the Labour Party and in favour of Galloway’s Respect) in 2007 — in a speech republished in full on the Socialist Worker website! Socialists have no confidence in bourgeois judges, but the idea that Mawrey is a ruling-class assassin or bug-eyed Islamophobe is absurd. The pro-Rahman left's main argument is that he is the victim of a...

I don't like the idea that a privileged, conservative judge ousts Tower Hamlets mayor Lutfur Rahman for alleged electoral malpractice, rather than a tribunal of the people he is supposed to serve. I also don't know whether all the accusations against Rahman upheld by the judge are true or not. I am not going to take the judge's word for it. I am also not going to take the word of former councillors for George Galloway's Respect group that he is not. The residents of Tower Hamlets, of which I am one, have plenty of reasons to want Rahman and his communalist politics out. Some left-wingers are...

Bradford MP George Galloway was hospitalised with a broken jaw and rib after being attacked in Notting Hill on 29 August. The evidence suggests that Galloway was attacked because of his positions on and comments he has made about Israel-Palestine. The man accused of attacking Galloway, Neil Masterson, has said in the press that he was bothered by Galloway's anti-semitism. Galloway's politics on Israel are very bad; Masterson seems to be a right winger, a defender of the Israeli government and its oppression of the Palestinians. Politicians should not be physically attacked for expressing their...

THE "George-Galloway-loves-Saddam-Hussein" affair gave the Tories a brief respite from their own scandals and sensational revelations last week. It brought no respite to socialists concerned at the continuing decay of the old left. It was the latest putrescent manifestation of that decay. The Tories needed the respite, and though in fact it was the BBC monitoring service which "broke" the story, we got tabloid front pages. Beneath the abuse, they must have loved George Galloway! "Where's your nose been Galloway? ...Presstuck up Saddam's junta, that's where!" grimly chortled the dingy Star. The...

Syria's disgusting, murderous, one-party state is responsible for mass murder, torture on a vast scale, and an enormous humanitarian disaster inside Syria, where whole towns have been raised to rubble. Over four million are internally displaced, nearly two million have fled the country, seven million are in immediate need of humanitarian aid, the economy has collapsed, and over 100,000 are dead. The main responsibility for this utterly avoidable catastrophe belongs to the Syrian government and military. Bashar Assad’s small ruling inner circle has chosen to reinforce and exploit sectarian...

According to the Daily Mail (21 April), Labour leader Ed Miliband had an hour-long meeting in his office with George Galloway. A Labour spokesman felt the need to insist that there is "no attempt" to readmit Galloway to the Labour Party, and what Miliband was discussing - for an hour... - was just a vote on boundary changes. The report has sparked a many-sided row. The Daily Mail has run a continuing campaign about the meeting, saying that it shows that Miliband is "Red Ed" and too close to supposed leftists like Galloway. "Mr Miliband said he wanted further meetings - but in a secret location...

The crises and splits in the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and Respect have spurred more talk about left unity. The left needs systematic unity in action where we agree, and honest dialogue where we differ, in order to reinstate socialist ideas as an option in the working class. On 26 March the Coalition of Resistance (within which the key force is the SWP splinter Counterfire) held a press conference to promote a “People’s Assembly Against Austerity” for 22 June (previously announced in a letter to the Guardian on 5 February). Workers’ Liberty supports all such gatherings; but, worryingly...

When I first entered politics, I used to respect George Galloway, he was one of few prominent politicians with a viewpoint that seemed to resonate with my own. I liked the way he could run rings around ignorant TV presenters; his eloquent and devastating oratory gave comfort to me that my anti-Iraq-war feelings weren’t either as isolated, or as naive as every analyst made them out to be. However, any bone of affection I ever held for Galloway has long since disintegrated, further fuelled by his latest ridiculous outburst at an Oxford University debate. Upon hearing his opponent’s way of...