That’s just the Galloway
Controversial anti-war British politician makes surprise return to House
He’s baaaack!
That’s the gasp in London’s Westminster this week as Labour politicians and their rivals struggle for breath after a stunning upset in a northern byelection that brought one of Britain’s most loathed and loved politicians back to the House of Commons.
Respect Party founder George Galloway took the Bradford West seat with a majority of more than 10,000 votes, beating Labour councillor Imran Hussain in one of the most Muslim — and Labour — constituencies in the country.
“By the grace of God, we have won the most sensational victory in British political history,” Galloway said with typical modesty. “Labour has been hit by a tidal wave in a seat they have held for many decades and dominated for 100 years.”
That was before the final votes were counted.
But 57-year-old Galloway, a grizzled Scots-irish scrapper with a pumped-up ego, wastes no time on self-effacement.
And he’s been thrown out of better places than most of London’s West End clubbers.
A staunch opponent of military action against Iraq, he was bounced from the Labour Party in 2003 after attacking Prime Minister Tony Blair’s backing for the Americanled invasion.
After losing a European Parliament election, he clawed his way back into a London seat in 2005 for the socialist coalition Respect party, which he helped found. But two years later, he was temporarily suspended from the House of Commons for attacking a committee that investigated him for — and cleared him of — benefiting from Saddam Hussein’s regime.
Galloway’s effort to bring humanitarian aid to Gaza saw him barred from Canada in 2009, when the Stephen Harper government declared him a supporter of Hamas, branded as terrorists by Ottawa. A year later a Federal Court judge ruled it unfair, and Galloway gave his post- poned speech in Toronto to a cheering audience. Galloway exited parliament when he lost a 2010 election. More spectacularly, four years earlier, he was ousted from a Big Brother reality show, after a cringemaking appearance for charity in a jump suit, as a cat slurping milk. Throughout his career, he’s been equally famous for striking back at his foes, with his bitterest comments reserved for those who op-
“By the grace of God, we have won the most sensational victory in British political history.” GEORGE GALLOWAY, BRITISH MP
pose his Middle East views. “It’s a Bradford spring,” he crowed on winning the poll this week, adding that Britain’s participation in the Afghan war, at the cost of more than 400 troops’ lives, was a deciding factor in the riding where many people of Pakistani origin live. “They have to stop supporting illegal, bloody, costly foreign wars,” he said of the mainstream parties. “The public don’t believe that they have atoned for their role in the invasion and occupation of other people’s countries and the drowning of those countries in blood.” When Iraq was under sanctions, in 1994, Galloway met with Saddam Hussein and was shown on television apparently praising him. In 1998, he shone a spotlight on the effects of the sanctions by bringing a leukemia-stricken Iraqi child, Mariam Hamza, to Glasgow for treatment not available at home. But in 2004 he successfully sued the Daily Telegraph over articles claiming he had received money from Saddam’s regime. Now back on top of his political game, Galloway has shown he’s a political cat with nine lives. And his party may play a new — and perhaps more prominent — role on Britain’s crisis-ridden political stage. Although many Bradford supporters were attracted by his anti-war views, they live in an area of growing poverty and youth unemployment. Galloway’s win shows that “growing anti-coalition sentiment in this country does not translate into automatic enthusiasm for Labour,” said author and political blogger Owen Jones in the Independent. He added that Labour, and the ruling coalition of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, have failed to keep the loyalty of constituents hurt by deep budget cuts. “It does signify a real rejection of the entire political establishment.”