George Galloway's ‘Bradford Spring’

George Galloway’s ‘Bradford Spring’ shows huge potential for left advance
Dave Stockton assesses George Galloway’s stunning election win in Bradford West.
George Galloway has pulled off his second big election victory (the first was in Bethnal Green and Bow in 2005) to confound the major national parties, especially the pro-war and pro-cuts Labour Party.
He won with 18,341 votes, trouncing a stunned Labour Party by more than 10,000 votes, with a 35 per cent swing.
Galloway said after his victory that the working class of Bradford West were giving the Labour leadership a warning: “You can no longer take our votes for granted.”
He is 100 per cent right.
In a whirlwind campaign of just three weeks, culminating in an election rally of more than 1,000, Galloway and Respect broke thousands away from the establishment parties with their look-alike policies of cuts, racism and war.
Galloway set out four major themes in his campaign: an industrial policy, which will bring jobs back to Bradford, get rid of tuition fees, get the troops back from Afghanistan, and stop the break up of the NHS. He added, “I am the real Labour man in this election.”
That’s why he won.
 
Not just a Muslim vote
Undoubtedly his win was helped by both the strong Muslim and youthful demographic of the constituency. But it was not just Muslims who voted for him.
Labour tried to stir up racism by claiming he had neglected the white working class areas of Bradford West. Guardian writer Patrick Wintour even called Galloway’s campaign “fundamentalist”.
But as Respect leader Salma Yaqoob pointed out on Radio Four the morning after the count, Galloway won votes from every part of the constituency. In Clayton Ward, which is 80 per cent white English, Respect won 800 votes, while the Labour Party managed just 40.
 
Against imperialist war
This was an uprising of the working class and youth of Bradford against two things: the Tories’ savage cuts, carried out locally by Labour councillors, and Labour’s occupation of Afghanistan, continued today by the Tories.
Labour takes the Muslim working class community’s votes for granted, while trampling on its concerns by backing cuts and wars. But Respect expressed their real concerns by calling for investment not cuts, and by resolutely opposing the occupation of Afghanistan.
In a revealing incident, Radio Four’s Justin Webb demanded to know if Salma Yaqoob “supports attacks on our troops”. She replied not just by calling for the immediate withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, and not just by pointing out it is the main parties including Labour that sends British troops into harm’s way, but by reminding listeners that “Britain is an occupying power” and supporting “the right to resist”.
One lesson of this campaign is that you can win mass support without giving in to patriotism and militarism. Not just among Muslims but among all sections of the working class.
 
Community leaders
Back in the period 2004-07 during Respect’s first surge of support after the Iraq war, Galloway and his former allies in the Socialist Workers Party built alliances with Muslim businessmen/women and clerics to win votes from the Muslim community in the East End of London. This class contradiction caused it to split in 2007, in a bitter falling out between Galloway and the SWP, then led by John Rees who is currently fronting the breakaway Counterfire group.
But this does not appear to have been how Respect approached the Bradford West election. The mosque hierarchy were apparently firmly behind Labour, whose candidate, barrister Imran Hussain, was a Muslim of Pakistani origin and a product of the local clientelist party machine, called “Bradree” locally: an Urdu word for a hierarchical system where political leaders are chosen for their connections rather than their policies.
The surge of youth support for Galloway (whose leaflet said “God knows who is a Muslim”) was not secured through Bradree or an accommodation to community leaders, but through a rebellion against it. This is positive and shows that the way to organise working class youth is not through backroom deals with businessmen but through bold political agitation.
 
The politics of Galloway and Respect
Despite their bitter break with Galloway and Respect in 2007, the leaders of the SWP and Counterfire are today calling any criticism of Galloway “sectarian”. But there is no need to become suddenly uncritical. Socialists can “walk and talk at the same time”. We should understand Galloway’s brilliant agitation in Bradford and at the same time criticise his and Respect’s politics.
Despite the four progressive themes he stood on in the by-election, Galloway holds a number of reactionary positions. Some of them are simply right wing, like his opposition to abortion rights. Others are reactionary policies shared by much of the left worldwide, especially in the Communist Parties, like his support for “anti-imperialist” capitalist dictators, like Bashir Assad and Muammer Gadaffi, and his opposition to the Syrian revolution today. When courting Muslim leaders in East London – clerics and businessmen – he was careful to avoid giving overt support for lesbian and gay rights.
The unaccountable celebrity leadership practised by Galloway has always been uncontrolled and uncontrollable by Respect’s membership. The working class needs orators as brilliant as Galloway, but we have too many MPs who are out of the control of their parties’ base. They should be strictly representative of their party’s programme and policies, and should be recallable by their members and constituents if they break their word. They should earn a workers’ wage, not the big money Galloway is on.
 
A new workers’ party is possible
The huge vote in Bradford West shows the willingness of thousands upon thousands of youth and working class people of all communities to break away from a Labour Party that will not defend them against cuts and supports British imperialism.
It proves that the left can rally hundreds of thousands to our side, if we clearly oppose the cuts, the destruction of the NHS and Britain’s wars and occupations.
Above all, it shows that, important as new movements like Occupy are, with their emphasis on networks and horizontal methods of organising, the idea of a political party is not dead. Bradford proves it is essential for getting a clear alternative across to millions.
And it proves the time for a new party has come, that a new, mass, nationally–organised socialist party would win huge support. Socialists should raise the demand across Britain that Respect, the socialist organisations like the SWP and the Communist Party, the unions fighting cuts, the students and youth fighting fees, the antiracist and antiwar campaigners should come together in a great democratic convention to found a new working class party.
Within such a formation, Workers Power would work to build the party, and to win it to a revolutionary policy for the overthrow of capitalism.