George Galloway Online
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Monday, 29 August 2011
No place for the EDL in Tower Hamlets
However the terms on which the Home Secretary's ban has been imposed and the reasons provided for the ban are not acceptable. The Home Secretary, acting on advice from the Met Police, has banned all marches for 30 days from 2 September in Tower Hamlets on the grounds that the cost of policing will be too high.
Freedom of speech is a fundamental right, as is the right to protest. In particular, we should have the right to march in Tower Hamlets to uphold the fundamental, democratic principles of cultural diversity and religious and racial tolerance.
Monday, 22 August 2011
George Galloway: Lesson from history.. be careful what you wish for
THOUGH, like Mark Twain, his death has often been exaggerated, barring a real sandstorm it looks like we'll be seeing the demise of Colonel Gaddafi very soon.
Many have predicted that Tripoli will be a Stalingrad fight from house to house but I don't agree with that myself.
Others think that the Colonel - 42 years the supreme ruler of a state which officially had no rulers at all - will fight to the last drop of his own as well as other people's blood. I don't believe that either.
Zimbabwe en route to Venezuela sounds like the Dunroamin retirement home most likely for a man who would most certainly frighten the horses.
Many have predicted that Tripoli will be a Stalingrad fight from house to house but I don't agree with that myself.
Others think that the Colonel - 42 years the supreme ruler of a state which officially had no rulers at all - will fight to the last drop of his own as well as other people's blood. I don't believe that either.
Zimbabwe en route to Venezuela sounds like the Dunroamin retirement home most likely for a man who would most certainly frighten the horses.
Wednesday, 17 August 2011
Viva Palestina 6 - join the siege busters
Much has changed for the Palestinian people and the wider region in the 11 months since our last convoy.
Dictatorship has fallen in Egypt. Palestine has moved up the international agenda. Yet the siege on Gaza remains. Israel recently blocked the second international flotilla. Major aid agencies report that the situation in Gaza is as bad as ever. Civil society organisation and NGOs in Gaza have issued an appeal to the transitional Egyptian authorities to open the Rafah crossing for the free movement of people and goods. A promised partial opening earlier this year did not go far enough and has largely been reversed. Meanwhile, the condition of Palestinians living under occupation in the West Bank and Jerusalem continues to deteriorate with ongoing illegal settlement building and the construction of the apartheid/separation wall. Outside Palestine, conditions for three million Palestinian refugees living in camps remain desperate, despite UN and international recognition of their right to return to their homes.
Monday, 15 August 2011
Mama said, They'll be days like this.
by Kevin Ovenden
What did people expect? Just over a year ago, during the general election campaign in Britain, I remember George Galloway on the stump warning that the last time the Tories came in to replace an already dead Labour government and pursue full-blooded, class war policies, Britain’s cities went up in flames. That was 1981. Three decades later the Sunday supplement features on Brixton, Toxteth and St Paul’s all situated those events in the aggressive policing, racist exclusion and darkening hopes of the young of the time.
The same papers in 1981 had amplified the Tories’ denunciations of the “mindless criminality” of those who rose up, and foreshadowed the hapless John Major’s injunction to “condemn more, and understand less”. That the Tories and the right are doing the same today comes as no surprise. They cannot accept that it is their policies, building on many more years of social polarisation and stigmatisation of the poorest that are the condition which has produced today’s riots. In a similar way, the Blair government could not bring itself to accept that its policies - at home and abroad - created the circumstances in which the 7/7 attacks took place in London in 2005. There was a hue and cry against anyone who said we should try to understand. Yet within a year, that understanding had become commonplace - from the analysts of MI5 to the mainstream of the labour movement.
What did people expect? Just over a year ago, during the general election campaign in Britain, I remember George Galloway on the stump warning that the last time the Tories came in to replace an already dead Labour government and pursue full-blooded, class war policies, Britain’s cities went up in flames. That was 1981. Three decades later the Sunday supplement features on Brixton, Toxteth and St Paul’s all situated those events in the aggressive policing, racist exclusion and darkening hopes of the young of the time.
The same papers in 1981 had amplified the Tories’ denunciations of the “mindless criminality” of those who rose up, and foreshadowed the hapless John Major’s injunction to “condemn more, and understand less”. That the Tories and the right are doing the same today comes as no surprise. They cannot accept that it is their policies, building on many more years of social polarisation and stigmatisation of the poorest that are the condition which has produced today’s riots. In a similar way, the Blair government could not bring itself to accept that its policies - at home and abroad - created the circumstances in which the 7/7 attacks took place in London in 2005. There was a hue and cry against anyone who said we should try to understand. Yet within a year, that understanding had become commonplace - from the analysts of MI5 to the mainstream of the labour movement.
Wednesday, 10 August 2011
Riots and condemnation without context
Just as the explosion of social unrest that has engulfed working class communities all over London are a predictable outcome to the enormous economic and social pressure said communities have been under as the Tory-led coalition government doles out its punishment to the poor and the working class in response to an economic recession not of their making, and with the tension that has long existed between the alienated youth of our inner cities and the police, so has been the response by the political class and mainstream commentators.
Condemnation without context has been the stock in trade of those sitting at the apex of society, as they seek to explain away the unrest as nothing more than “wanton acts of criminality” or the actions of “mindless thugs”.
While this may be the accepted truth according to the norms of polite society, it fails utterly to get at the root causes. But no one should be under any illusion that this failure is the product of ignorance. On the contrary it is exactly as intended. Assorted right wing commentators and politicians clearly have a vested interest in refusing to admit their own culpability in shaping a society more unequal than at any time since Charles Dickens was in his pomp as a searing critic of Victorian barbarism in the treatment of the nation’s poor and working class over a century past.
Condemnation without context has been the stock in trade of those sitting at the apex of society, as they seek to explain away the unrest as nothing more than “wanton acts of criminality” or the actions of “mindless thugs”.
While this may be the accepted truth according to the norms of polite society, it fails utterly to get at the root causes. But no one should be under any illusion that this failure is the product of ignorance. On the contrary it is exactly as intended. Assorted right wing commentators and politicians clearly have a vested interest in refusing to admit their own culpability in shaping a society more unequal than at any time since Charles Dickens was in his pomp as a searing critic of Victorian barbarism in the treatment of the nation’s poor and working class over a century past.
Monday, 8 August 2011
George Galloway: Leaders playing with fire
I have already written here that our old Etonian government of white-tied Bullingdon Club multi-millionaires would set the country on fire while they fiddled and now they have.
Tottenham, like many parts of the country, is a toxic pyre of seething resentment against racist policing, bigotry, institutionalised discrimination, savage cuts in public services, mass unemployment and hopelessness. No meaningful political leadership exists in such places; no constructive channel exists for such rage to be heard. But everybody has heard them now.
Without leaders, the youth of Tottenham have cried out from beyond the political graveyard and said, "We exist. And you will listen to us."
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