AWL leaflet for SSP weekend school 8-9 October 2005

Submitted by AWL on 19 October, 2005 - 4:44

Has the Left Lost the Will to Live?

GALLOWAY ON THE SSP AND SSP POLICIES:

“Unlike the SSP MSPs, with their denunciations of ‘fat cats’ and their average worker’s wage, Galloway disdains the whole issue. He’s not interested in money, he says. At the same time, he’s not the frugal type. ‘As I told Tommy Sheridan once, I couldn’t live on three workers’ wages.’” (“Scotsman”, 19th May 2003.)

“Tommy is still fighting his corner in the SSP, but I fear he will have to accept that they have betrayed him and move on. … The idea that these unknown Trotskyite apparatchiks who have done him down are going to get the same kind of vote that they did when led by Sheridan seems to me inherently improbable. These people who have done him down are not fit to tie his shoelaces.” (“Mail on Sunday”, 5th December 2004.)

GALLOWAY ON DICTATORS:

“I thought the president (Iraq’s unelected president, Saddam Hussein) would appreciate knowing that even today, three years after the war, I still meet families who are calling their newborn sons Saddam. … Sir: I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability. And I want you to know that we are with you until victory, until victory, until Jerusalem.” (“Times”, 20th January 1994.)

“In poor third world countries like Pakistan politics is too important to be left to petty squabbling politicians. Pakistan is always on the brink of breaking apart into widely disparate components. Only the armed forces can really be counted on to hold such a country together. General Musharraf (organiser of Pakistan’s military coup) seems an upright sort to me and should be given a chance to put Pakistan’s house in order before managing to return to normal politics.” (“Mail on Sunday”, 17th July 1999.)

“We (Galloway and Syria’s unelected president Bashar al-Assad) covered the whole world in 60 minutes. I was very impressed by his sharpness, by his flexible mind. I was very impressed. … Yesterday we covered so many subjects. Syria is lucky to have Bashar al-Assad as her President.” (“Syria Times”, 7th August 2005.)

Galloway is a Stalinist who has described the collapse of the Soviet Union as “the saddest day” of his life. He is damned by his own words of admiration for “Third World” dictators (see above). His political activities have variously been funded to the tune of about a million pounds by the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and millionaire businessmen like Fawaz Zureikat. The “East” newspaper which he helped set up and staff was funded by successive Pakistani governments.

According to Galloway, Tariq Aziz, number two in the Iraqi Baath regime, is “viewed with high esteem worldwide by figures like the Pope in the Vatican and other international figures. … He is an eminent diplomatic and intellectual person.” (Al-Jazeera TV, 18th March 2005.) Galloway describes Aziz as a “dear, dear friend”, and fronts a petition (signed by various Holocaust-deniers) calling for the release of Tariq Aziz from prison.

For Galloway, the mass murderer Tariq Aziz is an eminent intellectual and a “dear, dear friend.” The SSP, on the other hand, is denounced for its “unknown Trotsykite apparatchiks” (i.e. its elected leadership) and its “worker’s MP on a workers wage” policy.

What does it say about the state of the Left when Galloway is seen as an ally? What does it say about the SSP when Galloway is invited to speak at “Socialism 2005”?

The refusal of sections of the Left, exemplified most clearly of all by the SWP, to condemn Galloway and to distance themselves from him is an expression of political, moral and intellectual collapse. That ‘Left’ defines itself primarily not by what it is for, but by what it is against. It defines itself not on the basis of class politics, but on the basis of a demagogic ‘anti-imperialism’.

It allies itself with Islamism in Britain; cheers on the Sunni sectarians, Baathists and jihadis in Iraq; opposes the right of Israeli Jews to national self-determination; lauds Castro’s one-party state in Cuba; and hails Galloway’s Muslim-communalist election campaign in the East End of London as a victory for the Left!!!

A Left which cannot define its own policies has lost the will to live. The SSP should be to the fore in re-asserting socialist values and class politics. Otherwise, it will end up as part of a ‘Left’ whose role in life is to fawn on Galloway. As Greg Palast, the American journalist and anti-war campaigner, put it on the occasion on Galloway’s recent American speaking tour:

“This is not about George Galloway, but about us. What’s Left? Are we about standing for the defenceless – or the cruel and senseless? It is not good enough for the Left to oppose Mr. Bush’s re-colonisation of Iraq. We needed to have actively supported Iraqis fighting to remove their Mesopatamian Stalin.”

“And now we’d better come up with something a little less nutty than … ‘unconditional support for the insurgency’ of berserker killers and fundamentalist madmen. If that’s the Left’s programme for Iraq, count me out.”

“We can’t define ourselves as the ‘anti-Bush’, blindly supporting those he opposes, and thereby letting the nitwit Napoleon in the White House pick our enemies for us. Nor can our revulsion for Bush’s horrors throw us into the arms of swamp-things like George Galloway.”

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