“This is for Gaza!” That was the triumphant cry of George Galloway as a landslide vote swept him to victory at the Rochdale by-election. The win was largely attributed to his lifelong support for an end to the Israeli genocide of Palestinians, distinguishing him from both Labour and the Conservatives, whose leaders Galloway called “two cheeks of the same backside”. It would be easy to imagine the sheer bliss felt by audiences hearing these words back home.
Despite being accused of running a one-issue race, Galloway’s campaign centred around many local problems in Rochdale: protecting the leisure centre, bringing back the local market, saving the football club, and restoring the maternity unit and A&E services, demands that would resonate with communities up and down the country, also destroyed by capitalist austerity. Although having no direct connections to Rochdale himself, Galloway has been careful not only to tap into local concerns, but also to study the history of the town, telling the story of how it birthed the co-operative movement, or how the British defended its town hall from the Nazis along with their “allies in the Soviet Union and China.”
Imperialism is the greatest crisis facing the world today and it is the first job of communists in Britain to organise against it. George Galloway has risked his life to do so, becoming hospitalised in 2014 by Neil Masterson, a British Zionist wearing an IDF hoodie who broke his jaw and ribs and beat him repeatedly in the head—leaving scars that his trademark hat covers to this day. Galloway was also an undercover agent in apartheid South Africa, joining others who supported the work of the African National Congress, including comrades from the YCL.
Galloway is completely fearless in his opposition to western imperialism, having been expelled from Tony Blair’s Labour Party for his outspoken stance against the Iraq War. He has continued to speak out against war hawks, most notably on his online programme, The Mother of All Talk Shows, in which he regularly defends China, Russia, and other countries fighting for a socialist or multipolar world. In a recent interview, he was accused of supporting Hezbollah, a “proscribed terrorist organisation”, to which he simply responded that Hezbollah is part of the Lebanese government with diplomatic relations to the British government, and a right to resist foreign occupiers. In 2009, Galloway was part of an aid convoy, delivering £1 million of food, medicine, clothes as well as emergency vehicles to the besieged people of Gaza.
George Galloway’s response to the media also marks him out from Jeremy Corbyn, a decent enough reformist socialist who nevertheless crumbled under pressure from a hostile capitalist press. When accused of anti-Semitism or support for Hezbollah or the IRA, Corbyn’s defensiveness would come across as weak and dismissive, while Galloway correctly finds opportunity in these interviews to expose the class bias of the media and educate viewers on who the real terrorists are. Galloway is also far less likely to roll over on any of his socialist positions than Corbyn was, not only because of personal strength, but also because, unlike Corbyn, he has the full backing of an independent party. Whether due to personal weaknesses or pressure from within or outside his party, Corbyn made several capitulations to the capitalist class before even taking office, not only on Brexit, but also on Syrian airstrikes and NATO. Galloway’s Worker’s Party of Britain has a ten-point programme of socialist policies, the first of which is to leave the imperialist NATO alliance.
As a strong, anti-imperialist, and charismatic leader with a long list of socialist policies who can speak across the liberal-conservative divide and refuses to back down from a fight, George Galloway has naturally attracted the most hate from the liberal ‘Left’, who never seem to be able to recognise a win when they see one. In Galloway’s case, they have scraped together a weak ‘red-brown’ analysis by completely ignoring a lifetime of militant anti-racism, combing through poorly worded tweets or speeches, removing them from context, and weaponizing them to lump Galloway into a bin labelled ‘bigot’ right next to another one labelled ‘fascist’.
Taking a few examples, Galloway’s defence of Julian Assange, one of the most important anti-imperialist journalists this country has ever known, who faced a smear campaign for sexual assault, has led to charges of ‘rape apologism’. Galloway has also been attacked for his opposition to the sexualisation of children and postmodernist gender theory being taught in schools, two working-class concerns which most of the ‘Left’ finds too distasteful to engage with.
Allegations of his supposed ‘right-wing’ or even ‘far-right’ politics largely come from a misreading of his populist rhetoric, his illiberalism, or his efforts to reach working-class Tory voters and outmanoeuvre the nationalist right by speaking to the same groups or from the same platforms. A tweet claiming he would vote Tory as a part of the Alliance for Unity campaign has even drawn accusations that he is a class traitor, without any evidence that he actually did so, and without any consideration that the Tory and Labour Parties both represent attacks on our class: one openly, the other covertly. In the words of the WPB: “Labour, Tory, same old story.”
We’ll have to wait and see if Galloway’s new, Trumpian, ‘Make Britain Great’ populism will cast the same spell as it did in the States, although it will certainly leave a bad taste in the mouth of many a Leftist. But the Galloway magic has won him three elections outside of the major parties, so finger-wagging from the unelected ‘Left’ just comes across like sour grapes. Not even childish gibes about Galloway’s no doubt deeply regretted stint on Celebrity Big Brother have stopped his recent success. In fact, it’s probably helped humanise him, and there’s something irresistible about someone who lets mockery roll off him like water off a duck’s back.
Like it or not, Galloway’s success should be a lesson to communists. It’s our job to make communist politics popular among the whole working class, not just the ‘Left’, and speaking to liberal and conservative workers in a language they both understand will be crucial to uniting both tribes around class issues. Communists should also take note that if we ever come as close to power as Galloway, we’ll inevitably face the same attacks as he has and should be prepared to respond.
It is worth noting that the question of whether Galloway will move beyond the dead-end path of reformism remains up in the air. His support for communists like Castro, Guevara, and Mao, as well as his close relationships with Marxist-Leninists and Communist Parties is promising. However, Galloway has also referred to himself as “a disciple of Tony Benn”, a principled reformist who nevertheless failed to take hold of the levers of power, not of the Labour Party, let alone of government. His association with Harpal Brar’s Communist Party of Great Britain–Marxist-Leninist was severed years ago. CPGB-ML withdrew its affiliation to the WPB in 2022, ending joint membership, followed by Joti Brar stepping down as deputy leader. In a statement posted on their website, the WPB expressed that they “welcome the participation in its ranks of communists (and non-communists) from any party, but the Workers Party is not a communist party and had no intention of becoming yet another party of this type.”
Reformists come in two kinds: those who capitulate to capitalism and imperialism, and those who are removed before they pose a threat. Galloway did not bend the knee to the Labour Party when he opposed the Iraq War, so was excommunicated from its ranks.
In a televised address, the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak launched a desperate, fatuous tirade bewailing the rising ‘extremist’ influence in the country. The whole farce was an explicit response to the people of Rochdale electing the wrong kind of outsider. The hysteria of this response from the capitalist class, to one man entering parliament for a least 6 months, represents an appetite to potentially remove Galloway from the modicum of power he has won, by authoritarian means.
If that day comes, it will be up to an organised mass movement of the people to rally to his defence, and up to communists to expose the inadequacies of liberal democracy and reformism and proclaim the need for a revolutionary path forwards. Whether his new party reaches that point or not, non-sectarian support for the Galloway Project should be the position of every socialist. And once he returns to parliament, I’m sure even his greatest haters will be grabbing the popcorn.
Eben Williams is a member of the Young Communist League’s Glasgow branch.
