The government couldn’t move him. In the end only cancer could. A symbol of peace and freedom, an icon of the anti-war movement and a picture of stalwart self-sacrifice for the cause of right.

Regardless of what anyone on the left thought of his tactics, I don’t think anyone could argue that he gave anything less than all of himself to ideals so many of us share. For all of us who struggle to find time to give a Saturday afternoon to protest, Brian Haw, who spent ten years camped outside the seat of power of a bankrupt ex-empire still bent on playing policeman to the world showing them the visceral evidence in bloody still-frames of all they were doing wrong, should stand as an inspiration.

While the evangelical Christian beliefs of some turned them into neo-conservative warmongers, Haw’s told him to stand up for peace and human life.

He fought a good fight, he finished his course, he kept the faith.

Ok, false alarm, it’s not quite breaking news. People have known this for years. But I think, following today’s little outburst in The Independent, it’s worth reiterating. Julie Burchill is an idiot. Quite why a paper which is, by and large, aimed at intelligent, liberal minded progressives, chooses to print the journalistic equivalent of an explosive wet fart after a dodgy vindaloo from the mind (or lack thereof) of an idiotic Iraq war apologist who once declared Israel the only country she would “fucking die for”, is beyond me. So what brainless, sputum-laced drivel did she have to offer us today? Three short pieces, each wetter and fartier than the last. Thusly summarised, they go like this:

1) People who oppose the war in Afghanistan are Taliban appeasers and there’s absolutely no chance they could have any genuine moral or political objections to the war, like the deaths of Afghan civilians, or a principled opposition to imperialism. People who criticise the war without ever having fought in it are cowards, don’t deserve to have an opinion and should just shut up. Anti-war activists would be cheering Chamberlain if he were around today because it’s absolutely impossible that two completely different wars could be fought for two completely different reasons and that one might be slightly more defensible than the other. It’s much better to be an armchair warmonger than an armchair peacenik.

2) Julie belittles the plight of millions of Pakistanis whose lives have been ruined by the floods. She then admits she doesn’t know much about Islam (does she know much about anything?) before bringing up the fact that a Saudi billionaire was profligate enough so spend millions on a number plate as evidence that Muslims are probably hypocrites if they’re not sending aid to Pakistan. I’d suggest that Ms. Burchill is rather tenuously conflating two separate issues – one of extreme importance, the other of large irrelevance – because she’s running out of things to write about. This, I think, is evidenced by wet fart number three.

3) Naomi Campbell is pretty, but miserable. Kate Moss is pretty, clever and full of the joys of life. Well, Julie, if either of them had had their brain extracted and replaced by a monkey’s anus, they could have come up with a more interesting piece than this. You cretin.

A few highly representative (quite honestly) comments on Burchill’s article from the Independent’s website:

Tony: The Indy’s bosses could save themselves a few bob by just getting a random cabbie to rant incoherently about the problems of the day, and transcribing the results thereof. At least that might be entertaining.

Giordano Bruno: Islamophobia infiltrating the Independent! Funny how one can feel Burchill’s contempt if not hatred towards Islamic “umma”. Usual suspects like JB always come back with same rusty and dusty arguments. I’ve just wasted 5 minutes of my precious time.

Christopher: Being a columnist is just a little more than your IQ can manage. I suggest you switch to covering horse shows, which I expect you could do well.

Meles: Wow! Three items, all poorly-judged, offensive and ill-informed. I have learned to treat JB’s writing with… well, let’s call it scepticism… but this has to be an all time low.

Ian1: I was doing a spot of gardening this morning when I accidentally put my hand in a turd left in one of my borders by a neighbour’s cat. Unpleasant as that experience was, it pales into insignificance alongside the trauma associated with reading yet another ill-considered, poorly-constructed column by the worthless sack of crap that is Julie Burchill.

R. Broxted: Julie, couldn’t Lebedev afford Rod Liddle?

There’s an excellent piece by Andy Newman on Socialist Unity about why Afghanistan could prove to be a bigger defeat for America than Vietnam.

The key point is his identification of Iraq and Afghanistan as being part of the same conflict. It’s easy to forget about Iraq with the media’s eye so focussed on Afghanistan. Remember five years ago when Afghanistan was barely mentioned and violence in Iraq was in the news every day? Now the focus has shifted, it’s not hard to buy into the idea that Iraq has been an eventual success (if you can call over a million civillians dead a success) and Afghanistan is a failure. But part of the reason Afghanistan is failing now is because of the Iraq war. Any successes in the latter have to be weighed against the failings in the former.

No one should cheer the return of the Taliban in Afghanistan. But these failures are a necessary lesson for America. The Afghan insurgents may not be about to topple their second superpower. But they may have given the US pause for thought about its role in the world. And America has long been due a good period of reflection.

Michael Moore says absolutely everything that needs to be said on Obama’s decision to send 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan.

Hat tip here goes to Leon on Pickled Politics. Sunny, writing on the same website, makes some good points, but I continue to believe his support for the war and for the additional troops is misguided. Time will tell which of us is right (and I sincerely hope he is), but I have an eight year head start.

Interview by Dan Swain and Lorna Finlayson

"Revolution isn't rational anymore, but a breath of fresh air would be"

Ted Honderich is Grote Professor Emeritus of Mind and Logic at University College London. Since 9/11 he has written several books on the subject of terrorism and war, most recently Humanity, Terrorism, Terrorist War, and has become a vocal advocate of the right of the Palestinians to a state, and to the means of achieving that state. We interviewed Honderich following his paper at Cambridge University’s Moral Sciences Club – their anachronistically named answer to a departmental seminar – where he laid out his views on Zionism, neo-Zionism, Gaza, Iraq and Afghanistan, arguing that support for the Palestinians includes acknowledging their right to terrorism. The discussion was mostly cordial, though it was clear that most of the philosophers and students present were sceptical.

Honderich is, in fact, very critical of the institution of academic philosophy and its role in politics: “The contribution of the overt and the more common covert conservative political philosophy is the same. It is to pretend that the political tradition of conservatism, as in the case of New Labour as much as the Conservative Party past and present, does actually have an arguable principle of what is right and wrong to support the self-interest of an economic and social class. In this, the tradition of conservatism in general is different from the tradition of the Left and of old Labour. Liberal political philosophy, as in the case of John Rawls, escapes the viciousness of conservatism, but lacks resolution in thought, feeling and action, and seemingly always will.” His interests haven’t always been in this area – and he continues to work, for example, on the philosophy of consciousness – but he sees a connection between a wider commitment to philosophy and his recent focus on politics: “These interests arose more or less accidentally, but maybe less accidentally than I have supposed. I take it that all decent philosophy is a concentration on — not sole ownership of — the logic of ordinary intelligence. That comes down to clarity, usually in the form of analysis, and consistency and validity, and completeness. What goes with that has to be generality, and truth as against convention. Any philosopher aspires or pretends to aspire to that logic, whatever his or her area.”

“I wouldn’t come now.”

The observation that New Labour is now firmly within the tradition of conservatism is clearly a saddening one for him. He calls the old Labour party “the great party of humanity and civilization in British history”, and the reason he came to Britain from Canada: “I wouldn’t come now.” But what about the hope over the Atlantic, Obama? “Chomsky, the great reality-judge of our age, is not hopeful. I myself think we can still expect more from Obama than from anybody else you could have dreamed would be president. Certainly I haven’t given up. The plain fact is that he is the president of the most powerful of the hierarchic democracies. Its national strength, it seems, is or contributes greatly to the power of the economic and social classes near and at the top. Surely it is also clear that as an astute and morally decent politician, so appallingly superior to our criminals against humanity Blair and Brown, he is judging what is possible and going forward in that rationality.”

For Honderich the modern democracies presided over by Obama and Brown are profoundly hierarchic. We ask what he sees as the alternative: “The alternative is real or realer democracy, of course, where not only two heads are better than one and more heads better than two, but the heads are equally free in expressing their judgements and wants. The question brings back to mind Colonel Rainborough’s moral truth in the Putney Debates in the time of the English civil war. ‘Really I think that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live as the greatest he….’ Are there tanks in those army barracks somewhere around Pimlico? I think some successor to Rainborough should think on him, and on our society, where not only the poorest but at least the six bottom economic deciles are being cheated of fuller lives. He should arrange for his tank to break down in Parliament Square for a while, only long enough for our political class and the telly to become aware of it, and then take himself back to the barracks, and also take his punishment for his civil and other disobedience. Revolution isn’t rational anymore, but a breath of fresh air would be. It might have a little effect on our coming election . Maybe remind some of our low politicians that the response to a question isn’t an answer, that selling isn’t their proper line of life, that the House of Commons isn’t the Student Union in Oxford, and that our elections shouldn’t be Afghanistan with drapery.”

Turning to the questions of terrorism. Words like terrorism, radicalism and extremism have developed a strange currency in recent years. As we are learning, one can be a domestic extremist merely for attending a demonstration or going to the wrong meeting. Honderich is struck by the speed of this development: “It has surprised me that transparent terminological means, such as persuasive or loaded definitions, or indeed the pretence of actual definition, have been so successful in the forming and manipulating of public feeling and opinion. This has something to do, presumably, with a new and larger role of the media in society. The effect is more pervasive than supposed, far wider than the effect of such organs as The Daily Mail.”

Precision in terminological definitions is crucial here. ‘Zionism’, defined as the project of establishing a Jewish state in 1948 and within those borders, is a project Honderich defends. It was justified in part by the horrors of the holocaust, he says, and the reality of that state now requires the defence of it. He is an implacable enemy of what he calls ‘Neo-Zionism’ – “the taking from the Palestinians of at least their liberty in the last 5th of their homeland”, and is critical also of ‘semitism’ – “the prejudice in favour of Jewish people right or wrong.” Whilst justifying the creation of the Israel, and therefore a commitment to what is commonly called a two-state solution, is a common (though far from universal) opinion amongst the Palestine solidarity movement, one of his reasons for it seems odd. In Humanity, Terrorism, Terrorist War… he attaches considerable significance to the question of whether the Palestinians were ‘fully a people’ in 1948, arguing that they were, but that it was reasonable to believe otherwise on the basis of the best information available at the time. Why is this so important? “I have the feeling that you have hit on the weakest point in that book, as some others have. But I still stick to it. The Principle of Humanity, in short, is that we should take rational steps to get and keep people out of bad lives — with bad lives defined in terms of deprivation of the great human goods, these being length of conscious life, bodily well-being, freedom and power, respect and self-respect, the goods of relationship, and the goods of culture. A people not organized into a state and society, I take it, not well-defined as a group, are not open to a kind of insult, a kind of disrespect. They are also less likely to have already achieved the other great goods. That is a beginning of a reply.”

"As for the pro-Palestinian student occupations, I am absolutely for them"

Over the past few years the question of Palestine has played a controversial role in universities. There is anger over the government’s requests for lecturers to spy on students, the way in which Islamic societies are being monitored and clamped down on, and controversy over strategies for delivering solidarity. There has been much concern over the desire of the government to channel funding towards such ‘key issues’, with terrorism being a primary one. Honderich puts this in perspective: “In a society as morally stupid as ours, nearly always a stupidity owed to ignorance and the success of keeping people in that ignorance, I am tempted to have the feeling that research funding should not be at the forefront of our concern. The cosmeticism of New Labour comes higher. So does not forgetting about the estate agents and the private schools along with the bankers. So does Noam Chomsky not having a Nobel Prize.” What about two of the most controversial solidarity strategies on campuses? “I have not myself joined the academic boycott of Israel, which so to speak has left me with a bad conscience as well as a good one. The main difficulty, as always, is a factual one. Same as with terrorism. Will a boycott serve the end of the Principle of Humanity and more particularly the cause of the Palestinians? There are arguments both ways, but maybe I am moving towards the boycott. As for the pro-Palestinian student occupations, I am absolutely for them. They don’t come to much, incidentally, against the neo-Zionist and semitic activities in the universities.”

“I suspect my view is easily the majority view in the world, however quiet people are about expressing it”

This year we mourned the death of Marek Edelman, the heroic resistance leader of the Warsaw Ghetto. The widespread respect for him surely shows that the notion of legitimate armed resistance is something people are, at least historically, happy to assent to. Why, then has Honderich’s position made him such a controversial figure? “I wonder if the explanation has partly to do with a perception of philosophy, not only a popular one. It is a perception, even in this degraded society, that carries with it respect, even in the midst of our monstrous plague of the celebrities. That a member of a respected profession and line of life, not gone over entirely to journalism, holds particular views, gets him or her attention. The explanation also has to do, of course, with the convention that we leave such judgements to governments, and in particular our hierarchic democracies. I suspect my view, on Zionism and neo-Zionism and Palestinian resistance to or self-defence against neo-Zionism, is in fact easily the majority view in the world, however quiet people are about it, however reluctant to express it.”

The Moral Sciences Club meets Tuesdays during term time in St. John’s College Cambridge.

Humanity, Terrorism, Terrorist War is published by Continuum. Ted Honderich’s personal website is here.

The Government has a problem. It is obsessed with integration, yet seeks to deligitimise one of the greatest examples of genuine intregration of recent  decades. I was reminded of this fact when I came across the above photo  from the recent Troops Out demonstration in London. This picture shows a number of things, the least important of which is that I’m getting a bit old for this sort of thing. It shows students from Essex University, of a range of ages and from diverse backgrounds, united in  their rage at what is happening in Afghanistan. The reality is we would not have known each other had we not been collectively involved in anti-war campaigning. I would not have discovered that one of the people pictured is an incredible political organiser, who half-filled a coach to the demonstration on his own. The fact is that over the past 7 years the anti-war movement has given me the opportunity for genuine engagement with the muslim community.

But the Government wants to suggest that what is happening here is the very opposite of integration. Rather, me and the other white people in the photo are ‘domestic extremists’, and the others are ‘radicalised’. For them the anger against injustice which unites us is something to mistrust. Obsession with defending their wars has meant Labour has sought to delegitimise the movements that have brought young Muslims and non-Muslims closest together. This is very sad.

In an exclusive interview with The Third Estate, Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg sets out his vision for change

Nick Clegg

It can’t be easy, being the leader of Britain’s third major political party. Caught between a disintegrating New Labour and a resurgent Conservative Party waiting for its coronation, convincing the British public that what you have to say can make a difference to their lives is an uphill struggle from the start. Nick Clegg, however, is a man of firsts. Elected to the European Parliament in 1999, he became the first ever Liberal Democrat parliamentarian in the East Midlands, and the first Liberal since 1931. Ten years later, MP for Sheffield Hallam and Lib Dem leader, Clegg has his eyes on Gordon Brown’s job. “Let me tell you why I want to be prime minister. It’s because I want to change our country for good,” he said at last month’s party conference as he attempted to position the Liberal Democrats to oust Labour as the dominant force in progressive politics for the first time in almost a century. On the back of the conference, as Parliament returns from recess and we prepare to enter a general election year, I quizzed Clegg on some of the big questions facing his party and whether or not his policies in the current economic climate can truly be considered progressive.

Grabbing headlines when you’re a bronze medallist often means you have to shout louder than the rest. And it was Nick Clegg’s call for “savage cuts” last month which became the buzzword for the conference season. I ask him how it is possible to reconcile these kinds of cuts in public spending with the assertion that the Lib Dems are poised to replace Labour as the true progressive force in British politics. Surely retrenchment has always been the antithesis of social justice? “Politics is about priorities,” he says. “Simply spending money doesn’t make you progressive; it’s about what you spend it on. This government has radically enlarged the amount of money spent by the state, but the gap between rich and poor has grown. There’s nothing very progressive about a country in which a child born in the poorest area of Sheffield will die a full fourteen years earlier than one born down the road in the wealthiest part. So it is right to look at the money government spends and work out if we can use more of it to help those who need more support.”

One area in which the Lib Dems certainly have picked up the ball dropped a long time ago by Labour is in their opposition to nuclear weapons. In his youth, Tony Blair was an active member of CND. In his middle age, he presided over the multi-billion pound decision to renew Britain’s nuclear weapons programme. “What’s progressive about renewing Trident – spending billions on a system that doesn’t protect the country from the modern threats we face?” Clegg argues. “We could put that money into helping people on the lowest incomes.”

But are the Liberal Democrats really willing to commit the money necessary to help people on the lowest incomes? One of the party’s most popular policies amongst students of all backgrounds has been its opposition to tuition fees. “I believe tuition fees are wrong, I believe they need to be abolished,” Nick Clegg told the party conference, shortly before saying that they had to be realistic about whether doing so would be affordable given the country’s current debt and fuelling speculation that the Lib Dems were planning to axe one of their core progressive policies. Given that improved access to education is vital for long-term economic growth, I ask Clegg, should we really be backing away from doing the right thing just because it’s easier now?

“None of these choices are easy, at any time,” he says. “But we’ve got to be straight with people about what can be afforded right now. I’ve set out a radical programme that would make our society fairer, and give every child – no matter their background – the best chances in life. We know that at the moment a poor, bright child will be overtaken by a better off, less intelligent child by the time they’re seven years old. So we have to get in there right at the beginning, with smaller class sizes for 5-7 year olds, and extra support for children from the poorest backgrounds. We would give schools more money for taking on children from poorer families and that big injection of cash would make sure everyone had the best start in life. Then more children from disadvantaged backgrounds would have the opportunity to go to university later on. And yes, I want to get rid of the tuition fees system too – it’s just a question of when.”

Meritocracy is not exactly Marxism, but it is an ideal to which most left-of-centre MPs believe we should aspire. Are the Lib Dems doing enough, however, to distinguish themselves from the other main parties? “I think we have distinguished ourselves very substantially by setting out the radical, progressive programme for change that I’ve been talking about,” Clegg says. I ask him why, then, the party is failing to capitalise on the deep dissatisfaction with the government. Labour suffered its worst defeat in almost a century at the recent European elections. But despite the wars, privatisations and crises, and despite the Lib Dems emerging from the expenses scandal as the cleanest party, why was it that they saw their share of the vote fall by 1.2 percent?

“Of course it would have been great to win more votes in the European Elections,” Clegg says. “But just look at the local elections which took place on the same day. We pushed Labour into a devastating third place, and we now control more big cities outside London than either of the other parties: Bristol, Sheffield, Hull, Leeds, Liverpool, Cambridge – they’re all Liberal Democrat cities, and I could name more. And in places like Bedford, where voters chose a new mayor just the other day, people are realising that Cameron isn’t offering real change at all. In an election where Labour came fifth, the Tories didn’t win – we beat them. In all these parts of the country we’re showing the way we treat power, dispersing it to the people, using it to cut crime, and regenerate areas that have wanted for attention for so long. People see the difference Liberal Democrats make in these places and they vote for us time and again.”

Smart, young, stylish, Oxbridge educated, leader of an opposition party, Clegg is keen to distinguish himself from Cameron as the voice of change in British politics. It was David Cameron who claimed that there was “barely a cigarette paper” between their two parties when he called for “one national movement that can bring real change” – broaching the idea of a Lib-Con coalition should his party fail to win a majority next year. Clegg was having none of it, however, describing the Conservative leader as a “con man” and attacking his hypocrisy on civil liberties. But how would a Liberal Democrat government under Nick Clegg reverse the alarming erosion of civil liberties and human rights that has taken place under New Labour?

“We’ve published a Freedom Bill, which shows how we’d repeal thirty years of Labour and Conservative authoritarian legislation,” Clegg says. “That Bill would restore the right to silence, which the Tories took away; it would bring back jury trials, which Labour have tried so hard and so often to curtail, and it would stop government storing DNA from people who’ve not been convicted of any crime. On day one, we’d scrap identity cards – along with the Government’s massive National Identity Register. It’s an enormous, expensive incursion on our civil liberties; a total inversion of the relationship between citizen and state, where we have to account for ourselves to the government, not the other way round.” Clegg clearly doesn’t think that a cigarette paper is all that separates his policies from Cameron’s. “The Conservatives’ commitment to this kind of reform is just paper thin. I don’t think anyone should take them seriously on the rights of the citizen while they retain their commitment to abolish the Human Rights Act.”

"The weekly pictures of soldiers being returned home to grieving families should give everyone pause for thought about the merit and the purpose of this conflict."

But are Lib Dem commitments on human rights and civil liberties sufficient to see them running against the pack of British politics? I remember marching against the war in Afghanistan in November 2001. Back then, only a handful of MPs opposed the invasion, and only 12% of the country was against it. Eight years later, with Afghanistan in a worse state than ever and British casualties on the rise, opposition to the ongoing conflict is not such a lonely position when it comes to voters, even though a consensus remains amongst Labour, the Conservatives and the Lib Dems on the need for a continued British presence in the country. The Lib Dems were widely praised for being the only major party to oppose the war in Iraq, but with the presence of foreign troops arguably exacerbating the instability of a country that has never in its history been successfully occupied, I ask Clegg if now is the time to take a principled stance against the war in Afghanistan too.

“We have taken and are taking a principled and practical approach to Afghanistan,” Clegg says. “The weekly pictures of soldiers being returned home to grieving families should give everyone pause for thought about the merit and the purpose of this conflict. But I want our troops to return when the time is right, with their heads held high, knowing they’ve made a real, long-term difference both to Afghanistan, and to Britain’s security.” Clegg’s approach, however, is not simply a military one. “The Government has a responsibility to our troops, now, to advance a political surge alongside the military surge; the Karzai Government clearly lacks the support of the Afghan people, and it is that among other things which is exacerbating instability. I’ve been calling on the Prime Minister for some time now to press for a Government of National Unity in Afghanistan, so that we can start to divert this conflict off the road of failure. Without that kind of reconciliation between the different interest groups in Afghanistan, we cannot hope to succeed.”

As a long-time opponent of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, it’s a position I can’t subscribe to, but Clegg’s appraisal of the situation is refreshingly honest for a politician sitting on one of Parliament’s front benches. And it is on the question of honesty in politics that I turn to finally, raising, in the spirit of the organisation itself, a question suggested to me by Guy Aitchison of the Power2010 campaign. At the height of the expenses crisis, Nick Clegg responded to David Cameron and Gordon Brown’s attempts to position themselves as democratic reformers by pointing out that the Lib Dems alone had consistently called for reform of a “rotten” Westminster system. Power2010 has received nearly 2000 submissions from members of the public beyond Westminster who also want democratic reform. But what is Clegg doing to mobilise people’s anger with the way we are governed beyond engaging in the very routines of Westminster village politics that puts them off in the first place?

“Well, it would be odd if we didn’t use the platform that Westminster gives Liberal Democrat MPs to make it clear where we stand on political reform,” Clegg says. “We’ve always favoured a much more open, transparent and responsive system of government. And whether it’s freedom of information or the way in which MPs get elected, we’ve always led the way in calling for change. The others just lag behind, and – as we’ve seen after 12 years with Labour – they see constitutional change as a sort of refuge from other political crises, running to talk about it when they’re in trouble and drifting back into their establishment ways the second they think they’re out of the woods.”

As a party that has always been held back by the first-past-the-post electoral system, it is, perhaps, natural that the Lib Dems alone should remain consistent to their message on democratic reform. “For us, changing the way politics is done is a central part of what we’re here to do,” Clegg says. “But you’re right: speaking up in Westminster isn’t enough. That’s one of the reasons I meet people every week in town and village halls around the country. People can come along and ask me, to my face, anything and everything they like; believe me, they do too! One of the great things about Power2010 is that it’s asking for your ideas, from people well beyond the bubble at Westminster. I’m really looking forward to reading what people come up with after November 30th. Politicians don’t know it all, and we have to ask people directly if we’re to know what they want.”

Wisest is he who knows he does not know, goes the old Socratic belief. But philosophers are not kings. Nick Clegg is the third most likely person to be Prime Minister next year in a country that is still a two-party state. Until we see the kind of far-reaching democratic reform that he touches upon, that will not change. And change is what it’s all about. All politicians are either gamekeepers or gardeners and Nick Clegg clearly wants to be seen as the latter. Whether he has done enough to convince a public hungry for politicians to be the change they want to see in the world, only time and an election will tell.

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/

“…how can you be so short-sighted to look never further than this week or next week, to have no impossible dream?”

- Che Guevara in Evita

September 11th. It’s a date that conjures up memories and few of them good. It was, after all, the historic day that Salvador Allende fell to the 1973 CIA backed coup that kicked off Pinochet’s dictatorship in Chile. Not to mention the little known event of 2001 that concluded the brief period beginning with the fall of the Berlin Wall in which many in the West could quite easily have deceived themselves into thinking that history had all but ended and that Pax Americana would relegate global conflicts to periphery schisms. Such fanciful thoughts in the post-9/11 world seem the stuff of naïve hopes and dreams. But there’s another day of note in this most infamous of months. September 21st is the UN’s annual day of global ceasefire and non-violence. And it all began with one man, one telephone and a few naïve hopes and dreams.

That man is British filmmaker Jeremy Gilley who, in 1999, began a campaign with a title as simple as its vision. The Peace One Day campaign sought to fix in the international calendar an annual day of ceasefire and non-violence on September 21st. One day in which the world would put down its weapons and, like the British and German soldiers kicking a football across no man’s land on Christmas Eve 1914, attempt to reach a common understanding.

Doing what comes naturally to a filmmaker, Gilley documented his journey from its humble beginnings amongst students and activists, though its peaks and pitfalls, its missteps and its forward steps to its emergence on the global stage. Recording his meetings with world leaders, politicians, religious authorities, activists, Nobel Peace Laureates and, dare I say, the odd celebrity here and there, he used his film to promote his cause amongst the world’s most influential people. And on September 7th 2001, when the 192 member states of the UN General Assembly unanimously adopted a resolution to establish September 21st as the official annual day of global ceasefire, it seemed Gilley had won his case.

Four days later, the twin towers fell and one month to the day after the resolution was passed, the bombing of Afghanistan began. It was a crushing blow to Gilley. Suddenly, the periphery schisms had become conflicts of the core and the possibility of peace appeared more elusive than ever before. History, it seemed, was far from over. But like history, the story of Gilley’s campaign, the story of peace on Earth, is one without an ending. For two years Peace One Day had campaigned tirelessly to establish one day of peace and that was the easy part. With the resolution passed and the world at war, the most monumental task still remained. To let the world know.

I first heard about Peace One Day when I watched Gilley’s film on September 21st 2004. And although it has always seemed to me an improbable cause, perhaps even an impossible dream, I continue to believe that one more person aware of the significance of that day is one more step, no matter how small, towards a goal for which we should all strive. Just one day of peace, after all, allows humanitarian aid to be delivered and lives to be saved in the calm before the storm resumes. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. There’s Chris Martin for a start. And Jimmy Cliff and Dave Stewart. Throw in Annie Lennox, Badly Drawn Boy and Corinne Bailey Rae, and it’s a veritable ABC of celebrity, all helping to spread the word in the form of song through packed out concerts.

Turning crucial issues into a celebrity circus can be a double-edged sword. Whilst giving them short-term prominence, it risks, in the long-run, downplaying or diluting the efforts of millions of activists who are still campaigning when the dust has settled. Poverty, after all, is not history, even though the media has moved on. But, with over 100 million people in every country in the world taking part in activities to mark the day in 2007, this is one campaign that truly seeks to engage every single person on the planet. This month, as Coca Cola ships out over a million unique Peace One Day cans to customers across the UK, urging them to think while they drink, the cause has truly entered the mainstream.

“This activity is really going to help us drive awareness and challenge people to think about what they are going to do on Peace Day,” says Gilley.

To date, as Peace One Day approaches its 10th anniversary, no government has signed a ceasefire on September 21st. But work by activists has already made a difference to people’s lives. Last year, 1.6 million children in Afghanistan were vaccinated against polio on Peace Day. Of course, it’s just a start and dreams like this do not offer easy ex machina means to right the wrongs of the waking world. Afghanistan remains a divided country, occupied by foreign forces, rife with conflict, poverty and corruption. Peace alone is not enough. For Marx, just as class conflict arises because of exploitative relations of production, conflicts between nations arise because of exploitative relations between rich and poor countries. Once the workers of the world had settled accounts with their own bourgeoisies, so the theory goes, such international disputes would, in turn, be settled. This is, naturally, too simplified an account for our modern, globalised, disjunctive world. However, a key point remains and it is one best phrased by soundbite stalwart Martin Luther King who said that: “True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice.” As long as there is injustice, occupation, exploitation and imperialist aggression, peace will remain elusive.

Achieving lasting peace, then, can never simply be about a single day of ceasefire. Without addressing the underlying causes of conflicts, September 21st can only be one day of peace amongst 364 days of war. “Everyone has the right to defend themselves,” the ardent anti-war activist Tony Benn tells me. “That is why the Afghans are absolutely entitled to defend themselves as their country is being invaded.” Can we be pacifists just for one day? Perhaps not. But that was never truly the objective of the campaign. “It’s not just symbolic,” says Gilley. “It’s only the beginning.” The point of a global day of ceasefire and non-violence is to promote dialogue and understanding through which the most crucial issues can be addressed and a long-term peace can be realised. Because it was never about kicking a football across no man’s land on Christmas Eve 1914. It was always meant to be premier league 1914-1918.

Make a commitment to Peace Day 2009

The sole survivor of Britain's first invasion of Afghanistan

Sunny Hundal, in a piece for The Guardian yesterday, made the case that we cannot give up on Afghanistan. It was, he says, unreasonable to expect the overthrow of the Taliban might come without British casualties or that we could secure positive social change in Afghanistan overnight. In and of themselves, these points are very true. Thus far 212 British soldiers have died in Afghanistan. These are, of course, 212 too many, but despite the public’s lack of tolerance for rising fatalities in a war being fought so far away for reasons so few people seem to understand, Britain’s casualties have been light. Almost as many soldiers were lost every day during World War 2. Neither should we expect immediate social change. As Sunny rightly points out, “Afghanistan’s patriarchal culture has been entrenched for centuries. Did anyone really believe that installing a new government would suddenly bring feminist enlightenment?” But whilst both points are valid, the point Sunny misses is that Afghanistan’s problems, rooted in violence and social conservatism, are never going to find a solution in continued Western occupation.

Like Sunny, I have always supported the overthrow of the Taliban. Unlike Sunny, I never supported an invasion of Afghanistan. Whilst in some senses the war might have forced Pakistan to tackle head on the dangers of terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism, it has had far from a stabilising influence on the subcontinent. Afghanistan is a failed state propped up only by Western military power, some of the most beautiful areas of Pakistan that were once a magnet for tourists now attract only militants, and India is far from free of the threat of terrorism, as November’s attacks on Mumbai reminded a stunned world.

The problem is that Western occupation will never provide an answer, to the security of the subcontinent or to the suffering of the Afghan people. “The radical Taliban groups are grossly outnumbered militarily and financially,” Sunny argues. And yet here we are still, in a war that’s already lasted two years longer than WW2, fighting an implacable foe in a country that has never been successfully occupied. All the while, the civilian casualties rise and with each missile gone awry we ferment further hatred, breeding the next generation of militants who’ll fight the good fight, stay the course and keep the faith even as our own wavers. The gloomiest of predictions, by General Sir David Richards, former commander of international forces in southern Afghanistan, see a British presence in the country for the next 40 years.

In an interview with The Third Estate earlier this year, I put the problem to Tony Benn. “It’s an unwinnable war,” he said. “Every country has to work out its own internal problems. You can’t solve them with an invasion.” It might seem a little callous to step back like this in the face of such blatant human rights abuses, but Benn’s point is a convincing one. A Western occupation will never successfully bring about the social change that is urgently required in Afghanistan to reject the religious fundamentalism of the Taliban, to enable democratic participation and the emancipation of women. All it will do is further entrench the hegemony of ultra-conservatism by setting the Taliban up as liberators fighting the latest in a long line of foreign aggressors. Islamism itself – emerging after the perceived failures of socialism and nationalism in the Muslim world – is a product of colonialism and imperialism, an internally developed tool of resistance which speaks to the very core of the oppressed identity.

The solutions to the problems of Afghanistan, to the subcontinent and to the wider Muslim world, have to be developed internally. A Western ideal can never be imposed down the barrel of a gun. For many human rights activists, myself included, watching the scenes on the streets of Tehran in June from the comfort of our armchairs and knowing the only thing we could do to help was change the time zone on our Twitter accounts, was a painful thing to face. But the movement for democratic change in Iran had to come from within. And when the Ayatollah finally falls, like the Shah, it has to be at the hands of the Iranian people, not the British or American military. The same is true for Afghanistan. No matter how uncomfortable that admission is, no matter how long and arduous the road to change for the Afghan people, the impetus has to be their own. Just as Pakistan must settle accounts with its own militants. Withrdrawal isn’t giving up. It’s trusting the people of those strange foreign lands, to whom we can no longer play policeman, to find their own answers. “If we’d invaded South Africa to end Apartheid, there’d be bloodshed from that day to this,” Tony Benn – who counts Nelson Mandela amongst his greatest heroes – told me.

I don’t have any easy answers. All I know is that propping up a failed government in Afghanistan for the next 40 years of bloodshed is not one of them.