And he was doing so well…
In his thoughtful treatise on tactical voting in the Guardian today. George Monbiot had me right up until the point where he said vote Respect.
George Galloway’s calls this week for Tariq Aziz to be released was just the latest reason not to vote for him and his party.
Posted on April 19th, 2005 at 7:59 am
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Monbiot’s comments show how far removed he is from the realities of life in our inner cities. There are two points to consider:
Here in Bethnal Green and Bow, Oona King has been a real fighter for ALL her constituents. But Galloway aligns himself with narrow factions - those whose anti-war views outweight all other considerations. And of course he shares a political platform with openly anti-semitic groups.
The wider issue which George Monbiot overlooks is the PURPOSE of this election. It’s about who will run the country. If large numbers of people follow Monbiot’s advice, Labour could lose some seats. If at the same time the Tories were to increase their share of the vote, we could actually see what he calls the “even nastier” party in government! Is that really what he wants?
Maybe he thinks that four years of Howard and the greedy racists would so inflame the electorate that it would return a solid left government in 2009 or whenever. Do you really want to go down that road? Get real!
Ken - Don’t swallow the NuLab propaganda that the Tories will win by NuLab supporters switching to protest vote for the Lib Dems or others. Phil at Cabalamat (http://www.cabalamat.org/weblog/art_541.html) has covered this in some depth, with graphs and other techno-whizzery. The Tories can only win by picking up NuLab defectors themselves, which seems unlikely in any sort of numbers. Mind you, I’m not saying vote Respect either. On balance, I’d rather vote Tory than for a coalition of opportunists, students and Islamic militants.
Ken, tactical voting is all about “the PURPOSE of this election” - which is to decide who runs the country and on what terms. There’s no reason to imagine that the Tories will win - according to the BBC’s seat calculator, they’d need to get around 40% of the vote to get a majority of 1. The only realistic possibilities are: a large Labour majority; a small Labour majority, with Labour under pressure from the Tories; and a small Labour majority, with Labour under pressure from the Lib Dems and the small anti-war parties. The third of these is well worth working for, IMO. (As I’ve said on my blog, I believe Backing Blair dropped a bollock when they advocated a tactical Tory vote - I think a small Labour majority with a resurgent Tory party would actually be better than a large Labour majority in the short term, but the medium- to long-term implications could be horrendous.)
Justin, Respect are a sideshow - they’re only standing in 28 constituencies. If you’re in Pavilion you can vote Green - they’re not actually going to win, but it’d be nice to see them coming second. (The Alliance for Green Socialism, whoever they are, are also contesting the seat - sectarian tossers. Their candidate is Tony Greenstein - quelle surprise.) I haven’t been able to find a list of Green candidates, but there’s a list of ‘left’ candidates here (weird formatting on my browser - scroll right).
I hate the SWP as much as the next person, and I’m deeply suspicious of their dalliance with the mosque vote (see my “Islamophobia” post). But I don’t think Respect are really important enough to get worked up about - it’s not as if they’re going to be around at the next election, after all. And people like Meaders are at least doing something about rebuilding the Left, which is a sight more than I’m doing - even if elements of what they’re doing are hideously misguided.
That’s a fairly obnoxious run of cack-handed smears from Ken, but what else would anyone expect from a desperate New Labour by this point? (Anyone else remember “SMASH TEEN GANGS” and “LIB DEMS SOFT ON ASYLUM SEEKERS” in Birmingham Hodge Hill? These people have no shame.)
It is simply a slur to claim Galloway “aligns himself with a narrow faction” when you are evidently talking about a clear majority of the constituents Oona King has (apparently) been fighting for. We might wonder why, on the single most decisive issue of this last Parliament she chose to ignore that majority; we might wonder why she only started campaigning against the removal of a fire-engine from Bethnal Green after Respect took the initiative; we might wonder why she has so abysmally failed to stand up to and challenge the government’s awful housing policies, despite the pressing needs of her constituents for decent, affordable homes.
Ken’s quip grossly misunderstands just how let down everyone in Bethnal Green has been by New Labour: behind the opposition to the war, there’s also opposition to tuition fees, to PFI, to foundation hospitals - to the whole damn Blair project. That’s one reason why, on the evidence of canvassing, so many voters, black, white and Asian, will putting their cross next to Galloway’s name on May 5. Respect is a party built on supporting and sustaining the multicultural society Britain now is; would we be able to say the same about New Labour, after Blunkett’s reign of terror?
(As for “sharing a platform with antisemites”: give it a rest; it’s a debate between different groups, including the Tories and (I believe) the Lib Dems. Galloway’s there precisely to expose and ridicule the arseholes from Hizb’ut-Tahrir, who have by their own initiative been doing a fine job for Oona King these last few weeks, trying to disrupt Respect stalls and meetings.)
The only people playing up to anything like “communalism”, or even racism, in this election are New Labour. Why else was a leaflet distributed to the (largely white) area of Bow claiming (I quote from memory), “The Scottish MP George Galloway is here to stir up trouble, particularly amongst the Bangladeshi community…”? This is a rotten, dirty campaign New Labour are running that utterly disgraces everything the party might once have claimed to stand for. Oona King is simply unfit to be an MP.
Finally, with polls currently predicting a 100+ Labour majority, you try and raise the Tory bogeyman. Pathetic. No-one’s frightened any more.
I agree, Meaders, that the war won’t be the only reason King’s probably going to be kicked out next month. But, the Respect website statement after the egg throwing incident was weasel words to the max, no? I suggest that some among them are tip-toeing round the Jewish East End issue to avoid upsetting a huge chunk of support Galloway needs to win.
Well, you won’t be too surprised to find me disagreeing. The only party unpleasant enought to attempt to play up to anti-Jewish racism in Bethnal Green in recent years are the Tories, who in 2001 conducted a singularly vile campaign against Oona King (see http://www.danielbrett.com/2004_12_01_archive.html#110313230833938590 for one account). It didn’t do the Tories any good - on a reduced turnout, King recorded a 4.2% swing for Labour. Leaving aside Respect’s deepest opposition to racism, there are no votes in antisemitism in Bethnal Green and it is a slur against her own constituents for Oona King to hint that there are.
The “weasel words” on the website were confirmed by Jonanthan Freedland’s eyewitness account of this horrid incident (http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1461183,00.html).
Re: weasel words. I didn’t think the Respect statement was ideal - the “ah but if you condemn this what do you say about that?” style of argument works in the short term, but it does tend to leave you wide open to accusations of, well, weaselling. That said, let’s assume (and I think this almost certainly is the case) that nobody from Respect was on the scene when it happened & the first reports they had were when they were accused of organising it. What you end up with is a statement saying, in effect, “We don’t approve of what happened (assuming that what happened was more or less what we’ve been told, which may or may not be true), and it certainly wasn’t us who did it (whatever it was ).” Which sounds a bit feeble, but it’s hard to see what else they could say in the circs.
Sorry both of you, but this is what Respect said about the incident on their site and in a letter to the Guardian three days after the incident:
_To date, there is no evidence that this egg-throwing was anti-semitic but, in any case, Respect does not condone throwing things at election candidates. Unfortunately, such episodes do occur, as happened to George Galloway, John Major, Tony Blair in parliament and indeed John Prescott, who, as we know, was quick to reply in kind._
That’s not good enough. I’m not saying they should put their hands up and do a mea culpa when it obviously wasn’t anything to do with them. But comparing mourning Jews being pelted with eggs (plus spat at, stones, abuse) to the odd egg chucked at Major or Prezza is lame.
If King also tried to make some capital out of the situation, then shame on her too. I have no idea if she did or didn’t. It doesn’t excuse the non-comment on the anti-semitic incident from Respect.
(BTW, the weasel words aren’t confirmed by the Freedland story you link; he quite clearly says it was an anti-semitic incident. You’d have to be naive to think otherwise, no?)
I think Freedland is very clear that whilst the attack was utterly reprehensible, he cannot be certain of the motive. I thought that was what the Respect letter was trying to say; the attack was made more revolting because of its particular circumstances, but may or may not have been of antisemitic intent. The opening paragraph of the letter makes Respect’s position on racism clear - ie we oppose it, regardless of the victim - and I’m not sure what could be added beyond that. We really can’t be expected to apologise for something we didn’t know about until (as Phil correctly guesses) we were all but accused of organising it.
The truth is that Respect, by undermining residual support for organisations like Hizb’ut-Tahrir, has done more to discredit radical political Islam in East London than any amount of furious invective on Harry’s Place - or the back pages of the Observer. This makes the fight for (say) gay rights and against antisemitism much the easier. Surely this is a good thing?
This is pretty serious, and it isn’t about “opportunists, students and Islamic militants”: either we start to build a genuine, left-wing, anti-war, anti-racist alternative to New Labour, or we are condemned to four more years - at least - of war, privatisation and the most craven pandering to racism. Tens of thousands of voters in the East End, if the canvassing returns are any guide, will think likewise on May 5.
Well, we’re reading Freedland differently then. On the letter: no, it doesn’t make your party’s commitment to fight anti-semitism clear. It says:
_there is no evidence that this egg-throwing was anti-semitic but, in any case, Respect does not condone throwing things at election candidates._
So, on one reading, it denies that a whole group of Jews in the East End being pelted, spat at and abused was an anti-semitic incident, and then says that you don’t condone throwing things at politicians. So, you do condone throwing things at Jews? Of course you don’t. So why not say so?
It’s not about an apology. Why should you apologise? It was nothing to do with you. It’s about speaking out when wrong has been done. In this incident, your party failed.
BTW you don’t really think an alliance with MAB is the way to further gay rights, do you? I’m not being an arse; I’m genuinely interested in how you would pitch that to them.
What “alliance with MAB”? MAB have never joined, nor even always supported Respect: in the June elections last year, they supported Greens, Ken Livingstone and even the occasional Liberal Democrat ahead of Respect candidates. If individual members of MAB want to join Respect, they’re welcome to do so on the same basis as everyone else - which includes accepting the very strong policy on gay rights detailed here.
(As I said, the letter makes clear Respect’s opposition to racism of any kind in its opening paragraph. The rest agrees with Freedland’s account on the uncertainty of motives.)