20.07.2005

Confused mish-mash

Appearing on Radio Four's Any questions? on July 15, George Galloway was joined as a panellist by Frank Field, Labour MP and former welfare reform minister, Oliver Letwin, shadow secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs, and professor Colleen Graffy, a US law lecturer and a former chair of Republicans Abroad. Predictably, Galloway became the focus of attention for the programme, recorded in Bexley, Kent. His presence as an outspoken critic of the war on Iraq and more importantly as a vocal public advocate of the dread notion that there might be some sort of connection between Iraq and the London bombings clearly annoyed them; to the extent that the whole show seemed to revolve around their and the audience's reactions to his utterances. Responding to Galloway, who had argued that the muslims of this country "feel the blows in Fallujah" as though they had been struck against themselves, Letwin argued that "I don't think that how somebody views what is going on in another part of the world, however strongly they feel about it, can conceivably be an excuse or even a reason" for the London bombings. He blathered on: "One of the people who was killed in the bombings that we've just had was a muslim - how can it possibly be a rational response or indeed a halfway decent or even an understandable response?" As if this was actually what Galloway had been arguing. But Letwin was intent on throwing up an accusatory smokescreen of terrorist-apologist allegations to choke any suggestion that the agonies inflicted on the Middle East by war and occupation could have helped produce, or justify, such a violent reaction. Frank Field, displaying his deep stupidity, also joined in the finger-pointing - "I found one thing that George said quite chilling ... I would hope the teaching [to young muslims] would be "¦ that on no account ever is it justified to bomb people because you may think they have other views than you share on the Middle East or on Iraq" - before Galloway pointed out that, once again, this was exactly what he had argued: "The swamp of grievance that I've talked about", he said, "is endlessly deepened by the events in Palestine and Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib prison and Iraq - that's just common sense. It's only inside the bubble of politics and the media that that is seen as a strange thing to say at all." There is a world of rational difference, Galloway could have argued, between justification and explanation. It would seem to serve the interests of those defending imperialism and its wars to keep these blurred right now. "It seems to me," argued Field, that "the very guts of the questions that we have to answer and grapple with is that we're dealing with people whose hatred is now so immeasurable that they will do anything to destroy us" and then added, crassly: "That is not linked to specific events." Letwin stated the obvious: "If somebody thinks that something done somewhere else in the world is very wrong, and that is a reason for them to blow up people in this country, well that's just not a reasonable way for people to behave." Another pearl of Tory wisdom. "Nobody is saying that: we're all saying that what happened last week was a despicable act of mass murder," said Galloway. "The question is, do you want to understand it or not? Because if we don't try and understand it it'll happen again and again and again. We must drain the swamp of hatred of its grievances: we must stop supporting general Sharon in Palestine, we must knock his wall down, we must force the settlers out, we must remove our soldiers from the occupation of Iraq, we must stop dropping our dictators in the muslim world - puppet presidents and corrupt kings. If we did those things the swamp would dry up." Significantly none of the panellists, including Galloway himself, were able to properly explain the 7/7 bombs as a product of British conditions and capitalism itself. People turn to irrationalism, whether it be political islam or christian fundamentalism, out of desperation. Not simply their desperation in terms of food, clothing and housing. Rather desperation at a life that appears meaningless in its inhumanity and chaos. So the answer does not simply lie in Galloway's 'common sense' solution of a withdrawal from Iraq and righting the wrongs done to the Palestinians, etc. Capitalism itself must be fought and overcome. Galloway likes to paint himself an anti-capitalist. His socialism is a national socialism, however. Therefore his anti-capitalism is fake. This was sadly illustrated when asked what concrete anti-terrorist steps he would recommend. First he accused the "mosque leaderships" of having "abdicated their role" in having failed to guide their flock to things that are "much more positive" - such as joining Respect, presumably. Then he launched into a remarkable, not to say reactionary, line of argument: "One of the things that's always struck me as extraordinary is how few customs officers we have at the ports ... Actually we probably need 10, 20, 30,000 more customs officers." Galloway also thought that "everyone should be searched" when arriving on these shores. Such measures would keep the terrorists out - even though, as we all know, the London bombers were British subjects. I noticed that the supporters mobilised by Respect and the Socialist Workers Party in south-east London, who had been wildly cheering Galloway's every remark up to this point, did not seem quite so enthusiastic at the prospect of even tighter border controls and greater snooping powers. Nor did George stop there: "And we need more police" - whom he also praised for helping to defuse tensions and stop us British turning against each other in the aftermath of 7/7. In fact we had "come together" (just as the establishment had hoped, no doubt). His interventions really were a confused mish-mash of the well intended and the downright awful. One audience member asked if panellists would "consider it appropriate to hold a two-minute silence to remember the hundreds of innocent civilians killed by men of violence in Iraq?" A malodorous Republican, Graffy declared that "I think we see who the men of violence are" - referring, of course, to the insurgency, as if the invasion had never happened! Nor did she pass up the opportunity to needle the Respect MP: "I would greatly encourage, for example, Mr Galloway to use his immense powers of persuasion to encourage those sunni hardliners that now is the moment to get with this political process that the people of Iraq want ... and to go to Iraq and to salute the courage and the strength and the indefatigability of those eight million Iraqis that voted, risked their lives, to try and have a better country, a democratic country." "The biggest man of violence is George W Bush," Galloway retorted, to a mixture of cheers and boos. "George Bush and Tony Blair launched an illegal war on a pack of lies that killed 100,000 people - how violent is that?" Unable to rattle Galloway, Graffy launched into a sudden and unexpected diversionary attack: "Let's be clear - the Respect party is the electoral front for the Socialist Workers Party ..." (more boos from the SWP comrades) "Look it up, look it up. The Socialist Workers Party was not anti-war." If that was not enough, she resorted to that old chestnut: "And let's remind ourselves that Mr Galloway was not kicked out of the Labour Party because he was speaking out against the war. He was kicked out because he was actively inciting the foreign troops to shoot at US and British soldiers ..." By now George was responding with his usual threats of litigation and Jonathan Dimbleby quickly intervened: "Let's not go there." l Carey Davies