Galloway stood in the Scottish Parliamentary election on the PR-based Glasgow regional ‘list’. He picked up 6,972 votes, well short of the 10,000 to 12,000 which he had estimated he would need to secure election. (Galloway’s estimate had been accurate: the Greens won a Glasgow list seat with 12,454 votes.)
When Galloway first announced in November of last year that he was considering standing for Holyrood he identified various ‘constituencies’ which – allegedly – were putting him “under serious pressure to be a candidate”.
These were “football supporters, leaders of the Asian community, trade unionists, former constituents and even members of the Labour Party.” To one degree or another these ‘constituencies’ were the focus of his election campaign.
Central to that campaign was his pitch for the votes of “trade unionists, former constituents and Labour Party members”. This was largely based on Galloway presenting himself as (very) Old Labour.
In an interview with the “Scotsman” late last year, Galloway explained that if he stood for Holyrood, then it would be as a kind of Labour-candidate-in-exile: “Mr. Galloway,... said that he would stand (for Holyrood) on the principles of ‘a Labour man’.”
In January of this year, before allying with the SPS and the SWP, Galloway wrote: “I'm a Labour man and they (Solidarity) are more of a far-left crew.” Galloway explained: “I’m a real Labour man – the John Smith Labour Party, that is – Tommy [Sheridan] and his friends are a bit far out for me.”
If elected to Holyrood, Galloway wrote the following month, he would vote to put Labour in power: “Though I rate Alex Salmond and don’t much rate Iain Gray, I will, if elected to the Scottish Parliament for Glasgow in May, vote to put Labour in power rather than the SNP.”
And shortly before polling day Galloway wrote that Labour voters, “can glimpse in me the ghost of Labour’s past.” A vote for him, he continued, would be a vote “for the socialism of Keir Hardie, James Maxton and John Smith.”
Ever helpful, Galloway was even full of advice on how the Labour Party should be running its election campaign:
“Gordon Brown needs to get on the campaign trail big time. ... New Labour certainly needs some of their big-hitters out there. Brown, Darling, Baroness Smith – anybody for God’s sake that Labour supporters might recognise as anything to do with them.”
Other ‘constituencies’ which Galloway had identified back in November of last year – football supporters (which, in practice, meant one particular set of football supporters: Celtic fans) and the Asian community – played a less important role for Galloway in his electioneering.
Only in the closing fortnight of the campaign did Galloway make a crude but determined bid for the votes of Celtic fans.
His pitch for their vote included pasting a video clip on his election website of himself and a couple of Celtic ‘celebrities’ (one of them a millionaire, and the other a Tory), initiating (but then cancelling) a supposedly ‘anti-sectarian’ rally in George Square, and distributing leaflets at Parkhead (headed with the words of the Celtic chant “Hail! Hail!”) in which he promised that “anti-Irish-Catholic bigotry” would be the first issue he would take up if elected to Holyrood.
(For further coverage of Galloway’s bid for Celtic votes, see: “Galloway Plays the Green Card?”.
The third ‘constituency’ identified by Galloway was the Asian community.
Galloway’s pitch for Muslim votes had been central to his election campaigning in Bethnal Green and Bow in the 2005 general election: Respect had described itself as “the party for Muslims” and Galloway had described himself as a “fighter for Muslims”.
But Glasgow is not the East End of London, and 2011 is not 2005.
The demographic significance of Muslims is far less in Glasgow than in London’s East End. In recent years there has been a steady drift by Muslims away from Labour and towards the SNP (i.e. the anti-New-Labour Muslim vote has already been ‘captured’ by the SNP). And eight years have passed since the invasion of Iraq, largely knocking it off the political agenda.
The Muslim-communalist element which had been such a feature of Galloway’s election campaigning in the East End of London was therefore largely absent from this election campaign (although his pitch for the Celtic vote functioned roughly as a kind of Glaswegian equivalent of his East End communalism).
But Galloway did employ his ‘anti-Zionist’ and ‘anti-imperialist’ credentials to try to drum up support support among Muslim voters. As one Glasgow newspaper reported on a meeting in Glasgow’s Central Mosque which Galloway spoke at in January:
“He said to the Sunday evening audience of around 700 people: ‘Talk is vulgar and cheap. I won’t talk about what I’ve done – that would take too long. But Palestine has been in my heart for 35 years.’”
“In a forceful speech George told the attentive crowd of men and women: ‘Palestine is ALL the land between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea.’ He advocated that every Muslim business should make sure it is not selling any product and produce from Israeli sources.”
“’I couldn’t believe what I saw in Glasgow – a shop with a collection box for Palestine next to dates from Israel for sale!’”
“He said a boycott and stronger, global, political action would be needed to achieve what he had wished for – the illegal occupation of Palestine to be ended and Palestinians being able to return to their own land and live in peace with their neighbours.”
The SPS and the SWP sought to justify their collaboration with Galloway by arguing that he was standing on an anti-cuts platform, and that this would help mobilise opposition to public spending cuts. (The more extreme version of this argument, from the SPS, was that Galloway’s candidature was a step towards building an new mass workers party!)
Opposition to cuts was certainly a theme of some of Galloway’s speeches during the election campaign. His manifesto and election address also included a clear statement of opposition to the cuts and support for a no-cuts needs budget:
“Stop the cuts to jobs, services and pay. Stop the £100 million cuts in Glasgow. Set a no-cuts needs budget. Scrap the council tax – replace it with a tax which means the rich pay more. End the crippling cuts at universities. Massively increase social housing provision.”
Does this mean that the SPS and the SWP were right to throw in their lot with Galloway, and that all votes cast for “The Respect Party George Galloway (Respect) – Coalition Against the Cuts” were “votes for a clear and principled anti-cuts platform”, as the SPS claims in its analysis of the election results?
The answer to this question is: No.
While Respect leader Galloway voiced opposition in Glasgow to all public spending cuts and advocated that councils set no-cuts budgets, Respect councillors in Tower Hamlets passively accepted £56 millions worth of cuts, declared their support for the mayor in proposing such a budget, and poured scorn on the idea of setting a needs budget.
So, what credibility could be attached to Galloway’s claim that he would “fight every cutback and closure” when his party colleagues and elected representatives in London were justifying cuts in the name of ‘lesser evilism’?
In any case, despite the fact that some of his election material had a focus on cuts in public spending, Galloway never really ran his campaign on that basis.
No-one will ever know for sure why the 7,000 people who voted for Galloway chose to do so. But it is certainly far more likely than not that the majority of them did not vote for him because of his avowed stance on fighting public spending cuts.
Votes cast for a candidate because he is a John-Smith-Labour-man, because he is bosom-buddies with various Tory and millionaire Celtic celebrities, and because he is someone who denies Israel’s right to exist and advocates a boycott to help bring about its demise cannot be counted as “votes for a clear and principled anti-cuts platform.”
Even less so can votes cast for Galloway because of his anti-abortion stance count as “votes for a clear and principled anti-cuts platform.”
In one of his “Daily Record” columns, published in mid-April when the election campaign was in full swing, Galloway wrote: “Margo McDonald is a towering figure in Holyrood. About the only thing I've disagreed with her on is her Right to Die bill. Because I believe in God and the sanctity of life, I can no more support self-killing than I can the death penalty or abortion.”
(When Galloway pulled the same stunt – voicing his personal opposition to a woman’s right to choose in the midst of an election campaign – in the 2005 general election, he was roundly denounced by the Socialist Party:
“George Galloway himself compounded Respect’s mistakes when he stated his personal views on the question of abortion, saying that: ‘I’m strongly against abortion. I believe life begins at conception.’ And that because he believed ‘in God, (he had) to believe that the collection of cells has a soul.’"
“… While this may have increased Respect’s vote amongst a section of Muslim voters, it will have also repelled many women that Respect should have been aiming to attract.”
In 2011, however, the SPS had nothing to say about Galloway’s repeat performance.)
And some degree of Galloway’s electoral support – as anyone who canvassed in Glasgow and came across Galloway supporters on the doorstep can confirm – was not even political. Galloway picked up a proportion of his votes simply because he was seen as a well-known ‘character’, who, in some undefined way, would ‘liven up’ the Scottish Parliament.
These too were anything but votes for a clear and principled anti-cuts platform.
But the decision by the SPS and SWP to back Galloway suffered from a more fundamental political flaw. And that political flaw was the fact that the entire campaign was built around Galloway himself.
Galloway brought with him into that election campaign his own personal political baggage: a history of friendly relations with Middle Eastern dictators, his current employment by Iran’s Press TV, nostalgia for Stalinism, a record of communalist electioneering, opposition to a woman’s right to choose, and contempt for the idea of workers’ representatives on a worker’s wage.
(The list is indicative rather than exhaustive.)
Whatever Galloway may have said about public spending cuts, whatever ‘openings’ his election campaign may have provided for the SPS or the SWP to raise the issues of the cuts to a wider audience – none of that even began to outweigh everything that was rotten in Galloway’s own politics.
And it was precisely because of the poisonous nature of those politics that no socialist should have given any support to Galloway’s bid to win a seat in Holyrood.
Campaigning for the Holyrood elections began in mid-March. During the seven weeks of campaigning, when the SPS and the SWP were urging the voters of Glasgow to back Galloway, around 600 people were killed in anti-government protests in Syria.
That’s the same George Galloway who visited Syria in 2005 and heaped praise on its autocratic ruler, Bashar al-Assad. According to Galloway, Syria was “lucky” to have him as its president, the country was “the fortress of the remaining dignity of the Arabs”, and its people were “a free people”.
Galloway heaps praise on an unelected dictator who goes on to drown in blood a popular uprising. And the response of the SPS and the SWP? They call for a vote for him!
Nothing could better sum up the sorry state of the SPS and the SWP.
