Re: [A-List] Michael Howard/ Galloway

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Why I will stand against New Labour

Blair's hallmark policies of war and privatisation must be challenged

George Galloway
Thursday October 30, 2003
The Guardian

The last straw for many - and the one which helped break the back of my own
reluctance to take the electoral field against New Labour - wasn't in the
end something said by Tony Blair.

The defining moment was, instead, when David Blunkett, confronted by BBC
undercover revelations about racism in the police, laid not into the
constable in the Ku Klux Klan hood, but into the braveheart who unmasked
him. When it later emerged that Blunkett had tried to mount a Gilligan-style
intimidation operation to have the programme suppressed, it became clear
that New Labour has learned nothing from the death in the woods of David
Kelly.

The recall of Britain's ambassador to Uzbekistan by the less-than-ethical
foreign secretary, Jack Straw, for the crime of complaining that the Uzbek
dictator was boiling his critics to death, meanwhile showed the sheer depths
of the double standards employed by New Labour towards dictatorships.

Fortunately, such punishments were not available to the panel of "judges",
led by the tight-lipped tricoteuse Rose Di Georgio Burley, at my New Labour
show trial last week. When I saw Ms Burley metaphorically knitting
throughout the testimony in my favour from Michael Foot, Tony Benn and and
the new TGWU leader Tony Woodley, I knew my head was off. I had been told as
much by the prime minister as far back as April, six days before
disciplinary proceedings were begun, when he let it be known to the Sun that
I was for "the axe".

But it is Mr Blair who is losing his head while, all about him, more and
more Labour supporters are coming to their senses about his leadership. How
else to explain the sheer political madness of inviting George Bush, the
most unpopular political leader in the world, for a three-day state visit
next month?

With his left flank starting to give way, Mr Blair chose this moment to
advance against me, for speaking up for millions of his own natural
supporters on the disastrous invasion and occupation of Iraq. And just as
the war was based on a lie, so was my expulsion.

I never did call upon anyone to "rise up", far less "kill", British
soldiers. I called on British troops not to "disobey orders", but to refuse
"illegal orders". The party's prosecutor four times declined to acknowledge
that since Nuremberg it has been a binding legal duty on all armies to so
refuse illegal orders. Nor did I "support" an anti-war councillor who stood
against Labour in Preston - I congratulated him six weeks after the polls
had closed. I did, however, ask for the show trial to take place in public;
New Labour refused. But the transcript, when it is published, will lay bare
how the people diminished and degraded by these proceedings were those who
prosecuted them.

New Labour's hallmark policies are now war and privatisation. Its leaders
have stained Britain's name and endangered our citizens with its bloody
aggression against Iraq. The faction in control of the party has repeatedly
demonstrated its growing intolerance of internal dissent and debate.

I will now seek to challenge New Labour at the polls. In the European
elections next June, I will be part of a list - in a proportional
representation contest - which will seek to unify the red, green, anti-war,
Muslim and other social constituencies radicalised by the war, in a
referendum on Tony Blair.

We will not be a political party, but a coalition around which we hope many
will rally - some perhaps only for the day, merely lending us their votes -
to show the true colours of the British people. Who knows, maybe the results
will be cathartic within the Labour party itself, and help to spark the
long-heralded -and much to be hoped for - "reclaiming" of the party by those
with Labour's best interests and traditions at heart, notably the trade
unions, who must play a central role. In the elections to the Greater London
Authority, we plan to support that other Labour exile, Ken Livingstone, for
mayor and run a full slate of candidates ourselves. There may be other
electoral firefights - in my own Glasgow constituency or in other
byelections.

But we will choose the time and place of any challenges to New Labour. It
will be a war of movement rather than position. But on its eventual outcome
much will turn. I said before he set out on the calamitous invasion of Iraq
that it would be the political death of Tony Blair. His attack on the rights
of MPs to speak freely and honestly is likely to be another nail in his
prime ministerial coffin. "Blair out, Bush out": these will not only be the
slogans around the country during a November to remember, the bonfire of
their vanities. They may just be the political reality by the end of next
year.

-----

MK: Well, this is unfortunate, in my opinion. If he were to force a
by-election now, and stand under either an independent or SSP flag there is
no question that he would be supported not only by a mass of activists
converging on his constituency, but by the vast majority of his present
constituency support team. He stands a much better chance of building upon
whatever grassroots support he possesses in Glasgow Kelvin than by taking
the Ken Coates/Hugh Kerr route to obscurity and standing on a Euro-election
list. At least Kerr is now fully ensconced in the SSP, and an effective
spokesperson for it.

Surprisingly, for a founding member of Scotland United, Galloway seems fixed
upon accepting the confines of the political status quo -- he's now
attacking from outside the party, but his goal is still to somehow "reclaim"
it, the goal of a forlorn campaign being run by the remnants of the
Socialist Campaign Group of MPs, whose secretary, Diane Abbott, has recently
been pilloried for sending her son to a private school. Moreover, his base
of support is the "British people", whoever they are. Full marks to Galloway
for supporting Livingstone, but to accept the political status quo in order
to "win" it is sheer folly, as has been argued here a lot recently.
Meanwhile, and this is understandable although in no way acceptable,
Galloway seems to be driven by the need to avenge the injustice done to him.
A clearer view of the party of which he was a member would disabuse him of
such feelings, but the desire to stick it to Tony for "stealing" his party
from him is typical of the sort of narcissism of which George is regularly
accused by his detractors. And to imagine that by standing in the
Euro-elections in England he will somehow dent New Labour's vote is very
much mistaken -- this is the sort of pantomime politics conducted by Arthur
Scargill, whose performance in Hartlepool against Peter Mandelson at the
last general election was pitiful. And if George somehow imagines that by
stealing enough Labour votes this will cost them seats as Conservative and
Liberal candidates win instead, what of real political consequence would
that accomplish?

As a maverick Galloway has accomplished much of real value, but now is the
time for him to join forces with others and to be a team player. If he is
such a steadfast defender of socialist principle then he should find a ready
home in the SSP. Alternatively he could work to build an English equivalent,
although this fell apart a while back thanks to the antics of the SWP, which
can be expected to form the base of Galloway's English support (for as long
as it finds him useful). Maybe the time is right for another regroupment of
left forces south of the border, but anti-Tony populism is not going to be
enough to do it. Otherwise George might as well align himself with the
poujadist fuel strikers of three years ago and be done with it.