George Galloway on the London Debate

On Tuesday an audience of Londoners will quiz Labour, Conservatives, Lib Democrats and hear from the smaller parties hoping to make an impact on 6 May.

The candidates appearing will be:

Tessa Jowell (Labour)

Jeremy Hunt (Conservative)

Tom Brake (Lib Dem)

George Galloway (Respect)

Natalie Bennett (Green)

David Coburn (UKIP)

You can watch the programme on BBC 1 in London on Tuesday 27 April from 10.50pm.

Outside London you can watch on the BBC website

Samad Billoo on N21.net

N21.net

Respect Party to launch manifesto for a hung parliament

Respect Office, 9 Club Row, London E1 6JX
Noon, Tuesday 27th April 2010

George Galloway will launch the Respect Party manifesto for a hung parliament tomorrow. He will highlight the policies Respect MPs will press for where no party has an overall majority and the major parties are seeking support from minor party MPs.

Respect expects to elect three MPs in the general election, George Galloway and Abjol Miah in Tower Hamlets and Salma Yaqoob in Birmingham. Respect MPs have ruled out supporting a Conservative government. The conditions they will place on support for a government in the next parliament will be a massive investment into council housing, withdrawal from Afghanistan and the scrapping of Trident and democratic reform of parliament including the introduction for fair voting.

Election meets Alice in Wonderland

Last night's leaders debate was strange affair. It was supposed to discuss foreign affairs but what should have been the biggest TV topic of debate was passed over with barely a flutter. The issue is, of course Afghanistan, where British soldiers continue to kill and be killed in an un-winnable war.

According to a poll in the Independent on Sunday, 77% of people in the UK want the troops brought home. Respect agrees. But sadly all the three old parties promise to keep them there - ensuring more blood is spilt needlessly. It's time to get round the table and talk peace and bring British troops home to their families.

My fellow candidate Dr Kay Phiilips in Manchester wrote the article below for her election website after the first debate. It sort of sums up the election so far: the election has been reduced, by the media, to three men and a question of who can look most 'prime ministerial'. Meanwhile our services face a decade of Thatcherite cuts. But should it really matter how 'calm and assured' they look as they wield the axe?

George Galloway on the Daily Politics show

George appeared on Andrew Neil's Daily Politics and predicted Respect will collect three seats and could have a crucial role in a hung Parliament.

You can watch the video on the BBC website here

No progress without struggle

I have always thought it crazy that 16 year olds could be sent to war, but could not vote against the politicians who wanted to send them there. I support proposals to lower the voting age. But even if such changes were introduced, how many young people would avail of the opportunity to vote?

Survey after survey shows that young people have strong opinions about politics, but very little faith in the political system. Parliament is seen as aloof, sleazy and indifferent. Many feel cynical about whether their vote makes any difference. That cynicism is understandable, but doesn’t really help much.

If we want change, we have to engage. As the great anti-slavery campaigner Fredrick Douglas said, “If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favour freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without ploughing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning.” That struggle is waged outside parliament, for example, by workers in trade unions campaigning for decent wages and conditions, by people trying to raise awareness and solidarity about climate change, or Third World Debt, or Palestine.

But that struggle can also waged inside Parliament as well. One of the great weaknesses of the anti-war movement was that while we had plenty of supporters on the streets, we had few inside the House of Commons. That needs to change. Parliament needs to be more representative of the people.

On May 6 this country will elect a new parliament. If you want Britain to be more committed to values of peace, justice and equality, you need to put politicians into parliament who will advocate on your behalf. But in order to vote you have got to be registered to vote. The closing date to register is April 20. The General Election is an opportunity to effect change. My advice would be, don’t waste it.

George Galloway: The fight is on

Labour is soft on the bankers. The Tories are the bankers.

So it’s not surprising that each of them is planning massive cuts to public services if they win the next election. The Chancellor, Alistair Darling, promises cuts that will be “deeper and tougher” than those carried out by Margaret Thatcher in the early 1980s.

Those cuts, we should remember, led to city after city in Britain becoming industrial ghost-towns, as millions were thrown on the scrap heap of the dole. Meanwhile from Toxteth to St Pauls, Brixton to Handsworth our inner cities burned as riots erupted out of anger and frustration.

So we have Labour’s manifesto in a nutshell. ‘A future fair for all’ translates as vote for us and we’ll deliver cuts deeper and tougher than the axe woman herself.

Save the NHS

Mike Marqusee is a journalist who is currently being treated for multiple myeloma, and in a recent article he contrasts the British and American health systems. It makes sober reading. I wish him a speedy recovery. In his article he writes:

“All the political parties promise to protect the NHS in the coming bout of spending cuts, but in reality the NHS is already being subject to a severe financial squeeze; services and jobs are being lost. After the election, the NHS will be asked to make bigger savings, i.e. deeper cuts. Health workers’ wages will suffer and the private sector will further penetrate the NHS at various levels, from primary care to specialist services to hospital finance. Unless we stop it, The NHS – and all that makes it better than the US system – cannot be taken for granted.” Read the full article here.

Vote for change

The revelation that three former Labour ministers were bidding for consultancy work by parading their government connections gives further insight into the shabby morality of Westminster politics.

But when politicians can get away with leading this country into wars based on lies, it is hardly surprising that they think they can get away with anything.We need greater transparency and more genuine democracy.

That’s why I am a supporter of Vote for Change. They are a lobby group campaigning for electoral reform. As they state on their excellent website ‘the only way we're going to make politicians understand their responsibilities to the people they represent is to make them more accountable at elections. It's time to kick out the antiquated First-Past-the-Post voting system that has allowed them to get away with so much and bring in a new style of elections where every single vote counts.’

Islamophobia - a threat to democracy

We are concerned by the rise of Islamophobia, the negative coverage of Muslims in the media, the violent street mobilisations of extreme rightwing organisations like the English Defence League, and the rising electoral support for the British National party (The battle for Barking, Weekend, 13 March). Following Channel 4’s recent inflammatory documentary, Britain’s Islamic Republic, which saw concentrated attacks on the East London Mosque, the English Defence League marched through central London with placards including the demand “Close the East London Mosque now”.

The East End of London is not new to having its communities attacked by fascists and the media. The 1930s saw the Battle of Cable Street when Oswald Mosley's blackshirts attempted to march into the Jewish community in the area. We cannot allow this terrible history to repeat itself. Further, the documentary, and articles since, have attacked the participation in politics by the Muslim community. We cannot stand by and watch this continue without remark or action.

In the runup to the general election, all parts of the population should be actively encouraged to exercise their votes. That is democracy. We welcome the work of organisations who work to this end. We call for solidarity and support for those organisations that work to encourage political participation from all sections of society, including Muslims, and condemn those who seek to undermine it.