George Galloway wins Bradford West: Labour should learn lesson

Whatever you think of George Galloway, the main parties should take heed. This is the public putting a rocket up your bum. It's no use dismissing this arrogantly as the victory of "communalism", "oh it was just the Muslim vote", and all the other whining I've seen and heard since he won his astonishing 36 per cent swing in last night's Bradford West by-election for the Respect party. The voters have noted that the Tories are emboldened in their attacks on every aspect of life for anybody who isn't a top earner while the creepy Lib Dems facilitate their pillage and Labour flails pathetically.

Yes, he has a monstrous ego. Yes, he sues at the drop of a mention of his affiliations or parts of his past. Yes, he wore a cock-hugging leotard, aired his sinister submissive side when he role-played a cat with Rula Lenska on Big Brother and was a beastly bully to the two young contestants on the show. All that is true.

But he defends the Palestinians articulately and with gusto — his performances in the US and against the awful Sky newsreader were impressive. And he is now saying what most of us are saying. While Labour can barely muster the energy to pretend they care about the damage being done to British society, Galloway provides a voice, an analysis and a willingness to fight this corner where no others will.

If Labour doesn't like Galloway then the solution is easy. Start doing your job so Galloway doesn't have to.

UPDATE: In one predominantly white middle-class ward, 900 votes went to Respect while only 40 went to Labour.

Sunday 8th April 2012 — Patrick Coburn in the Independent:

The Economist, after recording that Mr Galloway is "a hate figure for the British establishment", claims he won his seat "mostly by touting his opposition to the war in Afghanistan." (Note the use of the loaded word "touting".) But what should be more relevant to current British politics than the Afghan war where 407 British soldiers have been killed and a small British army of 9,500 is still fighting? It is a conflict in which men and women have died and are dying in vain: their intervention has achieved nothing; the Taliban are not being defeated and this should long have been self-evident.

Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven

The challenge: to tell the story of the tragic demise of the Respect party through satire and vulgar abuse of the literary classics or whichever other cultural medium floats your boat.

Anyone uninterested in the ins and outs of the far left look away now.

Today I am mostly quoting John Milton and Paradise Lost, Book 1 (including line numbers). This was one of Paul Foot's favourite poems, so a double heaping of irony here.


So stretch out huge in length the Arch-fiend lay
[210]
Chain'd on the burning Lake, nor ever thence
Had ris'n or heav'd his head, but that the will
And high permission of all-ruling Heaven
Left him at large to his own dark designs,
That with reiterated crimes he might
Heap on himself damnation, while he sought
Evil to others, and enrag'd might see
How all his malice serv'd but to bring forth
Infinite goodness, grace and mercy shewn
On Man by him seduc't, but on himself
[220]
Treble confusion, wrath and vengeance pour'd.
Forthwith upright he rears from off the Pool
His mighty Stature; on each hand the flames
Drivn backward slope their pointing spires, & rowld
In billows, leave i'th' midst a horrid Vale.
Then with expanded wings he stears his flight
Aloft, incumbent on the dusky Air
That felt unusual weight, till on dry Land
He lights, if it were Land that ever burn'd
With solid, as the Lake with liquid fire;
[230]
And such appear'd in hue, as when the force
Of subterranean wind transports a Hill
Torn from Pelorus, or the shatter'd side
Of thundring Aetna, whose combustible
And fewel'd entrals thence conceiving Fire,
Sublim'd with Mineral fury, aid the Winds,
And leave a singed bottom all involv'd
With stench and smoak: Such resting found the sole
Of unblest feet. Him followed his next Mate,
Both glorying to have scap't the Stygian flood
[240]
As Gods, and by their own recover'd strength,
Not by the sufferance of supernal Power.
Is this the Region, this the Soil, the Clime,
Said then the lost Arch Angel, this the seat
That we must change for Heav'n, this mournful gloom
For that celestial light? Be it so, since hee
Who now is Sovran can dispose and bid
What shall be right: fardest from him is best
Whom reason hath equald, force hath made supream
Above his equals. Farewel happy Fields
[250]
Where Joy for ever dwells: Hail horrours, hail
Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell
Receive thy new Possessor: One who brings
A mind not to be chang'd by Place or Time.
The mind is its own place, and in it self
Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be, all but less then hee
Whom Thunder hath made greater? Here at least
We shall be free; th' Almighty hath not built
[260]
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure, and in my choyce
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav'n.
But wherefore let we then our faithful friends,
Th' associates and copartners of our loss
Lye thus astonisht on th' oblivious Pool,
And call them not to share with us their part
In this unhappy Mansion, or once more
With rallied Arms to try what may be yet
[270]
Regaind in Heav'n, or what more lost in Hell?
So Satan spake, and him Beelzebub
Thus answer'd. Leader of those Armies bright,
Which but th' Omnipotent none could have foyld,
If once they hear that voyce, their liveliest pledge
Of hope in fears and dangers, heard so oft
In worst extreams, and on the perilous edge
Of battel when it rag'd, in all assaults
Their surest signal, they will soon resume
New courage and revive, though now they lye
[280]
Groveling and prostrate on yon Lake of Fire,
As we erewhile, astounded and amaz'd,
No wonder, fall'n such a pernicious highth.
For Daddy, the witchhunting bastard, made me doeth it.

If you read all the above you will have noticed that I haven't had to change a word (sort of). Methinks Milton had a Tardis or sumthin' for he sure sayeth the sooth.

The raptors are coming ...

In a lighter satirical moment, Splintered Sunrise has had fun with Mark Anthony's funeral speech from Julius Caesar.

I've done it before but I'm having another crack at Yeats's Second Coming:

Burning and burning in the widening gyre
The raptor cannot hear his conscience;
Principles fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of comradeship is drowned;
The best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity and get to appear on Question Time.
Although the very worst stamp their little hobnails when they don't.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Socialist Worker
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with ferret body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Westminster to be born?

The raptors are coming ...

In a lighter satirical moment, Splintered Sunrise has had fun with Mark Anthony's funeral speech from Julius Caesar.

I've done it before but I'm having another crack at Yeats's Second Coming:

Burning and burning in the widening gyre
The raptor cannot hear his conscience;
Principles fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of comradeship is drowned;
The best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity and get to appear on Question Time.
Although the very worst stamp their little hobnails when they don't.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Socialist Worker
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with ferret body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Westminster to be born?

A Bad Case of the Trots

For anyone who missed it first time around, you can catch Madam Miaow in Cassandra mode at:

A Bad Case of the Trots

Printed in Tribune, 5th September 2003.

Plus ca change ...

A Bad Case of the Trots

For anyone who missed it first time around, you can catch Madam Miaow in Cassandra mode at:

A Bad Case of the Trots

Printed in Tribune, 5th September 2003.

Plus ca change ...

Chewing off your own foot

Well, we were waiting for the San Andreas Fault to give and here it comes.

Ructions within the British far left over the Galloway "Respect" bodge-up are so catastrophic that the Socialist Workers Party is now chewing off its own foot and expelling three players in the inner circle.

Two of them, Nick Wrack and Rob Hoveman (the SWP National Secretary's Mini-Me) have been proactive in this mess from the start when they facilitated the destruction of the Socialist Alliance, the first time the left had worked together in an era, so few will be shedding any tears. The fact that Hoveman, who was extremely personally close to the Cardinal Richelieu leadership, has been purged illustrates just how deeply damaging their policies have been.

The axis running the SWP have screwed over everyone around them in ever-decreasing circles until there’s only them left. Well done, comrades. I hope you feel great standing in the rubble. Admire your handiwork - it’s all yours.

The Morlock Tendency

Only a fool doesn’t learn from experience, but only in the whacky world of the Left is excusing the regular Groundhog Day rerun of disasters transformed into an auto-lobotomising virtue.

The Popular Front Barnum & Bailey monstrosity of "a special type" that is Respect has lost credibility with all but a few, and still the Morlock tendency insists on herding us Eloi into the cattlepens. “Don’t panic. Nuthin’ to see. You’d be nice with mint sauce.”

My dear sweet old Stalinist Ma and Pa always told me that solidarity in the working class movement is paramount. That you never do over a fellow leftist. So to see a raft of these characters building their careers by doing just that came as a shock.

Raised on a revulsion for careerists, adventurists, opportunists and all the other one-off-the-wrists who clutter up La Causa, my instinct would have been to kick them out of the movement. But no. Perversely, the Morlocks insist that these boys and girls are now the saviours of “The Class”, and urge us to “coalesce” around one particular one now that Galloway has shot his bolt and got his media career underway.

It doesn’t matter that certain parties built their careers by smashing up fellow lefties and purging respected anti-war activists at the Socialist Workers Party's (SWP) behest. According to the Morlocks they have "moved on", to use one of Blair’s favourite phrases. Yet one protege's debut on the scene took the form of the destruction of the thriving Birmingham Stop The War Coalition (BSTWC) when maximum mobilisation was needed. The new regime was so inept that they hadn’t booked any coaches for one important London anti-war protest and the purged activists had to step in and organise transport for them. You may well ask the classic question: who gains?

One particularly spiteful letter written to Birmingham Trades Council in 2002 targets a striking firefighter and respected socialist and anti-racist, Steve Godward, freshly purged from the BSTWC. It’s a stunning Stalinesque act of betrayal of someone who is on your side but, unfortunately, in your way.

It's not just about one person - this behaviour is endemic on the Left. But I think it is fair comment to ask, if in practice you have persecuted workers in struggle, why you should ever be trusted again?

Being part of the machine, as some have pleaded, or being sponsored by the “comrades”, is no excuse as some of us have been more than able to say no to the control freaks. If anything, that’s as good a test of character and socialist credentials as I can imagine. It is said that a person’s character is revealed by the moral and ethical choices they make under pressure and that's what's happened here.

Some sort of truth and reconciliation would be welcome but the initiative has to come from those who genuinely understand what they did and why. Some massive apologies are needed before anything really does move on, especially in this instance to a striking firefighter and his three-year old son who was expelled from his nursery school when all this blew up, who had the misfortune to fall foul of the egos on the Left.

Turning and turning in the dissembling gyre, the raptor cannot hear the whistle;
Principles fall apart; the centre cannot hold.
The best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity and get to appear on Question Time.

The Morlock Tendency

Only a fool doesn’t learn from experience, but only in the whacky world of the Left is excusing the regular Groundhog Day rerun of disasters transformed into an auto-lobotomising virtue.

The Popular Front Barnum & Bailey monstrosity of "a special type" that is Respect has lost credibility with all but a few, and still the Morlock tendency insists on herding us Eloi into the cattlepens. “Don’t panic. Nuthin’ to see. You’d be nice with mint sauce.”

My dear sweet old Stalinist Ma and Pa always told me that solidarity in the working class movement is paramount. That you never do over a fellow leftist. So to see a raft of these characters building their careers by doing just that came as a shock.

Raised on a revulsion for careerists, adventurists, opportunists and all the other one-off-the-wrists who clutter up La Causa, my instinct would have been to kick them out of the movement. But no. Perversely, the Morlocks insist that these boys and girls are now the saviours of “The Class”, and urge us to “coalesce” around one particular one now that Galloway has shot his bolt and got his media career underway.

It doesn’t matter that certain parties built their careers by smashing up fellow lefties and purging respected anti-war activists at the Socialist Workers Party's (SWP) behest. According to the Morlocks they have "moved on", to use one of Blair’s favourite phrases. Yet one protege's debut on the scene took the form of the destruction of the thriving Birmingham Stop The War Coalition (BSTWC) when maximum mobilisation was needed. The new regime was so inept that they hadn’t booked any coaches for one important London anti-war protest and the purged activists had to step in and organise transport for them. You may well ask the classic question: who gains?

One particularly spiteful letter written to Birmingham Trades Council in 2002 targets a striking firefighter and respected socialist and anti-racist, Steve Godward, freshly purged from the BSTWC. It’s a stunning Stalinesque act of betrayal of someone who is on your side but, unfortunately, in your way.

It's not just about one person - this behaviour is endemic on the Left. But I think it is fair comment to ask, if in practice you have persecuted workers in struggle, why you should ever be trusted again?

Being part of the machine, as some have pleaded, or being sponsored by the “comrades”, is no excuse as some of us have been more than able to say no to the control freaks. If anything, that’s as good a test of character and socialist credentials as I can imagine. It is said that a person’s character is revealed by the moral and ethical choices they make under pressure and that's what's happened here.

Some sort of truth and reconciliation would be welcome but the initiative has to come from those who genuinely understand what they did and why. Some massive apologies are needed before anything really does move on, especially in this instance to a striking firefighter and his three-year old son who was expelled from his nursery school when all this blew up, who had the misfortune to fall foul of the egos on the Left.

Turning and turning in the dissembling gyre, the raptor cannot hear the whistle;
Principles fall apart; the centre cannot hold.
The best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity and get to appear on Question Time.

"All Change" for the comrades

I looked from the SWP to George Galloway, and from GG to the SWP, and from the SWP to GG again; but already it was impossible to tell who'd look better in a bacon sandwich.

The real Gorgeous George told the story of the Communist Party member who left a gathering of comrades to go to the loo and returned two minutes later to find that, unbeknownst to him, the party line had changed. We don't know what happened to him but his mates are thriving in the British "Left".

After several years of defending the indefensible, it's all change for the comrades. A recent SWP National Council saw the poor dears turning on a dime at whiplash speeds in response to an ugly bust-up with Galloway, who'd been presented as their Saviour Who Can Do No Wrong. How did it go from GG saying of the SWP's moustache-twirling Cardinal Richelieu and kingmaker, "He made me an MP," to him being unable to even mention the Respect National Secretary by name?

The ancient maxim, politics is showbiz for ugly people, has rarely seemed more apposite. The lure of having their mugs on the telly and their pearls of wisdom quoted in the press proved intoxicating to the Party leadership. Principles were ditched, successful groups wrecked, allies purged just so they could take the "Don't You Know Who I Am" road to oblivion. They even sold their prized printing press. If those whom the gods aim to destroy they first make mad, then the deities did a good job here. Four years into the millennium, one such leader is said to have chastised the organiser of an anti-war conference who hadn't invited them with, "I am the leader of the biggest, most significant social movement this century". The fact that it was a conference for academics and this person wasn't one cut no ice.

But how to deal with inconvenient contradictions? Taking Animal Farm as their model, the Popular Front became "The United Front of a special type". The Socialist Alliance, which formed the spine of the SWP's other project, the Stop The War Coalition, was airbrushed out of history in best Stalinist fashion. Bourgeois businessmen and those driven by their faith became the revolutionaries' best buddies whilst old left allies were written off as "the Left Ghetto."

And George Galloway was hailed as Supreme Being.

All credit to GG for standing up in the US Senate and denouncing the war in Iraq. But anyone who dared point out that this anti-abortion, Armani-suited, villa-owning, Mercedes-driving chum of Middle-East despots might not be everyone's idea of the heir to Marx, was flamed by hacks using as dishonest a set of tactics as the worst Stalinoids.

Give Galloway his due, though, he always said "I'm not as left as people think," and yet the hacks were happy to perpetuate that myth. Now he's Emmanuel Goldstein and the comrades are enjoying their three-minute hate - only someone lost the stopwatch.

At a time when capitalism is entering its most decrepit, most vicious phase and we are about to witness if Rosa Luxembourg was correct to warn that we will see "... either the triumph of imperialism and the destruction of all culture, and, as in ancient Rome, depopulation, desolation, degeneration, a vast cemetery; ...", the "comrades" have fiddled away while opportunities burned. And what music they make.

"All Change" for the comrades

I looked from the SWP to George Galloway, and from GG to the SWP, and from the SWP to GG again; but already it was impossible to tell who'd look better in a bacon sandwich.

The real Gorgeous George told the story of the Communist Party member who left a gathering of comrades to go to the loo and returned two minutes later to find that, unbeknownst to him, the party line had changed. We don't know what happened to him but his mates are thriving in the British "Left".

After several years of defending the indefensible, it's all change for the comrades. A recent SWP National Council saw the poor dears turning on a dime at whiplash speeds in response to an ugly bust-up with Galloway, who'd been presented as their Saviour Who Can Do No Wrong. How did it go from GG saying of the SWP's moustache-twirling Cardinal Richelieu and kingmaker, "He made me an MP," to him being unable to even mention the Respect National Secretary by name?

The ancient maxim, politics is showbiz for ugly people, has rarely seemed more apposite. The lure of having their mugs on the telly and their pearls of wisdom quoted in the press proved intoxicating to the Party leadership. Principles were ditched, successful groups wrecked, allies purged just so they could take the "Don't You Know Who I Am" road to oblivion. They even sold their prized printing press. If those whom the gods aim to destroy they first make mad, then the deities did a good job here. Four years into the millennium, one such leader is said to have chastised the organiser of an anti-war conference who hadn't invited them with, "I am the leader of the biggest, most significant social movement this century". The fact that it was a conference for academics and this person wasn't one cut no ice.

But how to deal with inconvenient contradictions? Taking Animal Farm as their model, the Popular Front became "The United Front of a special type". The Socialist Alliance, which formed the spine of the SWP's other project, the Stop The War Coalition, was airbrushed out of history in best Stalinist fashion. Bourgeois businessmen and those driven by their faith became the revolutionaries' best buddies whilst old left allies were written off as "the Left Ghetto."

And George Galloway was hailed as Supreme Being.

All credit to GG for standing up in the US Senate and denouncing the war in Iraq. But anyone who dared point out that this anti-abortion, Armani-suited, villa-owning, Mercedes-driving chum of Middle-East despots might not be everyone's idea of the heir to Marx, was flamed by hacks using as dishonest a set of tactics as the worst Stalinoids.

Give Galloway his due, though, he always said "I'm not as left as people think," and yet the hacks were happy to perpetuate that myth. Now he's Emmanuel Goldstein and the comrades are enjoying their three-minute hate - only someone lost the stopwatch.

At a time when capitalism is entering its most decrepit, most vicious phase and we are about to witness if Rosa Luxembourg was correct to warn that we will see "... either the triumph of imperialism and the destruction of all culture, and, as in ancient Rome, depopulation, desolation, degeneration, a vast cemetery; ...", the "comrades" have fiddled away while opportunities burned. And what music they make.