I meet George Galloway in his campaign office just next to Levenshulme station, in a room filled to bursting with campaign banners on garden stakes featuring his beaming face.<\/p>\n
Our meeting was initially postponed following the tragedy of the evening of Monday the 22nd in Manchester. He tells me he \u201cwent to the vigil in Albert Square, and we for 24 hours maintained a self-denying ordinance \u2014\u00a0then took the view that terrorism can\u2019t be allowed to stop democracy, and so have in a more moderated way, begun campaigning again\u201d, though without the bus, music or large public platforms.<\/p>\n
The builders renovating what was formerly a kebab and curry shop that his campaign base has taken up one half of are asked for some quiet while we get our chance to speak with him. The unmistakable black hat is on and his piercing light blue eyes shine out from beneath it, and you can understand why his reputation for charisma and passion precedes him.<\/p>\n
People should vote for him in Manchester Gorton, he says, because \u201cafter 47 years of Sir Gerald Kaufman, who was no ordinary MP\u2026 the people of the constituency should not settle for ordinary.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have a proven track record, not least in double harness with Gerald Kaufman, over many, many years\u201d, he continues, \u201ctravelling the country and farther afield with him, raising the big issues that impact on all of our lives, and those are not just local, but they are local, they\u2019re not just national, but they are national; but they are international.\u201d<\/p>\n
What Manchester Gorton needs, is a \u201cbig figure to stand up for them, to speak up for them, to defend them and to try and alter a situation here which is, frankly, dangerous.\u201d<\/p>\n
He is careful not to promise too much before the election \u2014\u00a0\u201cpoliticians can\u2019t offer anything in advance of an election. It\u2019s better in this case to look at what someone has actually done.\u201d I press him on what he can offer students, and he recalls defying a three-line whip, to oppose introducing tuition fees.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Chief Whip intercepted me at the door of the lobby and berated me for breaking the government\u2019s line, and he said \u2018It\u2019s only \u00a31,000\u2019, that\u2019s what he said. I said, \u2018it\u2019s the principle. Once you breach that principle that \u00a31,000 will one day be \u00a310,000\u2019. And he laughed \u2014 how he laughed \u2014\u00a0and nobody\u2019s laughing now.<\/p>\n
\u201cManchester University, and other colleges and universities here are all in the same boat of high fees, high costs, no grants, high rents, high cost of living, and I want to do something about that\u201d he says. \u201cWhat I want to do is abolish tuition fees, starting this September, so if I\u2019m elected\u2026 my vote will help to put a Labour government in to office, and the scrapping of tuition fees will be the first but not the only thing that needs to be done.\u201d<\/p>\n
Galloway has positioned himself as an alternative Labour candidate, despite standing against their chosen candidate, Afzal Khan, in the constituency. \u201cThis is a choice between two different types of Labour \u2014\u00a0the Tony Benn, Jeremy Corbyn Labour that I represent, and the Tom Watson, Tony Blair Labour that Afzal Khan represents\u201d, he explains.<\/p>\n
I ask if he\u2019s concerned he risks damaging Labour\u2019s chance of victory by standing in Gorton independently. \u201cThere\u2019s only me or the Labour candidate can win this election. If you look at the simple arithmetic, Labour has 28,000 votes, and the nearest competitor is the Green Party with 4,000 votes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no danger at all of splitting votes and letting The Conservatives in. The Conservatives, as far as I know, are not even really in this campaign, they haven\u2019t delivered a leaflet or turned up at a hustings or anything else.\u201d<\/p>\n
He harshly criticises how Khan was selected by the Labour Party, saying that it was rigged against any Corbyn supporters. \u201cIf the Labour candidate had been chosen fairly, then I probably would not be standing, but the Labour candidate was chosen in a rigged selection, in an all-Asian Muslim shortlist, the first time that has ever happened\u201d, he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cI strongly disapprove of that. It would be a very risky adventure in identity politics, even if it had been meant sincerely, but it was not meant sincerely. It was the product of Keith Vaz\u2019s manoeuvrings, and the words \u2018sincerely\u2019 and \u2018Keith Vaz\u2019 shouldn\u2019t appear in the same sentence.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey couldn’t have an open shortlist, because the Corbyn supporter, Sam Wheeler, would have won it. They couldn’t have a woman-only shortlist, because the Corbyn-supporting councillor Julie Reed would have won it. So they came up with this wheeze\u201d.<\/p>\n
In the past, following Ken Livingstone\u2019s suspension from Labour, Galloway called the Labour leader\u2019s behaviour \u201cshameless opportunism\u201d and \u201cutterly dishonest\u201d. Having positioned himself as still standing up for Labour, I ask whether he would really work well alongside Corbyn as he says he would.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have been with Corbyn almost 40 years, and sat next to him in Parliament for almost 30 years. My last speech in Parliament, in the last Parliament\u2026 was a filibuster, and the three filibusters were me, Jeremy Corbyn, and John McDonnell.\u201d<\/p>\n
Galloway was a supporter of leaving the European Union. \u201cAlmost all of Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell\u2019s manifesto would have been illegal if we remained within the European Union \u2014\u00a0public ownership, nationalisation, state intervention in the economy and so on, are all illegal, deliberately so, in the articles of the European Union, that\u2019s why it was set up, to stop that kind of Socialist politics.\u201d He campaigned against it in 1975, he says, for the same reasons he opposed it in 2016.<\/p>\n
I ask him if Corbyn is a credible candidate for Prime Minister. Before the attack on Monday which suspended campaigning, Corbyn\u2019s campaign \u201cwas really picking up momentum, if you\u2019ll forgive the pun\u201d, he says. \u201cHe climbed from around 25 per cent to around 35 per cent in the course of the election campaign thus far.<\/p>\n
\u201cTheresa May was on the ropes, anyone who saw her interview with Andrew Neil on the BBC after the incredible fiasco of the social care issue, knows that Jeremy Corbyn was beginning to breathe down Theresa May\u2019s neck.<\/p>\n
\u201cJeremy Corbyn is very much a credible Prime Minister, and those \u2018fake news\u2019 outlets that seek to pretend otherwise, are just that, they\u2019re fake news, in the service of the power, in the service of the Tories.\u201d<\/p>\n
When asked what could help Labour\u2019s current struggles, he makes it very clear that\u00a0Labour\u2019s poll results are catching up quickly to the Conservatives\u2019 \u2014\u00a0but is it enough? \u201cGood question\u2026 Let\u2019s put it this way, Labour started on 25, the last poll they were almost 35, with two weeks to go, so that shows Labour steadily rising in the polls, not falling.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut insofar as there is a credibility gap which you\u2019re identifying, it\u2019s hardly surprising, given that hundreds of Labour MPs have spent the last 18 months stabbing Jeremy Corbyn in the back, and given that the entirety, virtually, of the mass media, has for the last 18 months \u2014 and including, in the case of the BBC, in defiance of the law \u2014\u00a0has continued to maintain an unremitting bias against him.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s hardly surprising. The surprising thing is, despite all that, he\u2019s going up and up in the polls.\u201d He chooses to suspend his judgement on what can bring them eventual success \u201cbecause it\u2019s not yet clear what the impact of the events of this week has been.\u201d<\/p>\n
I turn finally to the issue of anti-Semitism. Galloway has publicly supported the University of Manchester\u2019s BDS campaign, and concerns have been raised by some about anti-Semitism on campus and in the political Left. \u201cIf there is actual anti-Semitism on the campus at Manchester University, I\u2019d first of all be a little bit surprised, but I\u2019d be shocked and horrified too\u201d, he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnti-Semitism is a vile strain of racism which murdered six million Jewish people in the Holocaust, so it\u2019s not a small thing. If there is anti-Semitism it must be rooted out wherever it raises its ugly head\u2026 But the question of Israel has nothing to do with anti-Semitism, the question of Israel is about something else altogether.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s about politics, it\u2019s about ideology, it\u2019s about apartheid, and that has nothing whatsoever to do with the religion of the people who are practicing that repression, any more than you can blame the killer of Jo Cox on white people or Christian people, or the mass murderer in Manchester Arena on Monday on Muslim people.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have been on the Left for half a century. I have never met anyone on the Left who was anti-Semitic. If you were anti-Semitic, then, ipso facto, you couldn\u2019t be on the Left. Jewish people have played a leading role in the vanguard of the development of Left politics since the middle of the 19th century until now.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Renowned left-winger George Galloway is running as an independent candidate for Manchester Gorton this election. As part of our series of interviews with local candidates, we sat down with him<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1389,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[15955,785,16229,2895,11371,16230,759,8523],"coauthors":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26590"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1389"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26590\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26590"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=26590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}