ALB
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Two Socialist Party members went to Lewisham yesterday evening to listen to Galloway speak in favour of Hamilton. There were a hundred or so listeners. He made his usual joke about Labour and the Tories being two cheeks of the same backside (we prefer two wings of the same vulture) and said that Labour was not the lesser evil as both them and the Tories were equally evil, adding that a case could even be made out for saying that Labour was the greater evil for betraying people’s hopes.
The meeting was also addressed by a Hasidic Jew in full 18th century dress. He was inaudible but some of them are anti-Zionist, regarding the establishment of the state of Israel as sacrilege. There was a photo opportunity of Hamilton with them. Not sure if Galloway was in one too.
Also present were the police. A group of three opponents heckling and holding up placards saying :
“Galloway-Hamilton
The Nightmare ticket
Self-promoting
Self-serving
Stalinist
Misogynist
Anti-LGBQT Rights
No place for them in any progressive working-class movement”They were also shouting pro-Ukraine slogans, clue that they might be from either the Trotskyist “Alliance for Workers’ Liberty” or “Socialust Resistance”. That it was the AWL was confirmed when one of them told us he had debated against us in the 1980s on behalf of “Socialist Organiser”.
Apart from them and us the only other group present was SPEW.
Thanks. That gives some clue as to the date and context of that clip. It must be within last 5 or 6 months and addressed to a US audience. Could be one of those money-making videos where the speaker receives an income based on the number of viewers and makes outrageous suggestions to attract more viewers. But, with his MP’s salary he should be alright for money for the next 8 or 9 months.
Another 100 distributed at the outdoor meeting on the steps of the civic centre in Lewisham yesterday evening where George Galloway addressed a group of 100 or so in support of his party’s candidate for mayor there.
He didn’t actually say that. He only wondered if that might be the case. If he had, he should be appealing to Piers not Jeremy Corbyn to be his leader.
When he got sworn in as an MP (and he did so on the bible) he was not allowed to wear a hat as, apparently, these are banned in the chamber. It is easy to understand why he does as, without it, he looks pretty nondescript.
Ps who is Lauren Boebert? Never heard of her.
We may as well keep on recording these threats, even though by now people must be perfectly well aware of what a Labour government will be like.
Here’s one of their future ministers declaring:
“Under our changed Labour party, if you can work there will be no option of a life on benefits.”
She went on to criticise the Tories for not having been tough enough on benefits:
“She took aim at what she described as “Tory claims about being tough on benefits”.”
Talk about “Labour, Tory, Same Old Story”.
Looks like the Royal Air Force’s:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f1/RAF_Type_A_Roundel_%28ww2%29.svg
In any event the fact that it is red, white and blue can’t be an accident.
Galloway himself is going to Lewisham to support Hamilton. It’s a 6pm tomorrow outside Lewisham Town Hall in Catford at 1 Catford Rd, London SE6 4RU
***Lewisham Catford Calling Tuesday 5 March***
If you are in or around London, get yourself along outside the Civic Suite, Catford, Catford Rd 6pm THIS Tuesday 5 March to watch and listen to #WorkersPartyGB Lewisham mayoral candidate John Hamilton, our newly elected Rochdale MP… pic.twitter.com/j8qDr9tN6j
— Workers Party of Britain (@WorkersPartyGB) March 3, 2024
We will try and get a local member to go along.
What an idiot. He needs to hope that the Daily Mail doesn’t find out and use it as ammunition in the current media witch-hunt against Galloway and his party.
Incidentally, I wonder if he agrees with this from the WPB website:
“We defend the achievements of the USSR, China, Cuba etc, not least the debt owed by humanity to the Soviet Union and Red Army in their war of liberation against German fascism. Our finest hour as a nation was when we stood side by side with Soviet Russia and defeated German Nazism.
(…)
We shall defend the positive historical legacy of the Soviet Union as well as all those today who struggle for socialism; for an alternative world order.”This mayoral election in Lewisham is more interesting than at first sight. Hamilton is a former member of Lewisham People Before Profit and is standing for Galloway’s Workers Party. Another former member, who stood for Parliament for them in 2015, Nick Long, is also standing but as an independent. He says he is a member of the Transform Party which is also trying to fill the left-of-Labour niche:
His programme seems essentially the same as Hamilton’s:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/abolish-lewishams-mayor-stand-with-gaza
Just noticed what this seems to mean:
“Starmer’s Labour Party is falling apart.
Any criticism of Israel is labelled “anti-semitic”.
He is their puppet.”I read this as him saying that Starmer is Israel’s puppet. But he can’t mean that, can he?
Or can he?
I wanted to include a link to the candidate’s election website so as to show the completely reformist platform he is standing on but it won’t reproduce here. I suspect that it might be blocked as he is under police investigation for carrying on a demonstration a placard equating the Star of David and the swastika.
So if you want to see it you will have to type “johnhamilton.org.uk” into your browser.
Interesting Freudian slip!
The first test will come this Thursday in the by-election for the mayor of Lewisham in London. Actually, they might not do too too badly as their candidate has stood twice before, for the People before Profit party, getting 5.7 percent of the vote in 2018.
https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/john-hamilton-for-lewisham-mayor
The Muslim population of Lewisham is 6.4 percent compared with 36 percent in Rochdale.
We’ll see.
So Galloway won and is now an MP again, for a party that claims to be “socialist” (but is really just state capitalist).
He is now starting a campaign to stand candidates against Labour in other constituencies at the general election, not so much in the expectation of winning but to take votes from Labour to punish it for its stance on the Gaza War, so mainly in constituencies with sizeable Muslim population.
There may be a niche for a left-of-Labour party for those dissatisfied with Starmer’s new Party of Business but Galloway has a rival in TUSC who are also seeking to fill this role though TUSC called for workers in Rochdale to vote for Galloway.
Outside Muslim areas Galloway’s Workers Party have much support. As a party with some degree of electoral support it seems to be a Muslim communitarian party, led by an opportunist with a huge ego.
Williamson is right. You can’t expect that but the reaction doesn’t have to take the form of an Islamist group which deliberately targets other workers as they did on 7 October and in other random killings in Israel since as at bus stops and cars in a traffic queue.
Anyway, how can socialists support an organisation that wants to establish an Islamic State?
Of course it goes without saying that Israel is a terrorist state.
About twice can much, but then we don’t claim this as a mandate to do anything except carry on campaigning for socialism. Just Stop Oil think that, despite such minimal support, they have the right to disrupt other ordinary workers’ life through blocking roads, etc. in any event, they are in the same league as us and TUSC.
More on him here:
An interview with the Reverend Mark Coleman, candidate in the 2024 Rochdale by-election.
