I knew something was rotten at the core of Respect but, as a Nigerian, I had no idea how awful its leader, George Galloway, was until I read his book I’m Not the Only One which Solidarity reviewed a few months ago. I suppose I should have followed the recommendation of the review and not started the book, because I have never read such sexist and national-chauvinistic filth in all my time.
Obviously I oppose the Tories, New Labour, and the capitalist press, but when Galloway targets his female opponents with such phrases as “Air-headed blow-dried telly-dollies”, “fragrant rose” or describes them as “all folded arms, chins and bosoms” or compares the discovery of a vial of botox by UN weapon’s inspectors with less than the “ever-rosy cheeks of Miss Joan Collins” or says the “wives of the elite” wouldn’t “get a spot in Sex in the City”, I wonder about George Galloway’s socialist sanity.
I start to get even more alarmed when he tells me he receives filing cabinets full of hate mail including death threats and then publicly lists the names of his front line female staff on page xi. (Of course they’re probably better able to deal with it than Galloway — I’m not being condescending).
There is also his capitulation to sexist religious sentiment when he tries to send his bus from the Miriam Appeal to Iraq with an all male crew because he’s afraid of what the Muslims will say and the “wives back home”. Fortunately a woman named Alex, a bus driver, gets the upper hand by driving the bus through the middle east and steals the limelight from Galloway. It turns out Galloway’s sexist concerns were not a concern at all.
George Galloway writes much drivel about being a “British Patriot” and capitulates to nationalism while casting Middle East culture in romantic imagery. He says, for instance, “I came to love Iraq the way a man loves a woman.” This it will be remembered is a man who is personally anti-abortion in a party (Respect) that takes no concrete stand in favour of abortion or homosexuality. Then there is the remarkable piece of xenophobia where he blames Kosovo for importing drugs, prostitution, people trafficking, crime and fundamentalist terrorism to England.
Then there are his politics. He states he’s a republican at several points and then calls Queen Elizabeth II a “good egg”. We can establish that he hates Trotskyists whom he calls “fanatic” at one stage but he has supposedly forged an alliance with them in Respect. (I’d watch my back Lindsay German). And he states he actually opposes many independence struggles including those close to home like Scotland, Catalonia, and the Basque. He says on page 72 that every nation has the right to self-determination but also has the “right not to exercise that right”.
Most importantly though there are his contradictory remarks about his relationship with Saddam Hussein and Iraq and his work in the Middle East.
Never once does he actually come out and say in this book that he supports the Iraqi working class or that he will forge an alliance with them. All his references are to high level (sometimes cloak and dagger) “diplomacy” on behalf of the Labour Party and the Labour Party Government when it is in power. He states also on page 40 that he supported Khomeini and the “Islamic revolution” in Iran, then on page 112 he says he opposed the US-backed overthrow of Khomeini. He says on page 45 that in 1990 he was the enemy of the Iraqi regime then lower down on the page he says he decided to support the Iraqi regime (note not the “Iraqi workers” or even the “people”) as a lesser evil of US imperialism.
To any Kurd or Iraqi who has suffered at the hands of Saddam Hussein, there is an inexcusable section where Galloway says “By the standards of contemporary dictatorships Saddam himself may have been a killer but he was not a thief”, that he was not a Hitler, just a Third World Dictator and that he did not commit genocide equivalent to killing six million Jews. Galloway chooses not to mention the millions of Kurds, gypsies, homosexuals, and other ordinary working class Iraqi men and women who were killed by Hussein. And he chooses to downplay the gassing of Kurds by Hussein in 1988 by comparing it to what Britain did to them. (Both were inexcusable.)
This book is parliamentary, reformist nonsense riddled with contradictions, inconsistencies and a total absence of relevant revolutionary politics.
Amina Rules, Canada
