An Interview with George Galloway
Posted Under: Afghanistan,Anti-War,Class,Democracy,Elections,Green Party,Interviews,Iran,Iraq,Islamophobia,Israel/Palestine,Labour,Protest,Religion,Respect,Socialism,Terrorism,Tories,Venezuela
Walking through security at Portcullis House, the fabulously expensive building standing adjacent to the Houses of Parliament, is a bit like going through any airport anywhere in the world. But making your way through the spacious courtyard, past green trees and sun-dappled water features under the enormous sparkling glass dome towering overhead, you could be forgiven for thinking that this is still the seat of power of a great empire. The man I’m here to see, however, is one of the country’s most vocal critics of imperialism. George Galloway rises from his computer to shake my hand as I enter his office. “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” he says. I remind him we met once before when he came to destroy a pro-war American politician at the Cambridge Union many years ago. “You’re far too young to say that,” he laughs.
Born in 1954, Galloway joined the Labour Party at the tender age of thirteen and has been a Member of Parliament since 1987. His strident opposition to the Iraq war, describing Bush and Blair as wolves and calling on British troops to disobey orders, led to his expulsion from the party in 2003. “His comments were disgraceful and wrong,” Tony Blair said. But Galloway has never been one to lie down in the face of his enemies. The following year he formed a new left-wing anti-war party, Respect, and in a stunning victory overturned a Labour majority of over 10,000 to oust Blairite Oona King in Bethnal Green and Bow. Since then, however, Respect has suffered a disastrous split, whilst Galloway has found himself having to fend off a barrage of media criticism for his famous decision to appear on Celebrity Big Brother in 2006. With a general election just months away, I ask George Galloway what he thinks his chances are of holding his seat.
“Well I’m not standing again in Bethnal Green and Bow,” he tells me. “Because I promised last time that I’d stand only once and if the people elected me, the next MP for the constituency would be a Bengali.” It’s a straight fight between Labour and Respect in Bethnal Green and Bow, Galloway explains, and with both parties selecting a Bengali candidate, his promise looks set to be kept. “For the first time, the Bengali community will have a member in the House of Commons and that’s something I’m particularly proud of.” Galloway has instead chosen to stand in the neighbouring Tower Hamlets constituency of Poplar and Limehouse. “We have a fighting chance of winning both seats,” he says. Galloway also believes Respect has a chance of breaking through in Birmingham – where the party came a close second in 2005 – and of Salma Yaqoob becoming the first ever Muslim woman MP. “If we could pull those three off, I could retire a happy man four years later.” 
Respect was founded in 2004 as a coalition seeking to bring together the disparate strands of perhaps the greatest mass movement in modern political history. In practice, what emerged was an alliance between George Galloway, a few prominent anti-war activists and the Socialist Workers Party. In 2007, for absolutely no reason that seems at all relevant, the party split in half and the SWP walked out. I ask Galloway if the split has harmed Respect’s chances of achieving the breakthrough he hopes for. “I don’t know if it’s damaged our electability. Certainly not if we do win three seats. Even having one seat in 2005 was almost unprecedented. It had been 60 years since a left of Labour party last won a seat in Parliament in 1945. And in the same constituency by the way.” Galloway has to admit, however, that the split has definitely affected the party’s power outside of Parliament. “The departure of key activists and leaders has weakened us. About half the members left.” I ask Galloway how many members Respect still has. “I don’t have the exact figure,” he says. “It’s a small number of thousands.”
In an interview with The Third Estate in June, Mark Steel told me that the feud in Respect was about nothing that anyone can work out. It has often seemed to me that whilst the left sits on the steps of the amphitheatre shouting splitters at each other and arguing about what society should look like after the revolution, it is failing to speak to ordinary people about the everyday issues that affect their lives. I ask Galloway how he would explain the split to voters who care about social justice and jobs and housing, but have little interest in sectarian squabbling. “With respect to you, and I don’t mean at all to be offensive, I wouldn’t care to explain it to anyone,” Galloway says. “I think that the arcane disputatious nature of the far-left in Britain is of interest only to the cognoscente and the cognoscente already know the reasons.” Galloway pauses as his phone rings. Sorting out a quick bit of business in ten seconds, he apologises before continuing. “For the rest of the public, Respect was always me, Salma Yaqoob, Ken Loach and so on, and it still is. So we’d rather go forward than look back.”
Respect, of course, will not be standing in every constituency at the next general election. “There are 649 seats, that’s beyond any small party of the left. We will be standing in more seats than just those three, but they’re the target seats.” In the constituencies where Respect is not standing, Galloway explains that they will back other progressive candidates. “Brighton, for example, where Caroline Lucas is standing for the Green Party and has a real chance of winning. I expect that we would support her, we haven’t made final decisions on these constituencies yet. Similarly Peter Tatchell is standing in Oxford, we would probably support him. There may be one or two other places where we would support a left, anti-war candidate.” I ask Galloway – who has branded the three main parties as “Tweedle-Dee, Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee and a half” – whether he would call for a vote for Labour to keep the Conservatives out, and am genuinely surprised by the firebrand MP’s response. “We definitely want the Tories to be defeated, so for the most part that would mean that we ask people to vote Labour.” It was understandable that Respect backed Ken Livingstone against Boris Johnson in last year’s election for London Mayor. But would Respect really ask people to vote for an arch New Labourite who voted for the war? “Most of them are arch New Labourites who backed the war, so we wouldn’t be able to have that as a hard and fast rule. It’s unlikely that the worst of the war criminals would attract our support, but we wouldn’t be able to use who voted for the war entirely as a yardstick.”
It’s surprising to hear Galloway say this – not least because he is Vice President of Stop the War Coalition and perhaps the most outspoken critic of New Labour’s neo-conservative foreign policy in the country – but because in June he called for an immediate election, arguing that the current Parliament is “utterly bereft of credibility.” I ask him if it’s possible that a Labour defeat at the next election could help bring back the party he once called home. “No, I don’t,” he says. “In any case, it would be too high a price to pay. The Tories will be a catastrophe for ordinary people in Britain, for the working people, the poor, the old, the sick, the disabled. So I want to see them defeated.” Galloway has to concede, however, that that’s not very likely. “Looking at the opinion polls, reading the runes, it would appear that the Tories are on course for a big victory. And if that happens, then we’ll have to see what happens to the Labour Party that I spent almost forty years in.”
Labour’s abandonment of the left goes part of the way towards explaining the success of Respect. But it is Blair’s utter betrayal of British Muslims, incensed by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which explains why so many Labour voters in East London and Birmingham have turned to Respect. Not least because of Galloway’s standing amongst Muslims. When housemates on Celebrity Big Brother were asked to rank themselves in order of fame, he mused: “If we’re talking worldwide fame, I’m most famous. Virtually every Muslim in the world knows who I am.” Whether or not that’s true, George Galloway has done perhaps more than anyone else in the country to help politicise marginalised Muslim communities, introducing to them left-wing politics as an answer to racism, Islamophobia, imperialism and neo-conservatism. But there’s another, more reactionary, current amongst Muslim communities that seeks to present itself as the sole representative of Islamic identity. I ask Galloway if Respect could do more to challenge religious fundamentalism and social conservativism amongst the communities it represents? “No,” he says, “I think the first part of our agenda is big enough. The question of social conservatism within Muslim communities is a matter for them largely.”
It’s a contentious point, and one that many on the liberal left will disagree with, but Galloway has never been afraid of courting controversy. In 1994, he flew to Iraq to meet Saddam Hussein in an effort to prevent war and end the sanctions which were bringing further immiseration to the Iraqi people, saluting their courage, their strength and their indefatigability. More recently he has spoken out in support of Ahmedinejad in Iran following the disputed elections, attacking the protesters as class enemies and drawing a comparison with opposition to Chavez’s reforms in Venezuela. But despite the similarity in their anti-imperialist rhetoric, is it really fair to compare the ultra-conservative, fundamentalist Ahmedinejad with the democratic socialist Chavez? “I’m not sure that Chavez would describe himself as a democratic socialist,” Galloway says. “But I do think the comparisons between them are stark. Not just in their international rhetoric, though that is a very significant thing for me, but in terms of their social base. The social base of Ahmedinejad is the poor masses; the enemies of Ahmedinejad are the English speaking, highly-educated, well-off elite. I’ve been several times to Venezuela, and that’s exactly the polarisation that exists there.”
Galloway concedes that Ahmedinejad is not a socialist, whilst Chavez is. But both, he argues, are populists. “I do think you can measure a man by his enemies, and both have the same enemies. My main interest in Iran is that is should remain an independent country and not a puppet of the West like virtually all of the Muslim countries already are, and to that extent I’m glad that Ahmedinejad won over Moussavi who, whether he liked it or not, was riding a wave of people who wished to see the return of the Pahlavi dynasty and who wished to see Iran as an outcrop of the United States. And I’m sure that he did win.”
It’s an uncomfortable prospect, that the left must lend its tacit support to tyrants opposed to Western imperialism, and even though Galloway has described Ahmadinejad’s denial of the Holocaust as “a disgrace”, I ask him, if the enemy of my enemy must always be my friend? “No,” he says. “That’s why I could never line up behind the dictatorship in Burma. It’s anti-American, but I could never say that that enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
Nevertheless, Galloway tells me that Ahmedinejad is the president of an important country and we’ll just have to accept it. “Iran is much more important than the sort of knuckle-dragging ignoramuses in the British media have realised. Its geo-political position is strategically significant, it has a very young population, it has an ocean of oil and gas and soon will have a nuclear power industry, famously as we know.” It is for these reasons that Galloway argues Iran must be treated with more respect. “Ahmedinejad is the president, that’s why he was speaking at the United Nations a fortnight ago, there’s no point in second guessing other people’s choice of their leaders. I believe strongly that every people have the right to choose their own leaders and not have them chosen by their adversaries.”
It’s a position to which Galloway has remained consistent throughout his opposition to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But with violence surging in Afghanistan, what is the answer to the country’s problems now? “The opposite of what we’re currently doing,” he says. “The war is doomed, it cannot be won. No one has successfully occupied Afghanistan, not even Alexander the Great, and Bob Ainsworth definitely isn’t Alexander the Great. No matter how many soldiers they pour in there, they’ll never pour as many in as the former Soviet Union did. That occupation failed as this one is bound to.” Galloway believes that a negotiated withdrawal is inevitable. “It’s better that that starts now rather than later. Many more people will be alive, the radicalisation of the Muslim world, which is a real danger, will be lessened, we’ll be able to spend the money we’re burning in Afghanistan on our own people at home, and we’ll begin to defuse the tensions that exist in our own country between Muslims and non-Muslims.”
But withdrawal brings with it its own dangers, not least the possibility of the Taliban returning to power. I ask Galloway what he thinks will happen to Afghanistan? “The first thing I need to say, and it’s a contentious point, is that it’s none of our business what happens. British people, after several hundred years of empire, have become used to the idea that we have some right, maybe even some duty, to determine what happens in other people’s countries. I never believed that and I certainly don’t believe it now when we’re an almost bankrupt set of islands off the coast of mainland Europe. The days when the building you’re currently in ruled a quarter of all the world’s population are gone. Hallelujah!”
That’s not to say that Galloway is unconcerned with the future of Afghanistan. “I have interests in that country as a British citizen and they are this: that it must not be a base for those who wish to harm me, us, our country and our legitimate interests.” However, he believes that it is important to separate the pan-Islamist al Qaeda from “Johnny Afghan who just wants foreigners out of his country.” These, he argues, were never the same thing. “Insofar as there’s an al Qaeda presence in Afghanistan, it was we who sent it there, paid for it, armed it, glorified it, paraded it at the Tory conference and at Ronald Reagan’s Republican national convention, called them Mujahedeen and all that you know. To punish the Afghans for al Qaeda when we sent it there, is double jeopardy.” Instead Galloway wants to see a negotiated outcome with the Afghan forces to ensure that the country is not used as a base to harm Britain and its legitimate interests. “I can’t guarantee that Afghanistan will be a lovely place if the foreign armies withdraw, but I can guarantee it will never be a lovely place if they don’t.”
There are many far-from-lovely places in the world that Galloway is concerned about, but perhaps none more so than Palestine. He recently returned from a convoy to break the Israeli siege of Gaza, the occupied territory which would form part of any future Palestinian state. But, I ask him, is a two-state solution really the best way to achieve justice for the Palestinian people? “I’m pleased that Hamas and Fatah have signed a unity agreement,” he says. “I hope it works. The division within the Palestinian ranks has been catastrophic for them and for those of us who support them from the outside, as I have been doing now for almost 35 years of my life. As to what the final outcome is, this is really a matter for them.” Galloway says that if the Palestinians decide on a two-state solution then he, as a supporter of their cause, must accept that. “My own personal view, however, is that Palestine is too small, the issue of the refugees too great, the topographic and demographic cleansing that has occurred has been too extensive. The building of the wall, the ethnic cleansing of East Jerusalem, the building of the settlements, which are really cities, have all been too extensive to make the separation of this small piece of land into two viable states realistic.”
Galloway is keen to point out that he does not support sectarian countries. “When Mandela was asked by the Boers at the end of Apartheid if they could have the Orange Free State as a white state, he said that he didn’t believe in white states or black states, only democratic states. One man, one woman, one vote, one government and everyone equal under the law. And if I believe that in South Africa, why should I change it for Palestine?” Instead he would like to see a democratic state, where everyone is equal, where all the existing inhabitants have the right to live, and all the people who were driven from the land have the right to return. “One state between the river and the sea is by far the best solution.”
In the meantime, Galloway believes that the convoys he is leading to Gaza to bring aid to the Palestinian people are crucial acts of defiance and solidarity. “I’m leading another one on the 6th of December to arrive on the 27th, which is the anniversary of the war. I think that these attempts to break the blockade are the most urgent priority for solidarity organisations around the world. We can march here, and protest here, and hold public meetings, but they make little difference.”
Somehow I didn’t expect George Galloway – the firebrand activist and unremitting radical who has always spoken his mind even when his opponents don’t like what’s on it – to say any different. His has always been one of the loudest voices for change and he has never lacked the courage of his convictions. I thank him for his time and make my way back through the courtyard and the green trees and sun-dappled water features under the enormous sparkling glass dome: the seat of power of an almost bankrupt set of islands off the coast of mainland Europe. On my way home, I pass Brian Haw, whose protest, like Galloway’s, will continue unabated till the people in power take notice.
http://www.georgegalloway.com/
Reader Comments
The interview is a great read – congrats Salman – but Galloway doesn’t convince me any more than he has ever done.
He still portrays himself as hard left but his voting record as a Labour MP was often far from that and the views he continues to espouse on women’s right to choose, on immigration controls and on faith schools, for example, are not those I would associate at all with the Left.
His comments about Burma notwithstanding, he still seeks to justify support for other tyrannical, anti-socialist, leaders who happen to be at odds with American plans – as if merely being at odds with America defines them as progressive. It doesn’t.
While condemning colonialist attitudes he himself seems to see no internal dynamics and locates no political agency within Afghan society or Iranian society – just responses to Western imperialism.
In contrast to GG though, many anti-imperialist leftists around the world showed true international solidarity with democracy protesters within Iran recently. Maybe you should have asked GG whether he supports trade union solidarity and what he thought of Ahmadinejad arresting and locking up trade unionists who protested on May Day in Iran this year. (This also gives the lie to his stereotypical view that all Ahmadinejad’s supporters are the poor and the oppositionists are all the bourgeoisie)
He avoids the question on challenging social conservatives/fundamentalists within Muslim communities in Britain. No wonder – with the support of arch reactionary Yvonne Ridlley, GG has led Respect to seek support from precisely these elements on a communalist basis rather than orienting towards the more secular, more progressive elements of these communities on their bread and butter daily issues.
I have much more time for Salma Yacoob, who seems to have her feet on the ground, doesn’t require a media circus around every initiative she takes, and can challenge imperialist politics without any sycophancy towards other countries’ tyrants. I hope she defeat’s New Labour on a principled basis and wins the Birmingham seat for Respect.
For your information, it was Galloway who walked out of the original RESPECT coalition, not the SWP. But, for technical legal reasons, Galloway got the name for electoral purposes.
As to why he did this, no one knows. Certainly not those of us who got left behind. All we can hope is that he responds to the calls for unity coming from others on the left. Rumour has it that his attitude to these are positive. Let’s hope so. The hour is getting late.
JGW, since the split in Respect, I have joined neither of the two groupings which emerged, and the last thing I want to do is spark up a sectarian squabble when there are much more important issues to discuss. That’s for other blogs. But, is it not true that the whole spat began because of John Rees’s objection to the appointment of Matt Wrack (an SWP member himself) to the position of National Organiser? I don’t want to start bashing the SWP, I’ve little time for that sort of behaviour, but I think it is fair to say, quite objectively, that the party has a history of attempting to monopolise the coalitions it enters. As Mark Steel told me in June, “The Socialist Workers Party caused that feud. They’ve admitted as much now. In their own words, they ‘went nuclear’. They justified it as a Left-Right split. But once you end up categorising Ken Loach as a witch hunter then you’ve gone a bit haywire haven’t you?”
“This was a wonderful interview”
and I find it inspiring that George Galloway can say what he does.
“That’s why I could never line up behind the dictatorship in Burma.
It’s anti-American, but I could never say that that enemy of my enemy
is my friends”.
All say is thank goodness that the SWP went there own way to find that
revolution they are searching for.
As far as I am aware there was a parting or the waves and the Respect
Party that stayed to attempt to be the real change that is needed is the
one that the working class sees as the one that represents them.
Show me a SWP member that really is working class? and one that does
not look down its nose at the people they say they represent .
Please I apologise to the odd few who really are there for the right reasons.
I remember a time when They gave a damming attack on Carol Vincent
long before the Big Brother thing and when certain members found out
she was going in the BB House they were thinking up ways of disassociating
her from them by trying to find things against her.
Also there was the time when another carol a activist Respect member
wrote an open letter to the SWP on the socialist unity website she was
attacked from every direction ever to the point of being told she never
penned the letter I mean how could she attempt to write a letter being
working class.
This is why Galloway is such a good spokesperson for the Respect party
because he treats each person he meets with the same gift of making them
feel he knows where they are coming from I have met him on a few
occasions and each time he remembered my name and spent the time to
chat he has that special quality of making you feel worthwhile regardless
of your background.
This is a far cry from the way the SWP acted and still continue to act in
there sectarian way
(This I know this for a fact)
It goes shows they only consider themselves as the only party that represents
the Leftand anyone else who does not fill there agenda is not a leftie. Mu mm?
I think there are some excellent activists in the SWP, and some extremely good thinkers, not least one of the members of The Third Estate. Galloway himself recognised that when he said “the departure of key activists has weakened us.” I’m not an expert on internal leftie squabbles. I tend to ignore them as much as I can. But I do think a fair few of the problems in Respect stemmed from the approach of the SWP leadership, treating the coalition as a vehicle for the party more than a genuine partnership. If more left groups had got on board, it might have been less of an issue. But I think a lot of people were very wary after what happened with the Socialist Alliance.
The split certainly did not occur because of John Rees’s objections to anyone. The split was, I think, a puzzle to all concerned. We in the SWP now generally think we handled the affair badly, mainly through inexperience. After all, we hadn’t been in this situation before. I get the impression that numbers of those on the other wing of the split feel the same about their own roles.
I don’t think there’s much point in going over the details of the split, because they’re complex, not very coherent and probably, if you eventually managed to list them, you’d find they were coherent either. This would only add fuel to sectarian rantings such as the one by Bonnie above – hardly a recipe for left unity!
The main issue, it seems to me, is how to move ahead in such a way as to make unity look credible. The Respect split was not a two=way split but a three-way one, the majority of members, like Salman, going into neither of the left-over groupings. I suspect most of these might be wary of a future organisation. That’s a major hurdle, but it’s one we’ve got to overcome.
This is going to be my only contribution to this thread, since I actually agree with George about bringing up the traumatic events of late 2007. But I don’t believe the split was over nothing. There were many tensions and problems in respect, and some quite specific conditions in wider politics that exacerbated them. A split was probably not inevitable, but it happened. Mark Steel is wrong, by the way, the SWP has never ‘admitted it went nuclear’, and his accounts of these events are generally very poor.
And Bonnie, I have never claimed to ‘represent’ anyone, much less look down my nose at them, and there are working class people in the SWP, thousands of them, and it is a shame that the split dynamic leads to such vitriol.
“One man, one woman, one vote, one government and everyone equal under the law.” That is democracy, neither left nor right dogma, with the populace given the right to choose. Personally, I think that is an ideal worth both defending and promoting. So far as the “islamic question” goes, this should be both the starting and finishing point of any such debate. See the Quilliam foundation for example.
Making friends with Saddam Hussein or the president of Iran neither defends or promotes such an ideal.
As for the infighting, fairly pointless.
Dan, I disagree with you and Galloway, I think it is important to analyse the mistakes of the past, without descending into aimless finger pointing, in order to build stronger co-operation in the future. The seeming inability of the left to unite over more than a few mass single-issue campaigns is testament to the necessity of explaining the split in Respect. What would you say were the wider political conditions that exacerbated the tensions within the party? Do you really feel it was justifiable as a left-right split?
Phil, I think ‘friendship with Saddam’ is buying too much into the right-wing tabloid analysis and an unfair characterisation of Galloway’s attempts to lift the sanctions and prevent war. On the issue of Ahmedinejad, I think Galloway has misjudged the situation and the quite genuine desire in Iran for democratic reform, civil liberties and human rights. That has to be the biggest issue.
Salman, If allegations of ‘friendship with Saddam’ looks like ‘buying too much into the right-wing tabloid analysis’, then GG could hardly have done more to encourage this analysis. His sycophantic relationship with Saddam, going back years was compounded by his close relationship with Saddam’s right hand man Tariq Aziz.
There were enough principled leftists/progressives who argued both against the Aemrican/British war on Iraq and against Saddam’s regime – a regime that came to power by butchering the Left.
While the initial Respect project was a welcome attempt to break out of the left sectarian ghetto it was a marriage of convenience with a good deal of opportunism on both sides of the equation. Having attended the initial Respect conference where some strange politicking went on, rejecting resolutions that would have established Respect on a more principled political platform (like demanding that its candidates only accept a workers wage if elected), I remember having a private conversation with a leading SWP member and friend and predicting that it would end in tears.
Nevertheless some good may come of it all in the future. For GG it’s a platform and a stepping stone and I don’t think he will hang around it too long after the next election. Respect will be healthier without his ego dominating it. And hopefully the SWP learnt that it has to go beyond seeing itself as the natural leaders of any broader left fronts and be willing to build more principled relationships with other groups it works with.
All of us red/green/anti-capitalist need each other and need to reflect honestly on the strengths and weaknesses of whatever groups/parties we are currently allied to, in building something more powerful together to challenge New Labour’s ever rightward drifrt and offer a genuine alternative.
BTW, Dan, I think you are wrong about Mark Steel who gave great service in many ways to the SWP over the years, tried to express his doubts and questions within the party, and was treated pretty shabbily by them. I would encourage people to read his book and form their own opinion on this.
I’ll comment on the split stuff later, but just on Mark Steel: I’m not disputing a) that he gave a lot to the party and b) that his doubts and questions were dealt with very badly. But based on what I read of the book he is not a good source on the specifics of the split. His accounts of what happened are shaky, and not how I remember them (IIRC he talks about meetings I was at that he wasn’t, and misrepresents what happened). His claim that the SWP has since admitted it ‘went nuclear’ is simply, demonstrably false.
Salman, this is a finely written piece, and you dealt with the issues very well. But I too remained unconvinced. Pn Iran, in particular, it is a disgrace. I just wrote why I thought so here:
http://brockley.blogspot.com/2009/10/galloway-and-tyrants.html
I agree with you on Iran, Bob. I believe Galloway, like Chavez, is ultimately a force for good, and I agree with many of their policies. But both, I think, are 100% wrong on their position on Iran and their support for Ahmedinejad. They’ve bought too strongly into the notion that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. It can be hard for left-wing anti-imperialist politicians to find allies on the world stage because they’re always running away from the pack. But I think there are limits, and this has to be one of them.
Salman, the wide-eyed sentimentalism that characterizes your attitude towards Galloway in this interview is alarming. I know the left wing, in its desperate search for a true post-Soviet identity, whores itself out to anyone willing to provide it with some sound and fury in its struggle against “imperialism”, but you people need to stop being so selective in your application of that term.
“British people, after several hundred years of empire, have become used to the idea that we have some right, maybe even some duty, to determine what happens in other people’s countries.”
And what the fuck have Syria and Iran been doing all these years? They are chronic exporters of instability, violence, and terrorism; they have assigned themselves the right to commit terrorist activities from Rushdie’s fatwa to the 1994 AMIA bombing in Argentina to the 1983 bombing of the US Marine barracks in Beirut to illegally starting the 2006 war with Israel. What does supporting Islamic terrorist organizations like Hezbollah and ‘hereditary republics’ like Syria have to do with advancing the true cause of socialism?
Resorting to that vapid journalistic trope – ‘you may not always like what he has to say, but everyone agrees he’s a really opinionated and important guy, you can’t ignore him!’ – belies the fact that Galloway shows a remarkably consistent pattern in his opinions; namely, he positions himself firmly along the Syria-Iran-Venezuela axis*. Why do you assume that a politician who is aligned with your perspective is less politically and strategically minded than your nemeses? Galloway is not a radical, he’s a profound conservative. What he stands for ultimately is the continuation of certain despotic and violent regimes and organisations because they happen to serve his own interests. If he were a true radical he would stand up against the betrayal of the poor EVERYWHERE. He would attack Bashar al-Assad for destroying the Syrian economy, and Iran, a country whose ‘supreme leader’ responded to pressing questions of economic deprivation by saying “Have we come this far just to squabble over the price of watermelons?”
“Ahmedinejad is the president, that’s why he was speaking at the United Nations a fortnight ago, there’s no point in second guessing other people’s choice of their leaders.”
Why do you transcribe quotations like this without treating them critically? The Iranian people do NOT choose their leader: their choices are whittled down for them from a list of hundreds of candidates by a council which selects the most conservative, establishment candidates in order to perpetuate their hold over the country.
“Galloway is keen to point out that he does not support sectarian countries.”
What could be more sectarian than Iran, whose constitution is almost entirely grounded on Sharia law, which persecutes aggressively its non-Muslim citizens, which prides itself on being the spearhead of a new Islamic radicalism?
But they stand up to America! So who cares if they betray their own citizens? Who gives a shit about the plight of those living under 24 hour Ba’ath surveillance in Syria, about those Bahai’s harassed and beaten and executed in Iran, about, indeed, the communists executed in their thousands in the aftermath of the 79 revolution? As long as these countries continue to exhibit the most superficial anti-Israeli and anti-American tendencies the Left will continue to ignore these realities.
* http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1030177/posts
Mardean, I actually broadly agree with you. But I don’t know how you could have read that interview and come to the conclusion it was uncritical of Galloway’s positions. I can transcribe his words because they are his words. My place as interviewer is not to shit on everything he says when he’s not here to defend himself. The critical element is not in how the answers are reported, but what questions are asked in the first place. And indeed what questions are not asked. If this interview were really as obsequious as you say, I would have done exactly what the BBC Radio 1 interviewer did with those BNP members. I would have asked nothing challenging and I would have glossed over all the contentious points. I would certainly have ignored Iran entirely and I would only have asked him questions that made him shine. Instead, I made him raise contentious points so they could be debated. The fact that this is one critical area where I think Galloway is wrong is the very reason I got him to talk about it. And when he did talk about it, I’ve duly reported it and discussed reasons why those answers would not sit comfortably with the likes of you. But you have to understand the difference between an interview and a slanging match. I didn’t go into his office to beat the crap out of his opinions, I went in there to get information out of him that could be discussed and debated as we are doing now. So don’t give me any of that wide-eyed sentimentalism crap.
An interview is either a straightforward Q&A transcription or an article which couches the interview within a larger commentary/analysis. You’ve chosen to go down the latter route, except that instead of a critical treatment of his comments, you’ve provided a few little paeans to him – “the firebrand activist and unremitting radical”, which very definitely qualifies as “wide-eyed sentimentalism”, “George Galloway has done perhaps more than anyone else in the country to help politicise marginalised Muslim communities” – and completely sidestepped things like the outrageous comments on Iran. Where exactly are the ‘abundantly clear’ shows of dissent? After the quotation beginning “Ahmadeenijad is the president…” I see no commentary from you. Does this then mean you agree with his assessment of Iranian democracy?
I don’t see how it’s a breach of journalistic ethics to accurately report what Galloway had to say and then to comment on it. What is a breach of journalistic ethics is providing the pretence of objectivity while saying things like “Galloway is keen to point out that he does not support sectarian countries” as opposed to “Galloway claims that he does not support sectarian countries” or “Galloway showed a particular interest in attempting to dispel his association with sectarianism”.
Mardean, I had to rush off as I was posting the last comment because my pizza was burning. I’ve updated it now and it addresses most of the points you’ve just made.
I completely agree with everything Mardeen says about Galloway, but disagree with what s/he says about the interview. I think that Salman was perhaps excessively respectful in places – but you don’t persuade someone to do an interview for your blog, and then use the opportunity to slag them off. And I think the article might have been a little clearer that the weight of evidence shows Galloway to be utterly wrong about the will of the Iranian people. But on the whole, I think the tone is right. Galloway does a good job of indicting himself with his own words.
If I can comment on the Respect debate earlier in this thread, my view is: a plague on both their houses. The Galloway half was obviously a personal vehicle for the ambitions and egos of a handful of minor celebs, and that is clear from George’s words: ““For the rest of the public, Respect was always me, Salma Yaqoob, Ken Loach and so on, and it still is. So we’d rather go forward than look back.”” The other half, the SWP, are utterly undemocratic and do not speak to the day to day issues that concern the electorates in East London and more than George does. If uniting the two Respects again is what left unity looks like, than I don’t want anything to do with it.
George Galloway sums up the very essence of champagne socialism and faux-liberalism, a man who keenly supports the needs of the working classes though he has no real idea or experience of their lives. After many years as an MP in Scotland he sensed it was time to jump on the Palestine/Iraq/Islam bandwagon and head down to Bethnal Green and Bow where he prompty became an MP. What’s he achieved in that time? Not much. His voting record stands at a shocking 8% and he has only spoken in four debates in the past year. Apparently his good friends in Iran have finally made him abandon democratic thinking for once and for all.
Thomas, he left school at 16 to work in a Michelin tyre factory, has been supporting the Palestinian cause since the 1970′s and was opposed to the first Gulf War fifteen years before becoming an MP for Bethnal Green and Bow. Whether you think he has been consistently wrong or consistently right, it would be hard to argue that he has not been consistent.
http://news.scotsman.com/georgegalloway/Galloway-puts-home-on-market.2821561.jp
Ahem.
Galloway says “I glorify the Hizbollah national resistance movement, and I glorify the leader of Hizbollah, Sheikh Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.” His appeasement of fascists goes beyond this and involves publicly defending the likes of Ahmadinejad, Saddam and presenting shows on PressTV.
If by ‘supporting Palestine’ you mean terrorist groups and ‘enemies of his enemy’ then fine.
Not to mention stirring up anti Semitism in his constituency, innit.
Thomas, my last post was intended only to correct your facts. I would hardly expect a Tory to see eye to eye with Galloway, but it is important to be clear that he has remained consistent to his position, rightly or wrongly. That’s not the mark of a champagne socialist.
He’s a dumb ****, a friend of dictators, a disgraceful MP, an abuser of democracy, and unfit to carry the name of “socialist”.
Whilst defending Muslims from harrassment and removing prejudice is a noble thing to do, one wonders why George Galloway wasn’t so keen on doing this back when he was an MP in Scotland.
The Eye’s Rotten Boroughs more than show what an absolute CS he is.
Salmam’s response @#21 is a fine example of true and epic pwnership
A few points, the Respect split was entirely predictable, put together a demagogue, some failed ex-student politicos and a range of political Islamists then you’ve got a lash-up, which works when everything is going swimmingly but can’t hold together when the internal contradictions of each groups’ politics show, as failure looms.
As for the Respect name, Team Galloway got it because the SWP didn’t trouble to read or understand basic election law, which holds that the Party’s nominating officer is the official that keeps control of the name, in this case, Linda Smith.
Whatever you think of Galloway (and frankly, I loath him), he is a skilled political operator and born publicist, whereas the SWP leaders are professional amateurs, out of their depth most of the time, which is why he ran rings around them.
Salman, these interviews are great but you need to find a way to make the text more readable – maybe put the bits where your interviewees speak in bold text, use more paragraphs, maybe write less context around the questions.
Thanks John. The Galloway interview was the longest of them, partly because he’s a very charismatic man and most of what he says is worth transcribing. Also because some of his positions are somewhat controversial and I felt it worth identifying where I agreed with him and where I disagreed.