Labour’s Genocidal Zionism Fuels Leftist Opposition

Critical support to George Galloway in Rochdale!

Support Andrew Feinstein, Leanne Mohammad, Newham Socialist Labour, Liverpool Community Independents, Transform and all Socialists Challenging Genocidal Zionist New Labour!

The by-election in Rochdale is an outrider for a challenge to Zionist New Labour in the coming General Election. George Galloway’s campaign is the first of a series of challenges that are taking shape as the political expression of the revolutionary change of consciousness that is underway in the imperialist countries which support Israel’s genocide.

This provides a huge opportunity to challenge Zionist New Labour. In the context of the slaughter of the Palestinians in Gaza, in which the US and UK are direct participants by providing military and diplomatic support to the Netanyahu government.  The overriding issue is Palestine. George Galloway’s challenge, whatever his other flaws, poses this point blank. He has been active in defence of the Palestinians for many decades, he is fearless in confronting Zionists and their friends in high places, and he has been brutally beaten for this by Zionists.

He was expelled from the Labour Party in 2003 for a remarkably radical stance on the Iraq war, going beyond the pacifism of the Labour left, supporting, and demanding, armed resistance from Arab bourgeois regimes to the imperialist invasion. Galloway has several times organised convoys bringing material aid to the Arab peoples, from Iraq to Palestine. From the Mariam Appeal in the 1990s that sought to break imperialism’s starvation blockade of Iraq (which caused the death through starvation and lack of medicine of half-a-million Iraqi children), to Viva Palestina after the Israeli massacre of Operation Cast Lead in 2009, where he was deported from Egypt by the collaborationist regime. Galloway became a hate figure for ‘left’ Islamophobes and semi-Zionists on the so-called ‘far left’ because of his uncompromising defence of Arab peoples against Zionists and neocon warmongers. Whose project was always genocidal. He twice defeated New Labour in parliamentary elections: in a hard-fought campaign in Bethnal Green and Bow during the height of the Iraq conflict in the 2005 General Election, and at Bradford West in 2012.

He was notably smeared by the bourgeois press as the recipient of oil money from Saddam Hussein. In 2004 he defeated the Tory-Zionist Daily Telegraph in libel court and again when they appealed. Islamophobes on the fake left still rant on to this day about his alleged ‘toadying’ to Saddam Hussein in the course of agitation against sanctions. One particular quote makes Galloway a bête noire: at a televised mass meeting presided over by Saddam in Baghdad in 1994, he concluded his speech thus:

“It is my belief that we must convey the very clear picture that 1994 has to be the year of the ending of the embargo against Iraq. Otherwise, famine and all the awful consequences, including acts of despair by Iraqis, will be the result; and this is the message we must convey to civilized opinion in Europe…Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability, and I want you to know that we are with you, hatta al-nasr, hatta al-nasr, hatta al-Quds [until victory, until victory, until Jerusalem].”

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Galloway

Galloway is a classic parliamentary orator, for whom it is common to address a wider public through the chair. Many speeches in parliament are addressed to a wider public through “Mr Speaker” etc. For Fleet Street hacks and phoney lefts alike, this mundane form became ‘proof’ that Galloway was a ‘stooge’ of Saddam. It is clear that the speech was a salute to the Iraqi population resisting imperialism, through Saddam as presiding chair. Various real stooges of Zionism and imperialism projected their own toadying onto Galloway. These reactionary smears deserve no quarter.

Galloway became the ultimate hate figure for the British ruling class and Zionists. Parliamentary niceties and ‘democracy’ were dispensed with in August 2014, during the Israeli Gaza massacre of Operation Protective Edge. 60-year-old Galloway was attacked in London and brutally beaten by a 40-year- old Zionist, Neil Masterson, breaking a rib and causing extensive bruising and scars. He was visibly betrayed by the Labour left and the capitulatory ‘far left’; there was very little solidarity from anyone. The only Member of Parliament who publicly denounced the assault was the sole Green MP, Carolyn Lucas. Even Jeremy Corbyn only signed a private message of support from STW people, though this was mentioned by Stop the War in a brief note introducing an article by an independent blogger, which appears to be the only public reference to the existence of this letter anywhere (https://www.stopwar.org.uk/article/george-galloway-responds-to-the-shameful-silence-of-mps-following-his-savage-beating-in-a-london-street/).

Galloway suffered a major loss of political coherence, and left-wing commitment, after that. That was a terrible betrayal by a left that capitulated to Zionism. Apart from individual leftist bloggers, such as that run by one of our political predecessors Communist Explorations, (see https://commexplor.com/2014/11/11/state-collusion-jewish-extremist-escapes-trial-for-religious-assault-on-galloway/) hardly anyone on the far left even made a fuss about it. Unfortunately, those events politically damaged George, and his partial and contradictory disillusion was expressed in a degree of sympathy for right-wing populism. At times since he has trampled over his own honourable past, which was considerable, despite his Catholic-derived opposition to abortion, which was always an important flaw.

He once boasted of being most pro-immigrant MP in Britain. His defiance of the US/UK war in Iraq was legendary – his attack on the Neocon US Senate shortly as a RESPECT MP in 2005 was exemplary. He was hostile to any whiff of anti-immigrant politics in those days, even though he could not oppose immigration controls in principle … having too much national-reformist baggage. But nevertheless in 2009 he refused to support Bob Crow’s No2EU left-wing Eurosceptic election campaign because he did not like its implicit nationalism.  In the spring of 2014 he ran a principled, working-class campaign (“Just Say Naw”) against Scottish separation, and correctly attacked the Labour Party for its ‘Better Together’ anti-independence campaign jointly organised with Tories.

But in 2016 he supported Brexit and tried to work with Nigel Farage. In 2019 he called for a vote to Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party, and even attempted to become a candidate. In 2021 his ‘Alliance for Unity’ Campaign in the Scottish Parliamentary Election called for votes for Tories against the Scottish National Party, in complete contradiction with his earlier denunciation of ‘Better Together’. He seemed to have lost his political moorings, and was flip-flopping all over the place.

Critical Support Sui Generis

His more recent activity has been even more contradictory. His initiation of No2NATONo2War as a alternative anti-war umbrella over Ukraine was an excellent idea, that unlike Stop the War took a side against the imperialist-Nazi proxy war against the people of the Donbass, aimed at dismembering Russia. Its launch in early 2023 drew thousands. But it proved abortive, and one important reason was that he insisted in including dissenting elements of the far right, centred around David Clews of Unity News Network, fellow travellers of the neo-Nazi Patriotic Alternative which has been responsible for vile attacks on immigrants and asylum seekers. This completely undercut No2NATO’s potential appeal in the labour movement, as most labour movement activists correctly do not want to be allied with dangerously racist elements like Clews.

In this situation, things are somewhat different. The dominant expression of reaction today, which pretty much overshadows all others, is the Gaza genocide. We need to give whatever political expression we can to mobilising the mass anger and radicalisation against it. This is the biggest change of consciousness in the lifetimes of even the 1960s/1970s and 1980s generation of labour movement activists, let alone younger layers of the population who are becoming politicised by this horror. In this situation, critical support for Galloway becomes an obligation. Though not in the spirit of Lenin’s famous remarks about hardened reactionary Labour leaders like Snowdon et all, of support similar to “a rope supporting a hanging man”. Galloway is a contradictory, sometimes heroic figure, and the left should see this as an opportunity to bring him and his followers in from the cold. While not going along with those elements of populist chauvinism that marrs their politics. This is aimed at overcoming that.

Galloway on his own with his mixture of anti-imperialism and pandering to xenophobia, would be highly problematic. But if he can be drawn into something broader, a left-wing movement that does not share his weakness for right-wing populism and worse, then there is a good chance that this weakness can be marginalised and transcended. His strengths are also considerable – he is an immensely powerful orator particularly when he speaks up for Palestine. What is excellent is that there are serious signs of such a broader challenge crystallising, offering hope for the future emergence of a new mass workers party capable of developing programmatically towards a revolutionary programme and outlook. Such a development is the logic of the failure of social democracy, the complete capitulation of Labour to the most reactionary manifestations of neoliberalism (Zionist genocide!) and the failure of the Labour left under Corbyn to stand up to this reaction. And its collaboration with its own downfall, apologising for non-existent ‘anti-Semitism’ and throwing his most dedicated supporters, anti-racist opponents of Zionism, under the bus.

Challenges to Starmer Multiply

The selection of Andrew Feinstein, the strongly anti-Zionist former South African MP, anti-war activist and “proud leftie Jew”, to challenge Keir Starmer in Holborn and St Pancras, is an excellent development. This was brought about by the exiled Corbynite campaign group OCISA (Organise Corbyn-Inspired Socialist Alliance) which has been sinking roots into Starmer’s constituency for the past few years. The huge discredit that Starmer’s approval of Israeli genocidal measures has caused, brought about an explosion among Labour’s mass base particularly in the immigrant-derived working class in cities like London. The challenge of Leanne Mohammad, a well-known Palestinian activist, to arch-Zionist neoliberal Wes Streeting in Ilford North is also very promising – independent lefts are now the main opposition on the local Council. As Skwawkbox pointed out:

“With neighbouring Tower Hamlets already run by Lutfur Rahman’s Aspire party after a landslide in the last council and mayoral elections and Newham Independents romping home in recent by-elections and scheduled elections, Labour and Streeting, who has been the target of protests and boycotts by outraged locals for his Gaza weaselling, have cause to be worried.

https://skwawkbox.org/2024/01/16/independents-select-palestinian-leanne-mohamad-to-stand-against-streeting/

A number of left Labour MPs, Corbyn himself, Diane Abbot and Kate Osamor, have been deprived of the chance to stand for Labour, and will have little choice but to stand as independents if to preserve their access to the Parliamentary platform. They will most likely win if they fight.

Nor is this a London phenomenon, as Galloway’s intervention in Rochdale shows. The challenge by Liverpool Community Independents’ Sam Gorst to Maria Eagle in Liverpool Garston is another left-wing challenge to an arch-Starmerite and witch hunter. And North Tyneside Mayor Jamie Driscoll, a Corbynite, defied Starmer’s attempt to purge him and will be standing as an independent in May.

Over Gaza, there have been resignations and defections of councillors all over the country, with Labour losing control of some councils, notably Oxford and Burnley. And there are a number of aspiring leftist parties challenging Labour across the country, from the new Transform party, to TUSC.

And as result of Starmer’s support for the Gaza genocide, Labour’s huge lead in opinion polls is showing signs of narrowing. The Zionist balls-up of the Labour candidacy in Rochdale is a prime example of what is involved. Starmer will likely win the election by default given the huge popular hatred of the Tories, who have impoverished Britain hugely in the past 14 years, and their effective political collapse into far-right politics. But his regime will be both disgustingly neoliberal and Zionist, and tainted from the get-go. Unlike Tony Blair, whose political ‘honeymoon’ lasted for his entire first term (1997-2001) Starmer is going to face a burgeoning leftist opposition right from the start.

Communists and the Labour Movement

The basis is being laid for a much broader working-class alternative to crystallise. A new working-class party will need to play a radicalising role in the trade unions, which have not been an effective force in the class struggle faced with the severe austerity and inflation the working class have suffered in this period.  The job of Marxists in this situation is to both play a unifying role, and act as a yeast for revolutionary programmatic advance, pointing the way forward for the labour movement as a whole. As Marx and Engels put it in the Communist Manifesto:

“The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other working-class parties.

“They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole.

“They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement.

“The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.

“The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.

“The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all other proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.”

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm