George Galloway, villified and demonised in the mass media for his uncompromising position over the invasion of Iraq and his opposition to the dozen years of crippling sanctions imposed on the country, is regarded by the Establishment and the media as being a member of what is known in Britain as the ‘hard left’. Yet in my interview with him, he came over as I what I can only describe as a ‘traditional Labour Party socialist’, indeed he describes himself as a "social democrat" representing the traditional, trade union and working class roots of the Labour Party that he regards as no longer having a voice in Blair’s New Labour. Not exactly the image that has been presented in the mass media but that is to be expected, as Galloway’s venom and the timing of his bite re the invasion, stung Blair just as British troops went into battle. As a result, it should come as no surprise that the establishment went straight for Galloway’s jugular, first with the accusations of accepting payments from Saddam Hussein for ‘services rendered’ (that the Christian Science Monitor was forced to recant over and pay damages, and similar accusations in the Daily Telegraph are to be the subject of future legal action) and ending with his expulsion from the Labour Party. But perhaps what separates him from his fellow left colleagues in Parliament is his belief that Blair’s "hijacking" of the party is beyond rescue, although it is still his hope that there is a chance for those whom the Labour Party once stood, trade unions, pensioners, students and the poor to once more have a voice in British political life. But how realistic is Galloway’s vision of a ‘return’ to the ‘old values’ of the Labour Party in an age of globalisation? I took a visit to the Website of the proposed new social democratic party that will have its inaugural meeting on January 25 2004, the Unity Coalition (www.blairout.com), that Galloway is instrumental in forming and noted that it is opposed to the Euro, not what I’d call a forward-looking policy given the role of the dollar in dominating the world’s economies but perhaps I’m pre-judging. And judging by his comments re the Unity Coalition, it would appear that he is banking on it being a lever, a kind of ‘external opposition’ acting on the Labour Party to force it back onto its traditional route, that of a party of the working people. Again, how realistic a view this is, only time will tell. Articulate and self-assured, George Galloway chose his words carefully but didn’t pull any punches regarding his opinions about Blair and his adoption of the ‘neo-con’ agenda and the fact that he felt that it came from an ideological rather than opportunist embrace, calling it a "hijack" and ultimately leading the Labour Party toward its destruction.

GG: I generally hope that it can be recaptured and I have left behind many close friends and colleagues who are absolutely committted to reclaiming the Labour Party as a social democratic vehicle for the aspirations of working people which is what it was formed for 103 years ago but eh – whilst wishing them well in that project, I have very real doubts as to whether it can be achieved.

It is my belief that the Labour Party has been hijacked by this New Labour clique who are flying to destruction, and I doubt whether there are enough passengers left to take back control of the plane; whether there’s enough democratic space to allow them to do so even if there were, but time will tell.

We can’t however, wait outside the Labour Party’s door to see what happens, politics doesn’t work like that. I believe there’s a vacuum in politics now in which whole sections of what would normally be the traditional constituencies of social democracy [who] are simply disenfranchised and not represented in the political centre.

The anti-war movement was a case in point. Many millions strong, an actual majority of the country at crucial stages, certainly before the war began. Every member of Parliament knew because the postmen were bent double carrying sacks of mail from their constituents to them, that the majority of their voters didn’t want them to do this [go to war]. They knew instinctively that the world would be a more dangerous place than it already was. Yet hundreds of MPs trooped into the lobby like sheep to vote for a disastrous war, the consequences of which are only now beginning to be felt.

We’ve been dragged over a cliff into an abyss, the bottom of which we’ve certainly not reached yet. But it’s certainly not only [the] war. Trade unions, 7 million trade unionists affiliated to the TUC [Trades Union Congress] of course gave birth to the Labour Party in the first place, are effectively locked out of the British political system. Fire fighters, 75 years loyally affiliated to the Labour Party, not being in industrial action for a quarter of a century, held a ballot under Mrs Thatcher’s anti-trade union laws which not only has Mr Blair not repealed but [he] goes around the world boasting about the existence of these anti-trade union laws as the reason for people to come and invest in Britain because we have the toughest anti-union lasw in Europe, falling far short of the ILO [International Labour Organisation] standards of trade union freedom, they’re locked out too.

The fire fighters were attacked as the enemy within, as saboteurs. The Chancellor [of the Exchecker] declared that if we paid 40,000 fire fighters £8.50 an hour for plunging into burning buildings for a living, that the economy would be – and I’m quoting him – "wrecked." Well, this is one of the richest economies in the whole world; the idea if we paid 40,000 people £8.50 an hour for plunging into burning buildings, the economy would be wrecked is preposterous and insulting rubbish.

At the same time, indeed in the same week week, Gordon Brown, who we are told is the alternative to Tony Blair, said that we had an unlimited budget, "as much as it takes" he said, "a blank cheque" to go around the world setting fire to other peoples’ countries, to destroy their property, to destroy their lives.

The pensioners are being told by the New Labour government that as a matter of policy their incomes should rise less quickly that the incomes of the rest of us. That’s what the refusal to restore the link between pensions and earnings actually means; [that] earnings will rise faster than pensions.

And these hypcrites stood at the Cenotaph a few weeks ago, their faces waxed with grief, paying tribute to a generation which defended the country, built the country’s wealth and…yet the same hypocrites told the same generation which survived the war, that they must hunker down for another cold winter for many of them, a winter which the choice of whether to eat or whether to keep warm is a choice they’re going to have to make on a daily basis.

Students leaving colleges and universities with tens of thousands of debts…even before this new wheeze of the top-up fees is introduced which is presided over by a cabinet virtually everyone of which was educated at one of our best universities entirely free and given a grant and so to do. These are the other constituencies that are dropped out of the political process.

The other that is topical – and I’ve just been in to the House of Commons to listen to the Home Secretary introduce the measures on asylum and immigration and the consequent implication for civil liberties. These are another set…of constituencies [that] no one is speaking in Parliament for, the ethnic minorities, for the immigrants, for Britain’s Muslim population, that is repeatedly scapegoated in the so-called anti-terrorism scare. Nobody is speaking for the asylum seekers who are the whipping boys, the scapegoats for the government’s failures.

GG: You’re right when you say that’s the tactic that Blair employs. He wants to make a false dichotomy between his treachery to social democracy and the return to conservative rule.

But of course, if I may put it this way, there is a third way, the third way could be if we had a government that actually did pursue the policies that are actually supported by millions of people in the country. And even where there are policies within social democracy that are not commanding a majority of support; we could fight for them. After all, this is a government which likes a fight; it’s not a government, which shirks away from making enemies. The problem is the enemies they choose. They choose the wrong enemies.

If we take race and immigration for example as an issue; instead of taking on the immigrants, the ethnic minorities and the people who support them, we could take on the racists, we could take on those who are actually betraying the interests of the country by attempting to turn it into a fortress at a time when we actually need people in the country. We need people who will work and who will work harder, someone who has clung to the bottom of a train to cross the channel to get into the country; who has shown ingenuity and enthusiasm and energy and dedication to get here.

GG: Perhaps not, perhaps not. But it could be fought for. It is a social democratic position.

GG: Well we’ve launched the Unity Coalition which will have a conference on the 25^th of January where it will formally found itself and agree a programme and elect a leadership and map out an electoral strategy. At this stage the Unity Coalition is targetting the European Parliament elections and the elections to the GLA (Greater London Authority) on the 10t^h of June next year. We hope to bring together the anti-war movement, the Muslim community, the pensioners, the students, the trade union movement, all these sections I talked about earlier as having been betrayed by New Labour. We hope to give them an electoral alternative in a proportional representation election where every vote counts equally wherever it’s cast, and I think we have the potential to do very well. If we do very well, we will either provoke change within the Labour Party, a change of leadership, a change of direction or, if we don’t, we will begin to be a magnet for those people who currently believe the Labour Party can be changed but who may by then can be persuaded that it’s not going to be changed [from within].

So going back to my concept of false dichotomy…[the Unity Coalition] is not…a party which threatens or which is aimed at the likes of Jeremy Corbin and other excellent Labour MPs who remained in the Party [and are] committed to change it…. Indeed, the more successful we are, it would seem to be logical, the more chance there is of them achieving what they’re looking for. And if they don’t, despite our success, despite our demonstrating the existence of huge electoral forces to the left of New Labour, then it seems to me logical…that they begin to rethink their attitude.

GG: We’ve sketched out…[some]…of the programme on our Website, blairout.com. Essentially we’re against the war and the occupation [of Iraq], we’re against the Bush/Blair axis, we’re against privatisation of our public services. We’re for free education, free health and against [its] part-privatisation. We’re for the restoration of the link between pensions and earnings:

[This section was inaudible, so I took this from the UC Website:

• To withdraw troops from Iraq and to let the people of Iraq decide their own future
• Halting the privatisation of essential public services
• Defeating the Euro and the proposed European constitution
• Protecting and enhancing our environment
• The restoration of trade union rights
• For equality, tolerance and a multi-cultural society]

GG: You know I think it’s a big enough job [that we have to do here] but I think there are forces out there…that are marching in the same direction…anti-globalisation forces…forces for social change, for a return [to] social democracy.

GG: I agree with that and whilst I think that we maybe slightly ahead of some the European countries…Germany, France, Spain…there are huge forces to the left of the formerly social democratic [parties], whether this will find a reflection in the European Parliament elections or not this seems to be likely to continue to grow. It is possible, I don’t know, that the French, British, Italian, Spanish etc, social democrats will make a left turn and go back to their roots but I doubt that and that’s why I’m putting my energies into this project. I don’t believe there will ever be again, nor should there be really, a kind of Comintern approach to unite people across national boundaries, have a centre, a programme, machinery etc. Every country has its own conditions.

GG: No, but I can tell you from the discussions…that it is not an Everest [that we face] but a whole range of Everests that we need to scale in order to try and hammer out, if you like…organic unity but I don’t believe that’s necessary or desirable. I think that every country will march at its own pace but basically…there big forces that are marching in the same direction.

GG: Yes, well I think it’s headed for further disasters and the quicksand in which they find themselves is not one which can be easily evacuated and they cannnot go back, they cannot go forward, they are stuck which is precisely what we said would happen in our millions before this disaster began, so they can’t say they weren’t warned and I fear that we ain’t seen nothing yet. The British troops for example, some 13,000 of them, stuck in the south of Iraq, surrounded by millions of Shi’ites, Muslims are just one Fatwa away from potential disaster. All the other participants in the illegal occupation are bleeding on an almost daily basis, aside from the US itself. If this rate of attrition keeps up it will be electorally unsustainable by Bush and yet the scuttling and running will be equally electorally unsustainable for Bush, so I fear that the poor, young men who’ve been sent there to kill and die for George Bush and Tony Blair are going to be caught in a terrible bind and the only way this can be ended id for the people in both countries to demand that their young men are withdrawn from the theatre and the Iraqis are allowed to find their own political future…a right that every nation has.

WB: What do you think the chances are of this happening?

GG: Well of course the anti-war movement is the anvil and the hammer is the Iraqi resistance and between the hammer and the anvil there will have to be a change brought. We are a part of it. We’re probably not the most important part of it but our strength is directly related to how disastrous the position on the ground in Iraq becomes. It would have been inconceivable to imagine the American ambassador shuttling off the roof of the embassy in Saigon with hangers-on literally hanging on the running boards. It would have been impossible to conceive of that just a short time before it happened but it happened because the Vietnamese people drove the American invaders out and I believe that will be more likely the way the current occupation will end. You see, if the Americans do as some commentators are calling on them to do, withdraw to the periphery and withdraw to the bases, the resistance will take over the streets of Iraq and even the stooge forces, the police and other forces which have been created by the Americans will increasingly go over to the insurgents. Many of them frankly, already have. The intelligence that the resistance is receiving from the stooge forces is quite considerable, let me tell you. So the Americans are stuck in this quicksand. They can’t withdraw from the streets because the insurgency will takeover the streets and if they stay on the streets, the insurgency will kill them at an increasing rate. I’m sorry if that paints a bleak picture but that’s what it is. And as I say, that’s exactly what we told them would happen before they did it.

WB: What about the idea of Bush expanding the war, perhaps targetting Iran or Syria next? And what about the role of Israel?

GG: Well Israel was created as an auxilliary of imperialism…even if it sometimes acts a little more coursely and a little more roughly than the masters would like. And of course, much of the policy to invade and occupy Iraq was driven by Israel and Israel’s friends in the United States, the neo-con circles that surround Bush. They have received a tremendous defeat as a result of the events in Iraq. They’re standing is plummetting in the United States. More and more people in the US realise that they’ve been lured into this disaster by these siren voices and that the safety of the American people and interests have been endangered by these events. So all of this is still in a state of flux.

WB: So you don’t think that the US may use Israel to mount some kind of pre-emptive attack against Iran?

GG: I think that’s a very real possibility, but I think that the idea of an Anglo-American invasion of Iran is definitely off for now. I think that they have bitten off far-far more than they can chew already and the political will to mount an invasion of Iran which undoubtedly was one of the plans on the stocks had to be put to one side.

WB: Thank you George.