SWooPees Are Everywhere

The Green Party today revealed that the "electoral coalition" proposed by George Galloway for next year's Euro-elections is a front for the loony-left Socialist Workers Party.

Galloway has been portrayed in Sunday's papers (1) as the new leader of a proposed coalition of anti-war, Muslim and Left groups.

But the Green Party has revealed that the Galloway plan is being driven by the Socialist Workers Party.

Leading Green Party spokesperson Prof John Whitelegg explained today: "Even before Galloway was kicked out of the Labour Party he seems to have been planning a new party - and it looks like that party is a front for the hard-left revolutionary SWP."

The Greens have discovered that Galloway has been billed to speak at a series of public meetings calling for a new electoral coalition. Others on the platform are Lindsay German, the Stop the War chief and also an SWP leader, and Nick Wrack of the Socialist Alliance, which is increasingly seen as the electoral wing of the SWP.

But the plot thickens. Recently George Monbiot, leading anti-globalisation campaigner and Guardian columnist, approached leading Greens and others, asking them to help put together a manifesto for the proposed coalition (2).

Mr Monbiot had been approached by a Stop the War activist from Birmingham, called Salma Yaqoob. Ms Yaqoob has been distributing an article called "British Politics at the Crossroads", advancing this idea of a new electoral coalition arising from the anti-war movement. The title of the public meetings featuring George Galloway and SWP leaders is also "British Politics at the Crossroads".

John Whitelegg commented: "It seems abundantly clear that the coalition George Galloway seems to want to lead is the coalition proposed by the SWP."

The Greens point out that in fact there could be no such coalition - under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act it would have to be a formal political party. The Greens believe the "new" party will turn out to be the Socialist Alliance, a registered party already dominated by the SWP.

Professor Whitelegg concluded:

"There is already an anti-war party contesting next year's Euro-elections -the Greens - and the Green MEP for London, Jean Lambert, has been a prominent anti-war campaigner. London will want to re-elect Jean Lambert next year, not a maverick representing the Socialist Workers Party."

1. The Sunday Herald describes him as "the figurehead of the broad coalition of the Left, muslim organisations and peace groups that organised the two million-strong march against the Iraq war in February..." The prominent Scottish newspaper says Galloway is "planning to top a slate of candidates being put forward by the Stop the War coalition during next year's European parliament elections." "Galloway to stand as Euro MP",  http://www.sundayherald.com/37699 2. John Whitelegg was approached to write the transport section of the manifesto. He is a well-known transport and environment consultant, Professor of Sustsianable Transport at Liverpool John Moores University and Professor of Sustainable Development at the University of York. He is also the Green Party's spoksperson on sustainable development and shadow to the ODPM, and as Leader of North West Green Party is confident of election to the European Parliament in June 2004.

ENDS

Galloway to stand as Euro MP

 http://www.sundayherald.com/37699


Ousted rebel MP rules out by-election challenge By Torcuil Crichton



GEORGE Galloway is to challenge Labour on an anti-war ticket in the European parliament elections in London next June, having abandoned the idea of forcing a by-election in his Glasgow Kelvin constituency. Galloway, who was expelled by Labour last week for bringing the party into disrepute over comments he made on the Iraq war, returned to Glasgow yesterday to confront the reality that many of his loyal supporters in Kelvin would not follow him into the wilderness.

Speaking outside his constituency office Galloway said he would take soundings among colleagues and voters before coming to a decision this week but he acknowledged that he could not push loyalty to the limits.

He said: "Were there to be a by-election then I would be immediately forcing all my friends to choose between their Labour party membership and helping me because Mr Blair would expel them in those circumstances."

Instead the veteran anti-war campaigner is planning to top a slate of candidates being put forward by the Stop the War coalition during next year' s European parliament elections.

Martyred for his anti-war stance Galloway has spent the last year speaking at rallys and public meetings up and down the country. He is now seen as the figurehead of the broad coalition of the Left, muslim organisations and peace groups that organised the two million-strong march against the Iraq war in February.

The coalition is now planning an electoral challenge to Blair next year which will offer Galloway an opportunity to take his vengance against the Prime Minister. He has vowed that Labour would rue the day it ejected him and that he would out-do Blair.

With the situation in Iraq still highly unstable and the Hutton Inquiry due to report in November, the government is still expected to be vulnerable to the fallout from the Iraq war well into next year.

Galloway's chances in a London Euro vote are considerably better than his prospects in what would be a bitter Glasgow by-election which could result in him committing the unpardonable Labour crime of splitting the vote and ushering in an SNP victory.

The SNP came second in Glasgow Kelvin in the Scottish parliamentary election and were a close third behind the Lib Dems in the last UK election.

Happily for Galloway, the European parliament vote on June 10 2004 coincides with the London mayoral elections in which many normally loyal Labour voters are expected to re-elect Ken Livingstone, another renegade ex-Labour MP who manages to draw support across social classes and political labels.

In the 2000 London mayoral election Livingstone, standing as an independent, beat the Conservative candidate Steve Norris after second preferences were calculated. But even in the first round Livingstone received 667,877 votes, 39% of the vote, on a turnout of 35%. Labour's official candidate Frank Dobson received just 13% of first preference votes.

In the 1999 European elections the 10th-placed MEP, Jean Lambert of the Green party, was elected with 87,545 votes, just over 7% of the vote.

Galloway's supporters reckon that with him at the top, an anti-war coalition can achieve 100,000 votes in the capital next summer when London is expected to elect nine Euro MPs by a proportional representation list system using the d'Hondt formula.

The Labour party and Galloway have been a long time leaving each other. Galloway was suspended from Labour in May following an interview he gave to Abu Dhabi TV. Always a thorn to the party establishment, the left-wing MP was charged with urging British troops to defy orders, calling on Arabs to attack British troops, telling voters not to support Labour candidates who backed the war, congratulating an anti-war candidate who defeated Labour in Preston and threatening to stand against Labour himself.

26 October 2003