Not the workers’ tradition, nor the workers’ flag
By Colin Foster At the Respect fringe meeting at the European Social Forum (Saturday 16 October), George Galloway set out to define for Respect “the traditions in which we stand... the flag we seek to carry”. Starting with Wat Tyler and John Ball and going up to Antonio Gramsci, his references were distant enough to be shared by almost any left-winger. But already he had noticeably omitted Lenin, Trotsky, and any reference to the Russian Revolution. Gramsci was jailed in 1926, and would die before he could re-enter public political activity. Galloway’s references for the last 78 years were of...