'Respect' and George Galloway

Calling for a Labour vote, combined with rebuilding the left and pushing the unions to assert themselves politically, is the only serious left policy in Scottish Parliamentary elections on 5 May. That is not because the Labour campaign, or the Labour Party’s policies, are good. The Scottish Tories will be lucky to hang on to a handful of seats. In the Holyrood elections the basic question is: do you want a Labour or an SNP government (or some kind of coalition with one of those parties at its core)? The SNP does not claim to be a socialist party. But the policies on which it is contesting the...

“We should get George Galloway elected so he’s a voice which stands up for people in this city. He will stand against the cuts,” said Socialist Party Scotland member Brian Smith at the press conference held last week to formally launch “George Galloway (Respect) – Coalition Against Cuts” (GRC). The GRC is an electoral bloc involving Galloway, the Socialist Party Scotland (SPS), the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), and some organisationally unaligned members of “Solidarity – Scotland’s Socialist Movement” (set up in 2006 when the SPS, the SWP and Tommy Sheridan split from the Scottish Socialist...

In a recent episode of his weekly radio programme – broadcast from Dubai, where he was holidaying in the “One and Only Royal Mirage Hotel” – Galloway explained his dilemma. “Somebody said to me in the hotel breakfast room this morning, here in Dubai: ‘Well, your friend’s getting a hard time in Libya.’ I asked him just exactly what he meant by that. And it seems that he’d confused his Arab dictators. Either that or he’d confused me with Tony Blair, who is of course Gaddafi’s new best friend.” (1) Galloway tells the same anecdote on the “Respect” website: “Last week at a breakfast in Dubai, an...

One good thing about the 6 May results: it looks as if George Galloway is finally out of British politics. In 2004 Galloway, expelled from the Labour Party, was offered a troop of activists to sustain him as a political figure by the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), who founded the Respect movement with Galloway as figurehead. The SWP hoped that Respect would enable them to win over Muslim youth brought onto the streets by the marches against the Iraq war, and so agreed to overlook Galloway's record of friendship with leading figures in Saddam Hussein's regime; of taking money from Pakistan...

With China now the world centre for industrial super-exploitation - low wages, no right to independent trade unions, and flagrant profiteering including by multinational investors - surely no "socialist" or "leftist" still sympathises with the Chinese government? They do. On 3 October the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist), a tiny diehard group, held a "celebration" for the 60th anniversary of Mao's seizure of power. The star speaker was George Galloway MP . On 7 November, the same holdout-Stalinist group has a meeting, dated to commemorate the 1917 workers' revolution in...

It is fortunate for the Iranian regime that it has a loyal network of supporters outside its borders, prepared to defend it against the “terrorists” as the Iranian opposition are now known. Some of the most outspoken defenders are not, as one might expect, brother clerics but… people on the “liberal” and “socialist” left. The Morning Star was ready to quote approvingly the words of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, quick to welcome Ahmadinejad’s re-election. According to Chavez it was a win “for all people in the world and free nations against global arrogance." However, the Morning Star is...

The victory of at least one BNP MEP in the upcoming Euro-elections now looks almost inevitable. To accept this is not to collapse into nihilism or to admit defeat, but to indict the New Labour, Tory and Lib Dem councillors and MPs across the country. Their policies of cuts and privatisation have created the conditions in which the BNP — posing as a populist alternative to the establishment — have been allowed to grow. A Euro-MP would give the BNP access to enormous financial resources, allowing them to develop and galvanise their organisation. As anyone who lives in an area of BNP strength...

Ken Livingstone has launched an organisation called “Progressive London” ( http://www.progressivelondon.org.uk ), backed by a “broad alliance of individuals, campaigns, communities, artists, trade unions, environmentalists, political parties and groups”. It is for “all those who believe in social justice, environmental protection, good community relations, cultural innovation and the many other areas in which London has made a contribution recognised throughout the world.” The CWU, GMB, Unison and Unite — or at least senior figures from these unions — seem to be backing this “campaign”, and it...

Rent-an-SWPer... at a price Crestfallen though the SWP is these days, it still seems to be trying to pull something pretty outrageous in Stoke. According to a Socialist Party comrade posting on the Socialist Unity website (www.socialistunity.com), the Unite Against Fascism campaign which the SWP leads is demanding that the local anti-racist group NORSCARF provide it with £1,800 for “costs” incurred during the run up to the recent anti-BNP demo in Stoke. One of these costs is apparently the involvement of SWP full-timer Bunny La Roche. Having thoroughly pissed off pretty much everyone on the...

The International Socialist Group, which so enthusiastically supports George Galloway's side of the split in Respect that it handed over its monthly paper to Respect Renewal, has launched a call for "revolutionary regroupment". Revolutionary Regroupment is a fairly transparent effort to bring into a renamed ISG the small group of SWPers who resigned after siding with Galloway in the split - including prominent members Nick Wrack, Kevin Ovenden, Rob Hoveman and Jerry Hicks - and whom the ISG has been heavily promoting and courting since then. There is nothing wrong with that, of course; the...