This was Bradford's version of the riots
Bradford's peaceful democratic uprising that elected me comes from the wellspring of discontent that swept Britain last summer
George Galloway addresses the media after winning the Bradford West byelection. Photograph: Andrew Yates/AFP/Getty Images
A 5,000 Labour majority was transformed into a 10,000 majority for Respect – the same total vote for me as the outgoing MP had in a general election – winning across every ward in the constituency. It was the most spectacular byelection result in British political history.
The word revolution was on many lips in this deprived and hitherto disenfranchised city well before Friday morning's result. And, like the Arab revolutions, this is a movement, above all, of the young. Bradford has a young population. By 2020 half the population will be under 25. They have grown up in the years when Tony Blair and his successors murdered the real Labour tradition, taking for granted the loyalty of working people – nowhere more so than in this city, where the precursor to the Labour party, the Independent Labour party, was founded in 1893.
A rotten combination of complacency, incompetence, opportunism and rule by clique has presided over Bradford's decline. It was going down even during the 13 years of New Labour government, which included the richest decade in British history. Now it is in danger of sinking under the sado-monetarist austerity of the Con-Dem coalition.
Labour's opposition in parliament is feeble to the point of paralysis, because so many share so much of the grim orthodoxy that has plunged the world into the great recession.
This, and the continuing support of all three old parties for war and occupation abroad, has created a chasm between the political class and so many working people, especially the generation that faces a future of extortionate tuition fees, a privatised NHS, mass unemployment – and, for those who find work, an ever diminishing pension and a rising retirement age. So, while support came from all quarters in this election, it was young people who moved first and created a critical mass, which drew around it ever wider layers until it became unstoppable.
Many had never voted before, including in their 40s. As hundreds of them threw themselves into the campaign, those who remembered what a real party of labour should look like could see it forming before their eyes and they too moved. Among them were activists who had held the labour movement together through the dog years of Thatcherism.
Mass face-to-face campaigning was combined with the tools of this century – Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, mass texting, bespoke apps – all run by the generation for which they are as familiar as a printed political leaflet once was. Every night, and late into the night, hundreds gathered at our headquarters provided by Chambers solicitors to rally, plan and organise on and offline.
This peaceful, democratic uprising comes from the same wellspring of discontent and alienation that fuelled disturbances in British cities last summer. But it is a positive counterpoint – bringing forth a new generation of political leaders, not another cohort trapped in the criminal justice system. Every politician should take notice, as they did not last summer.
Labour, above all, should learn this rude lesson. It cannot continue on the disastrous path set by Tony Blair, of war and occupation abroad and inequality at home. That's what lay behind the loss of a "safe seat", held for 38 years, just as the party lost London's East End in 2005.
The real Labour values I stood for in this election swept the Tories and Lib Dems away, and swept into every part of the constituency – including those areas where some voters, only a few years ago, had succumbed to the siren calls of the racists and fascists.
The media, especially the London media, should also smell the coffee. Something is happening in this country outside of the echo chamber. The council elections take place in May in many parts of the country: prepare for more shocks to come as people find their voices at the ballot box and in mass, democratic opposition to an elite that is failing them.
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George Galloway: The political rebel with a cause
Saturday, 31 March 2012
There is no one in politics who can whip up a crowd quite like George Galloway can. Nor are there many with his special talent for falling out with political allies. His is a long political biography, which had lurched from controversy to controversy, and has seen a series of setbacks any one of which would have finished off a less resilient character. Somehow whenever the world of politics thinks they have seen the last of "Gorgeous George", he bounces back.
Bradford West is now the fourth constituency to have George Galloway
for its MP – itself an unusual record in modern politics. There is a
cruel saying in Westminster that no one is more "ex" than an ex-MP.
Galloway was expected to take on that unwanted status after being
expelled from the Labour Party in 2003, but made an extraordinary
comeback at the 2005 general election as MP for the hastily formed
Respect party in Bethnal Green and Bow.
In 2010, Labour jubilantly saw him off when he ran against Jim Fitzpatrick in Poplar and Limehouse, and again expected him to vanish from the scene. Even on Thursday evening, after voting in Bradford West was almost over, Labour officials were quite sure that they had held the seat, though they acknowledged that Galloway had made an impact and expected him to come second.
Instead, after Easter, Galloway will return to Parliament, where he first made a mark 25 years ago. In the 1987 general election, he reclaimed Glasgow Hillhead, which the Labour Party had lost in a by-election in 1981 to Roy Jenkins, leader of the SDP. Most new MPs have to wait years before they make the front pages of the national press. Galloway achieved national fame straight away – but not in a good way.
As early as 1981, newspapers had started taking an interest in this political prodigy who described himself as having been "born in an attic in a slum tenement in the Irish quarter of Dundee, which is known as Tipperary". He had joined Labour's Young Socialists at 13, and was still in his teens when, remarkably, he was made secretary of the Dundee Labour Party. At 20, he was a member of the Scottish Labour Executive, and at 22 was Dundee's youngest councillor, despite being denounced by a local priest for "living in sin" with his future wife, Elaine. By 1981, he was one of the most articulate voices in Scotland of what was then known as the Bennite left, and before he was 30, he was general secretary of a major charity, War on Want.
At first, the charity thrived from having this dynamic, gifted, politically astute young boss. He improved its political connections and, when aid to the Horn of Africa increased dramatically in the wake of the Live Aid concert, he made War on Want the lead charity in channelling aid to the war-torn Eritrean and Tigris provinces of Ethiopia.
But towards the end of his time there, word began to spread that there was another, less attractive side to this charismatic figure. The Sunday Mirror carried damaging allegations of how Galloway had been conducting himself, written by Alastair Campbell. Just after his election to Parliament, Galloway called what was to be his last press conference as head of War on Want and, under persistent questioning from journalists, admitted that he had had sexual relations with two women during a conference in Athens in 1985 – a revelation that earned him the nickname "Gorgeous George".
"My wife won't leave me," he predicted. Actually, the relationship was soon over. Four years later, Galloway met the Palestinian-born biologist Amineh Abu-Zayyad. They married in a civil ceremony in 2000, but she divorced him in January 2009, citing his relations with other women. By then Galloway had a one-year-old son by his Lebanese researcher Rima Husseini.
Galloway's commitment to the Arab cause dates back at least 30 years, when he was instrumental in the unusual decision to "twin" Dundee with the Palestinian town of Nablus. After the first Gulf war, he began a campaign to end British sanctions against Iraq, which would bring him further attention. In 1994, he visited Baghdad and was filmed telling Saddam Hussein: "Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability."
Four years later, he set up the Mariam Appeal, named after a four-year-old Iraqi girl, Mariam Hamza, whom Galloway arranged to bring to Glasgow to be treated for leukaemia. The appeal, which paid for a number of Galloway's overseas trips, was never registered as a charity. Nonetheless, the Charities Commission looked into it after it was wound up in 2003, and again in 2007.
The second time around, the commission alleged that £230,000 out of the £1.4m raised by the appeal came from "improper" sources, via Iraq's food for oil programme. Galloway, who has never been coy in his own defence, described the commission's findings as "palpably false".
The Daily Telegraph thought it had Galloway bang to rights when, in the ruins of Baghdad's foreign ministry building, it found a document that referred to what were alleged to be payments to the MP, measured in barrels of oil. It has never been disputed that the document itself was genuine. However, the Telegraph read too much into its find, and ran an editorial implicitly accused Galloway of treason, for which he was later awarded £150,000 in libel damages.
Though he was by no means the only Labour MP to be opposed to the Iraq war, nor the most important, Galloway was the only one expelled from the Labour Party. With his usual love of a resounding phrase, he described George Bush and Tony Blair as "wolves" and, in Labour's views, had incited foreign armies to fight against British troops.
After his expulsion, he remained an independent MP for Glasgow Kelvin and joined forces with the Socialist Workers Party and others to create the Respect Party.
When Galloway took Bethnal Green and Bow by 823 votes, in an abrasive, bad-tempered race against Labour's Oona King, it was the first time since 1951 that a party avowedly left of the Labour Party had won a seat in the Commons. The east London seat, like Bradford West, had a high proportion of young Muslims who admired Galloway's opposition to the Iraq war.
His five years as a Respect MP were marked by two highly publicised appearances in places where British MPs are not normally to be found. In May 2005, he went to Washington to confront a Senate sub committee which had accused him of profiting from Iraqi oil. The senators were accustomed to dealing with witnesses who treated Congress with reverence, and were completely at a loss in the face of Galloway's abrasive way of using attack as the best form of defence.
In 2006, Galloway went on Celebrity Big Brother, under the illusion that it would allow him to relay his political views to the show's vast audience. Actually, most of his political remarks were cut out, and all that most viewers recalled was his bizarre impersonation of a cat.
Another high-profile appearance was his public debates with the writer Christopher Hitchens, who said of Galloway: "He looks so much like what he is: a thug and a demagogue, the type of working-class-wideboy-and-proud-of-it who is too used to the expenses account, the cars and the hotels – all cigars and back-slapping. He is a very cheap character and a short-arse." Galloway was equally insulting in return.
The Respect Party split apart when Galloway fell out with the SWP. When Galloway failed to be re-elected to the Commons in 2010, it looked as if Respect was heading for terminal decline, and that there was no future for George Galloway except as a star of the Iranian-owned Press TV and one of the last people in the UK to offer a qualified defence of the regime in Syria.
When he announced that he was running in Bradford West, it appeared to be a desperate attempt by a half-forgotten man to draw attention to himself. Almost the only people to spot what was actually happening were punters who bet so heavily on a Galloway victory that the bookies are saying the result is costing them £100,000. George Galloway is back on the scene.
A life in brief
Born: 16 August 1954, Dundee.
Family: His father was a Scottish trade unionist. Twice divorced, since 2006, Galloway has been married to Rima Husseini with whom has a son. Has a daughter from his first marriage.
Education: Harris Academy, Dundee.
Career: Elected MP for Glasgow Hillhead in 1987. Expelled from the Labour Party in 2003 over his stance on Iraq, and the following year co-founded the Respect Party. Won Bethnal Green in 2005 election, but at the 2010 election lost out in Poplar and Limehouse. This week he won Bradford West.
He says: “By the grace of God we have won the most sensational victory in British political history.”
They say: “He looks so much like what he is: a thug and a demagogue.” Christopher Hitchens
----
by Tariq Ali
George Galloway's stunning electoral triumph in the Bradford by-election has shaken the petrified world of English politics. It was unexpected, and for that reason the Respect campaign was treated by much of the media (Helen Pidd of the Guardian being an honourable exception) as a loony fringe show. A BBC toady, an obviously partisan compere on a local TV election show, who tried to mock and insult Galloway, should be made to eat his excremental words. The Bradford seat, a Labour fiefdom since 1973, was considered safe and the Labour leader, Ed Miliband, had been planning a celebratory visit to the city till the news seeped through at 2 am. He is now once again focused on his own future. Labour has paid the price for its failure to act as an opposition, having imagined that all it had to do was wait and the prize would come its way. Scottish politics should have forced a rethink. Perhaps the latest development in English politics now will, though I doubt it. Galloway has effectively urinated on all three parties. The Lib Dems and Tories explain their decline by the fact that too many people voted!
Thousands of young people infected with apathy, contempt, despair and a disgust with mainstream politics were dynamised by the Respect campaign. Galloway is tireless on these occasions. Nobody else in the political field comes even close to competing with him – not simply because he is an effective orator, though this skill should not be underestimated. It comes almost as a shock these days to a generation used to the bland untruths that are mouthed every day by government and opposition politicians. It was the political content of the campaign that galvanised the youth: Respect campaigners and their candidate stressed the disasters of Iraq and Afghanistan. Galloway demanded that Blair be tried as a war criminal, and that British troops be withdrawn from Afghanistan without further delay. He lambasted the Government and the Labour party for the austerity measures targeting the less well off, the poor and the infirm, and the new privatisations of education, health and the Post Office. It was all this that gave him a majority of 10,000.
How did we get here? Following the collapse of communism in 1991, Edmund Burke's notion that "In all societies, consisting of different classes, certain classes must necessarily be uppermost," and that "The apostles of equality only change and pervert the natural order of things," became the commonsense wisdom of the age. Money corrupted politics, and big money corrupted it absolutely. Throughout the heartlands of capital, we witnessed the emergence of effective coalitions: as ever, the Republicans and Democrats in the United States; New Labour and Tories in the vassal state of Britain; socialists and conservatives in France; the German coalitions of one variety or another, with the greens differentiating themselves largely as ultra-Atlanticists; and the Scandinavian centre-right and centre-left with few differences, competing in cravenness before the empire. In virtually every case the two- or three-party system morphed into an effective national government. A new market extremism came into play. The entry of capital into the most hallowed domains of social provision was regarded as a necessary reform. Private financial initiatives that punished the public sector became the norm and countries (such as France and Germany) that were seen as not proceeding fast enough in the direction of the neoliberal paradise were regularly denounced in the Economist and the Financial Times.
To question this turn, to defend the public sector, to argue in favour of state ownership of utilities or to challenge the fire sale of public housing was to be regarded as a dinosaur.
British politics has been governed by the consensus established by Margaret Thatcher during the locust decades of the 80s and 90s, since New Labour accepted the basic tenets of Thatcherism (its model was the New Democrats' embrace of Reaganism). Those were the roots of the extreme centre, which encompasses both centre-left and centre-right and exercises power, promoting austerity measures that privilege the wealthy, and backing wars and occupations abroad. President Obama is far from isolated within the Euro-American political sphere. New movements are now springing up at home, challenging political orthodoxies without offering one of their own. They're little more than a scream for help.
Respect is different. It puts forward a leftist social-democratic programme that challenges the status quo and is loud in its condemnation of imperial misdeeds. In other words, it is not frightened by politics. Its triumph in Bradford should force some to rethink their passivity and others to realise that there are ways in which the Occupiers of yesteryear can help to break the political impasse.
In 2010, Labour jubilantly saw him off when he ran against Jim Fitzpatrick in Poplar and Limehouse, and again expected him to vanish from the scene. Even on Thursday evening, after voting in Bradford West was almost over, Labour officials were quite sure that they had held the seat, though they acknowledged that Galloway had made an impact and expected him to come second.
Instead, after Easter, Galloway will return to Parliament, where he first made a mark 25 years ago. In the 1987 general election, he reclaimed Glasgow Hillhead, which the Labour Party had lost in a by-election in 1981 to Roy Jenkins, leader of the SDP. Most new MPs have to wait years before they make the front pages of the national press. Galloway achieved national fame straight away – but not in a good way.
As early as 1981, newspapers had started taking an interest in this political prodigy who described himself as having been "born in an attic in a slum tenement in the Irish quarter of Dundee, which is known as Tipperary". He had joined Labour's Young Socialists at 13, and was still in his teens when, remarkably, he was made secretary of the Dundee Labour Party. At 20, he was a member of the Scottish Labour Executive, and at 22 was Dundee's youngest councillor, despite being denounced by a local priest for "living in sin" with his future wife, Elaine. By 1981, he was one of the most articulate voices in Scotland of what was then known as the Bennite left, and before he was 30, he was general secretary of a major charity, War on Want.
At first, the charity thrived from having this dynamic, gifted, politically astute young boss. He improved its political connections and, when aid to the Horn of Africa increased dramatically in the wake of the Live Aid concert, he made War on Want the lead charity in channelling aid to the war-torn Eritrean and Tigris provinces of Ethiopia.
But towards the end of his time there, word began to spread that there was another, less attractive side to this charismatic figure. The Sunday Mirror carried damaging allegations of how Galloway had been conducting himself, written by Alastair Campbell. Just after his election to Parliament, Galloway called what was to be his last press conference as head of War on Want and, under persistent questioning from journalists, admitted that he had had sexual relations with two women during a conference in Athens in 1985 – a revelation that earned him the nickname "Gorgeous George".
"My wife won't leave me," he predicted. Actually, the relationship was soon over. Four years later, Galloway met the Palestinian-born biologist Amineh Abu-Zayyad. They married in a civil ceremony in 2000, but she divorced him in January 2009, citing his relations with other women. By then Galloway had a one-year-old son by his Lebanese researcher Rima Husseini.
Galloway's commitment to the Arab cause dates back at least 30 years, when he was instrumental in the unusual decision to "twin" Dundee with the Palestinian town of Nablus. After the first Gulf war, he began a campaign to end British sanctions against Iraq, which would bring him further attention. In 1994, he visited Baghdad and was filmed telling Saddam Hussein: "Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability."
Four years later, he set up the Mariam Appeal, named after a four-year-old Iraqi girl, Mariam Hamza, whom Galloway arranged to bring to Glasgow to be treated for leukaemia. The appeal, which paid for a number of Galloway's overseas trips, was never registered as a charity. Nonetheless, the Charities Commission looked into it after it was wound up in 2003, and again in 2007.
The second time around, the commission alleged that £230,000 out of the £1.4m raised by the appeal came from "improper" sources, via Iraq's food for oil programme. Galloway, who has never been coy in his own defence, described the commission's findings as "palpably false".
The Daily Telegraph thought it had Galloway bang to rights when, in the ruins of Baghdad's foreign ministry building, it found a document that referred to what were alleged to be payments to the MP, measured in barrels of oil. It has never been disputed that the document itself was genuine. However, the Telegraph read too much into its find, and ran an editorial implicitly accused Galloway of treason, for which he was later awarded £150,000 in libel damages.
Though he was by no means the only Labour MP to be opposed to the Iraq war, nor the most important, Galloway was the only one expelled from the Labour Party. With his usual love of a resounding phrase, he described George Bush and Tony Blair as "wolves" and, in Labour's views, had incited foreign armies to fight against British troops.
After his expulsion, he remained an independent MP for Glasgow Kelvin and joined forces with the Socialist Workers Party and others to create the Respect Party.
When Galloway took Bethnal Green and Bow by 823 votes, in an abrasive, bad-tempered race against Labour's Oona King, it was the first time since 1951 that a party avowedly left of the Labour Party had won a seat in the Commons. The east London seat, like Bradford West, had a high proportion of young Muslims who admired Galloway's opposition to the Iraq war.
His five years as a Respect MP were marked by two highly publicised appearances in places where British MPs are not normally to be found. In May 2005, he went to Washington to confront a Senate sub committee which had accused him of profiting from Iraqi oil. The senators were accustomed to dealing with witnesses who treated Congress with reverence, and were completely at a loss in the face of Galloway's abrasive way of using attack as the best form of defence.
In 2006, Galloway went on Celebrity Big Brother, under the illusion that it would allow him to relay his political views to the show's vast audience. Actually, most of his political remarks were cut out, and all that most viewers recalled was his bizarre impersonation of a cat.
Another high-profile appearance was his public debates with the writer Christopher Hitchens, who said of Galloway: "He looks so much like what he is: a thug and a demagogue, the type of working-class-wideboy-and-proud-of-it who is too used to the expenses account, the cars and the hotels – all cigars and back-slapping. He is a very cheap character and a short-arse." Galloway was equally insulting in return.
The Respect Party split apart when Galloway fell out with the SWP. When Galloway failed to be re-elected to the Commons in 2010, it looked as if Respect was heading for terminal decline, and that there was no future for George Galloway except as a star of the Iranian-owned Press TV and one of the last people in the UK to offer a qualified defence of the regime in Syria.
When he announced that he was running in Bradford West, it appeared to be a desperate attempt by a half-forgotten man to draw attention to himself. Almost the only people to spot what was actually happening were punters who bet so heavily on a Galloway victory that the bookies are saying the result is costing them £100,000. George Galloway is back on the scene.
A life in brief
Born: 16 August 1954, Dundee.
Family: His father was a Scottish trade unionist. Twice divorced, since 2006, Galloway has been married to Rima Husseini with whom has a son. Has a daughter from his first marriage.
Education: Harris Academy, Dundee.
Career: Elected MP for Glasgow Hillhead in 1987. Expelled from the Labour Party in 2003 over his stance on Iraq, and the following year co-founded the Respect Party. Won Bethnal Green in 2005 election, but at the 2010 election lost out in Poplar and Limehouse. This week he won Bradford West.
He says: “By the grace of God we have won the most sensational victory in British political history.”
They say: “He looks so much like what he is: a thug and a demagogue.” Christopher Hitchens
----
by Tariq Ali
George Galloway's stunning electoral triumph in the Bradford by-election has shaken the petrified world of English politics. It was unexpected, and for that reason the Respect campaign was treated by much of the media (Helen Pidd of the Guardian being an honourable exception) as a loony fringe show. A BBC toady, an obviously partisan compere on a local TV election show, who tried to mock and insult Galloway, should be made to eat his excremental words. The Bradford seat, a Labour fiefdom since 1973, was considered safe and the Labour leader, Ed Miliband, had been planning a celebratory visit to the city till the news seeped through at 2 am. He is now once again focused on his own future. Labour has paid the price for its failure to act as an opposition, having imagined that all it had to do was wait and the prize would come its way. Scottish politics should have forced a rethink. Perhaps the latest development in English politics now will, though I doubt it. Galloway has effectively urinated on all three parties. The Lib Dems and Tories explain their decline by the fact that too many people voted!
Thousands of young people infected with apathy, contempt, despair and a disgust with mainstream politics were dynamised by the Respect campaign. Galloway is tireless on these occasions. Nobody else in the political field comes even close to competing with him – not simply because he is an effective orator, though this skill should not be underestimated. It comes almost as a shock these days to a generation used to the bland untruths that are mouthed every day by government and opposition politicians. It was the political content of the campaign that galvanised the youth: Respect campaigners and their candidate stressed the disasters of Iraq and Afghanistan. Galloway demanded that Blair be tried as a war criminal, and that British troops be withdrawn from Afghanistan without further delay. He lambasted the Government and the Labour party for the austerity measures targeting the less well off, the poor and the infirm, and the new privatisations of education, health and the Post Office. It was all this that gave him a majority of 10,000.
How did we get here? Following the collapse of communism in 1991, Edmund Burke's notion that "In all societies, consisting of different classes, certain classes must necessarily be uppermost," and that "The apostles of equality only change and pervert the natural order of things," became the commonsense wisdom of the age. Money corrupted politics, and big money corrupted it absolutely. Throughout the heartlands of capital, we witnessed the emergence of effective coalitions: as ever, the Republicans and Democrats in the United States; New Labour and Tories in the vassal state of Britain; socialists and conservatives in France; the German coalitions of one variety or another, with the greens differentiating themselves largely as ultra-Atlanticists; and the Scandinavian centre-right and centre-left with few differences, competing in cravenness before the empire. In virtually every case the two- or three-party system morphed into an effective national government. A new market extremism came into play. The entry of capital into the most hallowed domains of social provision was regarded as a necessary reform. Private financial initiatives that punished the public sector became the norm and countries (such as France and Germany) that were seen as not proceeding fast enough in the direction of the neoliberal paradise were regularly denounced in the Economist and the Financial Times.
To question this turn, to defend the public sector, to argue in favour of state ownership of utilities or to challenge the fire sale of public housing was to be regarded as a dinosaur.
British politics has been governed by the consensus established by Margaret Thatcher during the locust decades of the 80s and 90s, since New Labour accepted the basic tenets of Thatcherism (its model was the New Democrats' embrace of Reaganism). Those were the roots of the extreme centre, which encompasses both centre-left and centre-right and exercises power, promoting austerity measures that privilege the wealthy, and backing wars and occupations abroad. President Obama is far from isolated within the Euro-American political sphere. New movements are now springing up at home, challenging political orthodoxies without offering one of their own. They're little more than a scream for help.
Respect is different. It puts forward a leftist social-democratic programme that challenges the status quo and is loud in its condemnation of imperial misdeeds. In other words, it is not frightened by politics. Its triumph in Bradford should force some to rethink their passivity and others to realise that there are ways in which the Occupiers of yesteryear can help to break the political impasse.