George Galloway, a key figure in the formation of the Respect coalition in 2003, is standing in the July 1 Batley and Spen by-election for his latest political instrument, the Workers Party of Great Britain. The by-election has been brought about by the resignation of Labour MP Tracy Brabin, following her victory earlier this year in the election for the Mayor of West Yorkshire. The candidate chosen to represent the Labour Party in Batley and Spen is Kim Leadbetter, sister of former MP Jo Cox, slain by a fascist gunman in 2016.
George Galloway claims he is likely to win or come second, and in any case, he says Labour will be defeated. The latest opinion poll puts Labour on 41 %, the Tories on 47% and Galloway on 6%. If the Tories win, doubtless Labour spokespeople will point the finger at Galloway. But those really responsible will be Starmer and the post-Corbyn leadership, and it is quite possible that Starmer will be gone by the week-end—if Labour loses.
Whatever happens on that front, the Galloway campaign is reactionary and disgraceful from a socialist viewpoint, and that is despite his good positions on Palestine and Islamophobia. Because of his position on those issues, Galloway has significant support in the Asian community. But his campaign overall repeats many right-wing themes and is an obvious attempt to garner support from both reactionary white voters and more conservative members of the Asian community.
Galloway explains his strategy in a very friendly interview published at the hard-right Spiked! website. The Workers Party of Great Britain, says Galloway, is where Labour should be— ‘economically radical, but socially and culturally conservative.’ So Galloway repeats right-wing stereotypes about Labour and pro-LBGT+ rights campaigners, namely that they represent ‘urban elites’.
Asked why Labour lost support in the Red Wall seats, Galloway argues:
It has been going astray for at least 40 years. It’s not just Keir Starmer’s fault. Labour took a California turn almost 40 years ago. Class and economic policy became less important to Labour and identity politics and wokeness became the mantra.
Class and economic policy did not become less important for New Labour; rather they adopted anti-working class positions on these things through pro-business positions of cuts and privatisation, which turned out to be disastrous for poorer post-industrial towns and cities. Galloway repeats the Spectator-Daily Mail line that it is ‘woke’ politics that lost Labour support, rather than the more obvious and fundamental fact that right-wing Labour, Blair’s New Labour government in particular, failed to do anything to help there working class in declining Northern and Midlands post-industrial towns that remain mired in poverty and neglect, with declining public services; including especially council services, social care in particular, whose undermining New Labour permitted in its 1998-2010 tenure in government.
As New Labour failed poorer sections of the working class from the 1990’s onwards, UKIP and other right wing forces were given the space to build up support on a nationalist and racist basis. As younger people moved out to the big urban centres like London and Manchester, older white and left-behind workers became more open to racist and reactionary ideas. You can see this pattern in the votes for UKIP and the BNP in successive elections, and in the pro-Brexit votes in the 2016 referendum.
In his interview, Galloway correctly attacks Keir Starmer’s failure to challenge the Tories on the Covid-19 pandemic and on the fundamentals of Tory economics. But then Galloway launches into a tirade about Trans rights, an obvious attempt to appeal to social conservatism in both Asian and white working class communities.
As a platform for a by-election, Galloway’s cross-community conservatism might just about hold water. But over a long time and geographical space it would collapse for obvious reasons, notably that large numbers of socially conservative white workers want Asians, radical, reactionary or otherwise, deported! There is no basis for creating an alliance among socially reactionary white people (working class or middle class) and socially conservative Muslims, because it will always be disrupted by racism.
To win over socially conservative Muslim voters, Galloway clearly has in mind the events at Anderton Park primary school in Birmingham in 2019, where reactionary sectors of the Muslim community campaigned against LBGT+ friendly education to primary school students. He says:
As a father, I have the right to withdraw my children from things that I don’t want them to be taught. That’s a position that crosses community boundaries.
That may go across community boundaries, but making kids education on LBGT+ issues (and other issues like climate change and racism) subject to the approval of reactionary parents, is not a progressive or socialist position. It is the opposite.
Galloway accepts a whole series of reactionary right-wing stereotypes, including the idea that workers in the big cities, who for example voted against Brexit by a huge majority, do not represent ‘the working class’, whereas reactionary white workers in smaller post-industrial cities do. He takes it for granted that most workers in poorer post-industrial cities accept socially conservative positions, which is far from being the case – the working class is split on these issues. His line on these issues links directly to the Spiled!-Sun-Daily Mail-Spectator-Telegraph nonsense that being militant about racism, women’s rights and LBGT+ rights is something that concerns middle class, university educated, people and not the working class. As if Black people, LBGT+ people and women were somehow not part of the working class and not affected by questions of oppression and discrimination.
Making a play for the socially conservative white vote means that Galloway is skating on racist thin ice. The people who are his new friends on the rabidly reactionary right are the self-same people who on a daily basis pour scorn on Black Lives Matter in the popular press, and who are winning support for that position among people who boo the English football team taking the knee. In a recent interview on Spiked, influential right-wing pundit Rod Liddle says he is a good friend of Galloway’s, but they have to ‘park’ the issue of Palestine and Israel to get along. It is unclear why they don’t have to park the issue of Black Lives Matter. Or racism in general. George Galloway extends the policy of ‘no comment’ omerta to immigration, about which he and his party say nothing.
Palestine is indeed a question which has mobilised tens of thousands of Muslim youth in Britain. During the Israeli bombardment of Gaza, Asian youth marched on pro-Palestine demonstrations alongside people from the labour movement and the radical left, and not the socially conservative right. More than 140 Asian school students have been disciplined for organising pro-Palestinian demonstrations in schools, and many have been referred to the ‘Prevent’ re-education process or interviewed by the police. The Left of course defends these Asian school students, but socially conservative white workers will be on the other side, as is Rod Liddle, Spiked! And the whole of the Mail-Telegraph-Spectator right wing.
There is another aspect of Galloway’s terminology that we should remember. He uses the term ‘woke’ liberally to describe both Labour and his opponents on the Left. But the term ‘woke’ is the contemporary embodiment of its predecessor ‘politically correct’. The reactionary right in whatever political party, and reactionary people of every description, used the term ‘politically correct’ to denote people concerned to defend the rights and needs of people in the Global South, poor people, disabled people, working class people, Black people, women, LGBT+ people – indeed the massive majority of people exploited by u global capitalism and its racist, xenophobic, homophobic and misogynist ideologies.Whatever its origin is US radical circles, ‘woke’ is now a term of abuse, largely co-extensive with Left and social radicalism.
George Galloway will come nowhere near winning the Batley and Spen by-election because socially conservative white voters are going to vote for the Tories, not for him and his pro-Palestinian, anti-Islamophobic positions. An attempt to tie together social conservatives in white working class and Asian communities will fall at the first hurdle.
In passing, let us note another fundamentally reactionary part of the Galloway campaign, namely the very name of his organisation—The Workers Party of Great Britain—which states at the outset an opposition to the right of self-determination of the people of Scotland and Wales.
If Labour crashes in Batley and Starmer goes, it will be too easy for pro-Labour commentators to lay the blame at the door of George Galloway. Labour should be winning the election by a landslide, given the terrible record of the Johnson government. Starmer and the Labour right have to own their own failure.
Nonetheless, there are many on the British Left who hanker after Galloway’s fundamental idea—the working class can be united around economic issues, and the Left should keep quiet about race, nation and gender. A strategy which allows the right to divide the working class and one that will always lead to defeat.
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Still digesting the piece, though agree with its main thrust regarding Galloway. I think, however, that the author has conflated the libertarian reactionary Rod Liddle, who is an associate editor at “The Spectator” (though once worked for the Labour Party!), and Roger Liddle, who is a Blairite Labour peer in the House of Lords.
This has now been corrected. Thank you
This is a good article.
Galloway stood in the recent Scottish parliament elections at the head of the cobbled together “All for Unity” slate in the regional party list section of the election. This slate stood in opposition to a second independence referendum, desired by the majority of Scotland’s voters, and even for a denial of the right of Scotland ever to leave the UK, something only fascists advocate in Scotland.
Galloway managed to unite with a motley collection of sub-UKIP reactionaries and Tory cast-offs but won only 0.9% of the vote, coming nowhere near to winning Galloway a seat.
However, All for Unity also published a list of tactical voting recommendations for unionist candidates in the constituency election that makes up the majority of the parliament and where they were not standing at all. In the South Scotland region, where Galloway now apparently lives, this mainly meant mainly voting for the Conservative & Unionist party (as the Tories call themselves north of the border). Galloway himself proudly declared that he had voted for the Conservative and Unionist Party candidate in his constituency.
Yet Galloway had previously said that you could “shoot me” if he ever lined up with the Tories!
Galloway’s motley crew may not have come anywhere near winning, but they probably did influence the election. In several marginal constituencies there were significant unionist tactical voting swings of Labour voters to Tory candidates and vice versa that despite the overall improved performance of the SNP on the previous elections undoubtedly denied them an outright majority in the parliament.
This cross-class voting advocacy to ‘game the system’ by Galloway stands in the face of his appeal to “working class” voters to stick together in England – while voting Tory in Scotland!
Galloway managed to galvanise opposition to the Iraq war more than 15 years ago, but his politics and persona are now thoroughly reactionary and should be completely rejected.
Galloway did say something about immigration recently – he accused the Scottish government of “treason” after campaigners in Glasgow prevented the deportation of two asylum seekers. That says a lot.
Despite the reactionary character of the Starmer leadership and the serious problems of the Ledbetter campaign – it is racist to equate Modi with all Hindus as that contravershal leaflet did – the only principled vote is still a Labour vote. Galloway is no revolutionary alternative as the article proves. Labour is still a bourgeois workers party, its class character has not changed under Starmer, and it didn’t under Blair.
This is largely a good article which sets out Galloway’s positions clearly. But there is one area where I think the author is wrong. The author writes:’There is no basis for creating an alliance among socially reactionary white people (working class or middle class) and socially conservative Muslims, because it will always be disrupted by racism’. However if you look at the campaign against Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) that was launched by conservative Muslim fundamentalists outside Anderton Park School in Birmingham in April 2019, we did indeed see such an alliance. Stephen Green of the reactionary Christian Voice overcome his racism and joined in to support Shakeel Afsar, the protest leader. Ultra-orthdox Jews also spoke in favour of the protest and the arch racist Katie Hopkins also joined them. This alliance in opposition to RSE showed the way religious fundamentalists and non-religious right wing reactionaries were able to form an alliance in opposition to RSE in which homophobia and misogyny overcame the racism of conservative whites.
Clearly people above are uniformily anti-Galloway without seeing the positive as well as the negative aspects of his politics.
Yes he was wrong to align with the Brexit Party and indeed over Brexit altogether. Yes he is wrong to oppose sex education in schools but that is not all.
The major fault line in Labour at the moment is over Palestine and what Starmer calls ‘antisemitism’. That is the weapon that the Right have chosen to wield over the past 6 years. Galloway stood both for Palestine and against Islamaphobia, which coexists in Labour alongside the ‘antisemitism’ narrative.
That is why I would have voted for him and why Chris Williamson campaigned for him. You have to sift out the chaff from the wheat.
And yes there is a real problem in identity politics which are wholly reactionary. They are an alternative to class politics which is where socialists should be. We see that in the gay groups in Labour and the gay MPs like Peter Kyle, Chris Bryant etc. Wholly on the right, anti-Palestinian, Islamaphobic, pro-Israel. I don’t see many prominent Labour Gays coming out in support of the Palestinians or opposing Islamaphobia. People might not like to admit it but gay right campaigners have moved to the Labour Right and the racist right. Clearly that provokes an opposite reaction.
People seem not to be able to understand how the Right has taken advantage of identity politics so that Jews in Britain are equal to Black people in terms of racism rather than being White and privileged. That was the basis of the fake antisemitism campaign. Identity politics are poisonous because there’s no means of differentiating between reactionary identities such as Jews being oppressed by opposition to Zionism and genuine oppression.
Galloway may be an opportunist but on balance he was to the left of the Labour candidate and the Tory and shd have been supported
The twin evils of capitalism are exploitation and oppression. Two sides of the same coin. I have never seen Galloway bombasting against either of those. Despite the title of his new party, The Workers Pary of Great Britain, weirdly carrying an imperialist title against self-determination for Scotland, Wales or Ireland, he has never fought for working class interests. At what point has he ever stood on a picket line in solidarity with striking workers. When did he ever take up the fight against anti-trade union laws or union busting bosses. At what point did he take up the cudgels in support of sacked trade union reps. When has he ever struggled for workers control of the economy and an end to profitering and the theft of workers wages.
Not to be too workerist/economistic about this it has to be said that the majority of WOMEN/LGBT+/BAME, who are in fact working class, are also subjected to the additional oppression of sexism, homo/transphobia and racism. It is not ‘woke’ or ‘politically correct’ to want to put an end to women’s second class status, homo/trans bashing or institutional racism. It is part of the bedrock of any Marxist approach that expoitation and oppression are co-equal in keeping workers down and divided. Both have to be fought against together. Not to do that means pandering to the morbid, right-wing sentiments of the anti-woke brigade.
Galloway’s forte politically is anti-war/anti-Imperialism and appealing to muslim communities against Islamaphobia and for electoral support. His record on solidarity with the Palestinan struggle for freedom is thoroughly principled and laudable as is his attack on the so-called war on terror leading to the destruction of Iraq and the fiasco in Afghanistan among other atrocities despite his fulsome praise of Sadam Hussain. But this raises a question. If he is so concerned about the destruction wrought by Imperialism and the poverty/terror in its wake where are his demands for open borders for refugeess fleeing the carnage. It is also noticeble he is silent on the question of immigration. Who is he trying to appease?
On the other side of the argument. There is a problem about ‘separatism’ and ‘identity’ politics. The absence of class politics regarding oppressed groups is evident by their lack of connection to the Labour Movement and revolutionary politics. This should not be used as an excuse to say they are all irredeemable etc however much they may be used by right-wing Labour MPs to justify reactionary/reformist politics. Groups like Extinction Rebellion, Black Live Matter, Gay Liberation, Womens Liberation, Insulate Britain and so on have to be persuaded that saving the planet and full human liberation are not possible in a capitalist system. That means socialists have to have an input into these groups to bring this about instead of dismissing them as bourgeois movements and needless distractions form the real struggles etc.
To give you two examples from my corner of the world – Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants and ‘Say no to Homonationalism’. Both groups are socialist and anti-Imperialist. The first fully supports the right of migrants to stay and has helped to stop deportations. The second fights against the use of ‘Pinkwashing’ to justify the oppression of Palestinians by the Israeli armed forces and against governments that might use the reactionary and death-dealing ways of treating homosexuals as part of the excuse to justify the Imperalist invasion of those countries.
The other thing I also mention is Galloway’s Stalinoid avoidance of China’s incarceration of the Uyghur people in concentration camps and their use as forced labour as well as his support for other authroiitarian regimes such as Putin’s Russia (Galloway has a programme on Russia TV).