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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>The WEEK <BR>ending 22 May 2005</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>A DUNDONIAN BRIT IN THE COURT OF KING
GEORGE</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>George Galloway, newly elected 'Respect' MP for
Bethnal Green and Bow, gave the Senate Committee on Homeland Affairs 'both
barrels' this week, winning congratulations around the world.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>It was an audacious challenge to the stuffed-shirt
chairman Senator Norm Coleman, who was, in the words of the New York Post, left
'flat-footed' ('Brit fries senators in oil'). Galloway was right to take the
fight to his accusers, having been smeared as an oil-profiteer when his true
'crime' was to oppose the invasion of Iraq.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Galloway has been a thorn in the side of the
political establishment in Britain for many years, leading eventually to his
expulsion from the Labour Party for denouncing the most recent attack on Iraq.
Loathed by Labour and Tory alike, the radical Galloway has none the less
succeeded in winning the grudging admiration of the British media.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>British reports of the Capitol Hill contest gloried
in the supposed superiority of the Parliamentary debating, as Scottish reports
claimed his Glasgow street brawling style. George has tentatively been adopted
by the usually cynical culturati as a standard-bearer for British
pluck.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>In the film Love Actually, a foppish Prime Minister
(Hugh Grant) finally works up the nerve to put down a miniac President (Billy
Bob Thornton). The scene, openly applauded in British cinemas, works because it
is a fantasy. Our real Prime Minister is known for sucking up to the US
President, something that galls every inner-patriot. But Galloway made the
fantasy a reality.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Some former radicals have attacked Galloway for his
egotism. Trotskyist-turned Bush supporting journalist Christopher Hitchens
acquits him of financial corruption only to conclude that he is drunk on
adulation. Like the radical MP Henry 'Orator' Hunt, or Howard Spring's anti-hero
Hamer Radshaw in the novel Fame is the Spur, Galloway is something of an egotist
of the left, lapping up the applause.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>But people have all kinds of motivations for
getting involved in politics. Egotism is hardly the worst sin. Indeed Galloway's
recklessness has proven to be something of an asset. Rather like James Bond,
every building he vacates promptly bursts into flames behind him, whether it is
War on Want, his unduly commented upon marriage, or the Scottish Labour Party.
That might not make for enduring relationships, but on the other hand, his
cavalier approach has released him from many of the constraints that his more
staid Labour Party comrades continue to wrap around them.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Hitchens (who Galloway rubbished in Washington
rather successfully, if ecentrically, as a 'Trotskyist popinjay') also complains
that the MP is a 'Stalinist'. But this too is unfair. If Galloway is a Stalinist
he is a bedroom Stalinist, colouring in the Socialist Republics red in his
school Atlas. After all, Galloway had not been born when Stalin died in 1953,
and was an infant when Kruschev denounced him. By the time that Galloway was
elected to Parliament (1987) the Soviet Union was already being dismantled.
Those who were members of the Communist Party of Great Britain back then are
today Galloway's sternest critics, like newspaper coumnist David Aaronovitch.
What is more, the core of Galloway's activist support was provided by Hitchens'
own former Trotskyist colleagues in the Socialist Workers Party.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Galloway should be criticised for his political
ideology, which is, as he said in the Bethnal Green and Bow election campaign,
unashamedly Old Labour. Galloway's rheteorical flourishes are taken from the
past. His phrase about accusing the accusers is taken from the speeches of
Clydeside Communist leader John Mclean, or more likely from the 1973 biography
by his daughter Nan Milton. In what was no doubt a fantasy moment for Galloway,
he cast himself as the accused in those other Senate Hearings, the House of
Un-American Activities Committee, by saying 'I am not now, nor have I ever been
an oil-trader'.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Galloway's politics of parliamentary socialism had
already proved to be an inadequate alternative to capitalism when he first came
to the attention of the party nationally, challenging Roy Hattersley for not
supporting exchange controls. His dogged commitment to the party's 1945
programme of a welfare state is little more than nostalgia in an era when the
welfare state has proved to be a suffocating trap, not a means of
liberation.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Galloway's success in Bethnal Green and Bow was due
primarily to the disaggregation of the old Labour Party's political
constituency. The current Labour leadership's struggle to break free of the
traditional labour bloc of trade unions and local government left room for third
party candidates to come through. In the past the Green Party or even the
British National Party on the right have taken advantage of this opening. But in
this election, the Respect Coalition, put together by radical anti-war activists
ceased the initiative.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Locally, Galloway could call on the talents of
individuals like Asad Rehman, who worked for many years on the anti-racist
campaign, the Newham Monitoring Project. In years gone by the NMP used its
connections to deliver the Asian vote to Labour. But the Blairite sitting MP
Oona King had little use for their brand of radical leftism, and their machine
was delivered up to Galloway.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Galloway's opportunism did have negative
consequences, primarily in his willingness to tack in the direction of cultural
conservatism, underlining his opposition to abortion in such a way as might be
thought to win votes from local Muslims. Locally, Respect picketed strip shows,
and refused, in candidate Lindsey German's words 'to make a fetish out of gay
rights'.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Galloway's élan and courage stand out in today's
small-beer politics. Next to technocrats like Norm Coleman and Oona King his
passion for what he believes in is laudable (we salute your indefatigability…).
But politically, Galloway's old Labour politics have been tried and found
wanting years ago. They are no alternative in the here and now, just nostalgia
for an English Jerusalem that never was.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>CREATIVITY GAP</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>THE CREATIVITY GAP by James Heartfield is published
as a Blueprint Broadside on 12 May. Copies are free with Blueprint magazine,
available at branches of WH Smith and other newsagents. To order a copy tel 020
8606 7549 or go to <A
href="http://www.blueprintmagazine.co.uk">www.blueprintmagazine.co.uk</A><BR>* The
Department of Trade and Industry wants to put design at the centre of boosting
British export - but why are British firms putting less and less importance on
design?<BR>* There are 123 675 Art and Design Students in Britain, one in
every 16 students in higher education - so why is it that less than a quarter of
them will be working in design related industries when they
graduate?<BR>* Tony Blair says that, if no longer the workshop of the
world, Britain can claim to be its drawing board - so why have design
consultancies seen their fees halved since 2001?<BR>* The Department of
Trade and Industry celebrates the knowledge-driven economy - so why is average
productivity falling in Britain, and work becoming more labour-intensive, not
less? <BR>* The National Lottery fund and the millennium commission helped
to open museums and arts centres all over the country - but why have so many of
them been closed down?</FONT></DIV>
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