Details below:

Saturday 24 May 2014

4:00pm

The Gathering Storm

George Galloway, Stephen King, Rana Mitter. Mary Ann Sieghart hosts.

China may be on the way to replacing the US as the dominant economic power, but with Russia growing its reach as well, could the future be more dangerous still? Do we face an uncontainable multipolar world with many nations vying for power? Or should we applaud a break from US global dominance and look forward to a more equal future?

Mary Ann Sieghart asks Oxford historian Rana Mitter, HSBC chief economist Stephen King, and politician George Galloway to envisage the world’s future.

Saturday 24 May 2014

6:00pm

Say “Naw” to Separatism

George Galloway.

The future of the United Kingdom is in doubt. George Galloway issues a rallying cry against Scottish independence.

“You don’t have to like him; but if you want to change the world, you do have to learn from him” Independent

Sunday 25 May 2014

12:00pm

War and Peace

George Galloway, Mike Jackson, Edward Mortimer. Isabel Hilton hosts.

Peace on earth has been the cry of idealists throughout the ages. Yet it is warfare and violence that sells newspapers and films not heaven and tranquility. Is world peace a mistaken goal which if achieved would leave us seeking risk, danger and excitement or is it still the essential political goal?

Isabel Hilton asks outspoken politician George Galloway, former head of the British army Mike Jackson and former UN Director of Communications Edward Mortimer to imagine the end of war.

Here is the letter:

Dear Secretary of State,

I wrote to you again, as you will see below, on 19^th February with further questions that need answering with regard to the DfE and King’s Science Academy, Bradford. It is now some six weeks later and I have not yet even had an acknowledgement to the email, never mind substantive answers. Would you please now reply?

Yours sincerely,

George Galloway, MP for Bradford West

Aisha Ali-Khan, 33, was led from the dock in tears after the verdict, the Evening Standard reports.

She obtained the images after marrying DI Mohammed Afiz Khan, a Met counter-terrorism policeman, in Pakistan in 2009.

His former partner Naheed Khan, of Watford, won a High Court order requiring them to be given up, but Ms Ali-Khan did not. Judge Richard Seymour sentenced her to three months for contempt of court.

She worked for Mr Galloway’s Respect party before allegations in 2012 that she had slept with DI Khan, 47, at the MP’s Streatham home. The MP complained to the police and Home Secretary.

Ms Ali-Khan, now a teacher in Leeds, must pay about £10,000 court costs. She claimed she had destroyed the photos.

The court heard she had married DI Khan in an Islamic ceremony – but he is still legally married to Naheed Khan.

Aisha Ali-Khan and Afiz Khan are pictured.

Bradford West MP George Galloway has demanded reassurance over the sale. He made the following statement to the local daily newspaper, the Telegraph & Argus, which was not published. The T&A has been uncritical over all of the recent events involving one of the country’s most famous and long-standing clubs.

Galloway said: “I really want to be reassured about this takeover, as I am sure do the supporters, because it strikes me as extraordinary and concerning. Marc Green was the man who put the Bulls into administration, was responsible for the appointment of the administrator and he’s walked away with the prize, courtesy of the administrator. Now it all may be entirely above board but it has all been done behind the closed curtains of commercial confidentiality.

“Obviously we all want a lasting solution for the club, but there is a history of mismanagement, false and failed promises and that cannot happen again. Supporters and creditors need to know that this was the best bid on the table, there needs to be transparency. There are a barrowload of questions which need to be answered, first off but not least, what happens with the loan from Bradford council? Is that being honoured? Was the council even consulted? What about the season ticket money which is already banked? Does that go into the new company or to creditors? I could go on.

“The administrator needs to justify this decision. And Marc Green’s financial bona fides and his commitment to the Bulls laid out explicitly. He may be the best thing ever to happen to the club but he now needs to prove that. Why hasn’t he arranged for an open meeting of supporters to put his case for the stewardship of this historic club, and will he do now?”

Joseph Hayat- Great Horton

Shazad Murtaza – Keighley East

Ansar Miah – Keighley Central

Colette Williams – Moss Side (Manchester)

All the details of these candidates, including profiles, are now available here. We are very proud to have them represent Respect in their various wards. We are hoping to announce further candidates in the near future…

If you have any queries, or you’d like to stand as a candidate yourself in your area under Respect, please contact us asap at [email protected]

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Following the devastating news of the death of RMT General Secretary Bob Crow on Tuesday 11th March, the union has confirmed arrangements for both Bob’s funeral and the commemoration of his life and work on Monday 24th March.

Bob Crow’s family have asked all media to respect the fact that Bob’s funeral service itself will be a private affair. Any invasion of that privacy will be taken up by the union through the press and broadcasting regulatory and complaints bodies.

However, Bob’s family recognise the huge amount of support given to Bob and the fact that his members, friends and colleagues from the wider trade union and labour movement will also want the opportunity to say goodbye.

Therefore, the union can confirm that a funeral procession will commence from a start point on Snakes Lane (IG8 7GF) – which will be clearly marked on the day and agreed with the police – assembling for 12 noon and will arrive at the City of London Cemetery and Crematorium at approximately 12.45 hours. Trade unionists with banners and flags have been invited to line the route. The immediate area around the family home will be kept clear and again the media are requested to respect that arrangement.

The procession will end at the cemetery gates and the family have asked that their wish that there be no press or public involvement beyond that point be respected in full.

In addition, a minutes silence for Bob Crow will be held at 13.30 hours on Monday 24th March which the union has requested that all members, staff, colleagues and friends of Bob observe as a mark of respect .

Donations on behalf of Bob may be made to the British Heart Foundation and a dedicated area has been set up by the family on the British Heart Foundation’s website. This can be accessed using the following link:https://lastinghope.bhf.org.uk/bobcrow

Finally, and at the family’s request, to enable all RMT members and friends and colleagues to honour Bob and his legendary championing of workers’ rights, the Council of Executives have called for a National RMT Mobilisation for the London May Day march and rally where the union will be at the forefront of the demonstration and arrangements on the day.

The march and rally will be on Thursday 1st May in London and while the final details are being confirmed with the London May Day Organising Committee RMT is already building for a huge turn-out in London on the day.

Mick Cash, RMT Senior Assistant General Secretary, said:

“Today, on behalf of Bob Crow’s family, we are able to confirm arrangements for the funeral and commemoration of the life and work of our General Secretary whose death has rocked the trade union movement, both in this country and around the world, to its very core. The thousands of messages of condolence from every part of the globe are a testament to the courage, leadership and strength that Bob shared with so many people.

“Whilst Bob Crow’s funeral itself will be a strictly private affair his friends and family recognise that many people will want to show their solidarity, respect and support both on the day itself and on May Day. These arrangements give everyone a chance to play their part.”

Funeral Procession Route to the City of London Cemetery and Crematorium, Aldersbrook Road, Manor Park, London E12 5DQ.

• Snakes Lane East (IG8 7GF)
• Right onto Chigwell Road
• Down to Charlie Brown’s roundabout
• Onto Herman Hill
• Follow to Wanstead High Street
• Right at the crossroads of Wanstead Station
• First left to Aldersbrook Road and on to Crematorium

Directions to Crematorium from Manor Park Station

• Manor Park Station, (Liverpool Street line)
• Turn left outside station
• Straight down road
• 10 to 15 minutes’ walk to City of London Crematorium (E12 5DQ)
• Bob’s Cortege will arrive from the North

Staff at Manor Park Station will be on hand to help with directions

Donations on behalf of Bob may be made to the British Heart Foundation and a dedicated area has been set up by the family on the British Heart Foundation’s website. This can be accessed using the following link:https://lastinghope.bhf.org.uk/bobcrow

Please note that attendance is available only for paid up members. Your membership will need to be valid exactly one week before the AGM i.e. 24th May.

If you would like to attend, please email us at [email protected] and we will email you with the details.

If you have any questions about membership, please email [email protected]

I was a “Bennite” (which became a considerable term of abuse in the 1980s) since the 1960s. I was brought up in a Labour household in which the premiership of Harold Wilson was the sun and in his constellation Mr Benn was the brightest of the many stars clustered around that Labour cabinet. There were so many stars – James Callaghan, Roy Jenkins, Barbara Castle, Tony Crosland, Richard Crossman, Dennis Healey, George Brown – but even in that company, the young, fresh-faced, bursting with ideas Wedgwood-Benn (as he was then known) stood out.

For us he seemed to exemplify the “white-hot heat” of the “technological revolution” – Mr Wilson’s wheeze for disguising his socialist purpose from a hostile media and the “Gnomes of Zurich” who, even then with their financial power, had the means of destroying any real Labour government. Mr Benn was brimful of innovative unorthodoxy, and seemed just what the doctor ordered.

From his heroic (and successful) fight to remain in the Commons upon the death of his father Viscount Stansgate – a Viscountcy which Mr Benn was to be forced to inherit – through to the Hovercraft, Concorde, TSR2, nuclear power, special edition postage stamps, tape-recording (we’d scarcely heard of it) his own interviews and speeches, he was every inch the “young Lochinvar”. Dashing, romantic, eloquent, unafraid.

The “technological revolution” cooled, the crucible crumbled but my love for Tony Benn never did, which is why his death today at the age of 88 surrounded by his family whom he loved with extraordinary zeal is not just any other passing and has caused, unusually for me, the cancellation of a raft of important engagements.

I first met Tony Benn (as he was by then) at the Labour conference in Blackpool in 1974. I was 20 years old, the Secretary of Dundee West Constituency Labour Party. Whilst I was expressing my hero-worship of him he told me that I was “the youngest constituency party secretary in Labour Party history”. It made that badge seem much brighter.

We remained in touch throughout the 1970s as Tony Benn emerged as the most important, most popular socialist – as opposed to mere Labour – figure in Britain in the 20th Century. When Mr Wilson and then Mr Callaghan’s governments (1974-79) ran into more and more troubled waters it was Tony Benn who became the parliamentary (and cabinet) focus of the fight for an “alternative economic strategy” being developed by the extra-parliamentary left and the trades unions, particularly the engineering unions AUEW and TASS, their supervisory section led by the immensely impressive Ken Gill.

On the eve of the Devolution Referendum in 1979 Mr Benn addressed a huge Yes Rally in Dundee’s Caird Hall attended by over one thousand people on a bitter winter’s night and gave a speech – the tape-cassette of which he sent me and which I still have – in which he gave quite simply the greatest speech for the socialist idea I have ever heard, bar none. In the vast cavernous auditorium his rolling cadences, his masterful command of the English language, his (by then) thinly coded attacks on the collapse into financial orthodoxy of his cabinet colleagues, the clarity of his call for the unity of working people on this island whilst supporting Home Rule within it, his unbelievably powerful case for democracy in our economy as well as our institutions (no-one believed in democracy more passionately than Tony Benn) still ring in my ears as I write this. It was a tour de force, even by his standards and no-one who was there will ever forget it.

Many of the words, concepts, imagery he used that night I still use in my own speeches today. Earlier he had posed in my home for pictures with my then baby daughter Lucy, today a mother of four, as he later would with her babies. His kindliness as well as his courage, intelligence, eloquence marking him out as head and shoulders above all of the political class then as now. If you can imagine the kindly old gentleman who sat at the back of the carriage in The Railway Children waving his handkerchief at the children and who came to their aid in their tragedy, that was the kind of man Tony Benn was.

Just before he launched his campaign for the Labour Party’s Deputy Leadership in 1981 Benn called my house. “Thish ish Tony Benn” he told my astonished then wife who thought it was a friend of ours playing a prank. “Oh yeah, right” she said.

He asked me if I would support his campaign. I was a full-time Labour organiser and the chairman of the Labour Party in Scotland at the time and he knew it might put my job at risk. He promised to look after me should the worst happen and a job at his side if he won.

Without hesitation I supported him and threw myself into the campaign as the Scottish organiser. It proved a bitter and divisive battle, crystallising existing divisions within the movement and, when Neil Kinnock and a group of left-wing apostates who included Robin Cook backed a “soft-left” rival John Silkin to split the Benn vote, created new divisions, some of which never healed.

The Labour Party had never seen a mass exercise within its ranks quite like it. And has since taken steps to ensure it never will do again. Thanks to democratic reforms within the party pioneered by Benn himself the choice would be made, not merely by MPs but by the rank and file of the party and the unions then affiliated, enthusiastically, in their millions. Benn chased every vote. Though supposedly handling Scotland I travelled with Benn the length and breadth of the country. If you’d believed the media, Benn was then, literally, mad, bad and dangerous to know. If you believed the evidence of your own eyes he was the most exciting and inspiring leader in the land.

I remember one occasion in particular in a motorway service station near Liverpool. We stopped for tea and toast (Benn rarely actually ate real food), Tony, me and Hugh Wyper the then legendary Scottish union leader and Hugh’s wife. First virtually every person in the station came over to greet him. Then, wearing their aprons and chef’s hats, all the kitchen staff did the same (alas there were no camera phones then so each person had to get a time-consuming autograph) then people started coming in from the petrol station forecourt leaving their vehicles unattended. Then Tony gave an impromptu speech. It felt like a popular revolution. And maybe it could have been.

At the height of his campaign when he seemed to be about to carry all before him, Benn was struck down by an obscure illness The Guillain – Barre Syndrome which attacked his nervous system, confined him to bed, and left him shaky on his legs for the rest of his life. It seemed suspicious at the time, and it still does now. Especially after what happened to Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez and other left-wing leaders in Latin America.

For that to sound less fanciful one must recap on what Benn might possibly have done. He might have won the deputy leadership of a Labour Party then regarded as a natural party of government. And quickly thereafter, its leader. He would have pulled Britain out of NATO and from the EEC. He would have scrapped Britain’s vastly expensive, unaffordable and essentially useless nuclear armaments. He promised public ownership and workers control of the commanding heights of the British economy. He would have nationalised the banks and many other industries including pharmaceuticals. He would have mounted a profound challenge to the rich and powerful in Britain and beyond, AND he had mass popular support in doing so.

The media hysteria had to be experienced to be believed. Think Scargill, Livingstone, Crow, add it all together and double it. It was that bad. Whole pages in serious newspapers were given over to cod-psychologists making the case that Tony Benn was, literally, insane.

But Benn-mania was taking on Beatles levels in the ranks of Labour. With the whole Labour establishment against him, as well as the whole of the British ruling class and its media echo-chamber, Benn was winning. As we gathered on the eve of the fateful Labour Conference in the Brighton conference centre the buzz was simply electrifying. When the result came and the right-wing candidate Dennis Healey was announced the winner by the hair of an eyebrow – well less than 1% – a result achieved only by the votes of a raft of Labour MPs, traitors who promptly defected to the now-forgotten SDP – the rest of us lost our heads. But Tony kept his, taking his brilliant and beautiful America wife Caroline by the hand and walking to the nearest fish and chip shop on the Brighton sea-front for a rare slap-up.

Kinnock picked up his 30 pieces of silver later and is now an Establishment clown (along with his wife) in the House of Lords. The remnants of the SDP (which helped keep Thatcher in power for a decade), now serve in David Cameron’s Tory government.

Benn lost his Bristol seat due to boundary changes in 1983, was re-elected in Chesterfield with the support of the Derbyshire miners (he was among other things the most wholehearted of the miners supporters) before “giving up parliament, to spend more time on politics” and continued to the end to support the socialist alternative to barbarism and war. He died and will forever live as the Honorary President of the Stop the War Coalition, leading the greatest mass movement in British history. He was the greatest leader Labour, and Great Britain, never had.

In Shakespeare’s words, “He was a man, take him for all in all; I shall not look upon his likes again”

We are proud to publicise the details of the first of our candidates, who will all be standing in the Bradford area. Details of all the other candidates will follow in due course.

If you would like to enquire about standing as a candidate, or have any other questions about the local elections, please email us at [email protected]