Update 30 March: Galloway interview with Shaun Ley on BBC Radio 4 World at One (interview starts 20 minutes into the programme) pressed him on an important nuance of his campaign:
SL: David Ward said this was really a fight between Labour and Respect for the Asian Vote. The white vote stayed at home?
GG: Along the lines of "No" and "No" and figures show that. Then he said it was Labour who put up Pakistani Muslim and campaigned for him on those credentials.
SL: You put out a leaflet saying "I don't drink I'm a better Muslim candidate than the Labour candidate."
GG: Well it was Labour who put up the Muslim Pakistani candidate...
SL: But is that a fair reflection of how you were campaigning?
GG: No... if you look at the break down of the count we won in virtually every area...
But do the figures answer this question? He was asked whether it was an important part of his campaign to appear more Muslim than the Labour Muslim candidate.
His answer was to quote figures. Don't these just show that whatever tactic he used worked? It doesn't say what those tactics were.
May be it is a bit pedantic to harp on about this issue in the face of the scale of his victory. The motives for choosing Galloway this time should become clearer as the next election draws nearer. The question of whether those motives clash may also be answered.
It will be interesting to see if he takes a trip to Mirpur in the next three years and whether such a trip will be reported?
Update 30 March: So Galloway won by 10,140 votes - he took 18,341 votes compared to Labour's 8,201. The turnout was 50.8%, the lowest for at least the last four elections.
This is a piece by a Bradfordian trying to analyse why he voted for George Galloway:
"I worry that Galloway’s only in this for himself… but which politician isn’t? I don’t trust George Galloway… but I can’t trust any politician. The trick we have to pull off is to make the relationship less parasitic and more symbiotic. Galloway offers us a national platform. The media will listen to Galloway, or at least give him his on-screen high, more than they ever would Marsha Singh or any of the other candidates. He can put the spotlight back on Bradford."
There's a General Election coming up in three years, time which Galloway will use to secure his position. He has much greater motive to do so than in Bethnal Green and Bow Galloway where he promised to stand down for a Bangladeshi candidate.
In a letter to Bradford Mosques he said: "I want to give my remaining days in the service of all the people - Muslims, Pakistanis and everyone in Bradford West."
May be the story could end happily.
In Bethnal Green and Bow:
Respect challenged Labour for council seats (he said he aimed to do this again in Bradford in his victory speech)
Then everyone started falling out with councillors from all parties swapping sides.
And now politics in Tower Hamlets is as peculiar and pointless as ever.
UPDATE 29 March 2012: As discussed below George Galloway tends to target specific groups with specific messages that aren't necessarily meant to be heard by other groups. According to the BBC (below) Galloway said it was pure chance that his campaign posters were mostly in Muslim areas of Bradford. Yesterday in a letter to Bradford mosques Galloway claimed to be more Muslim than than the Muslim Labour candidate.
He wrote: "God KNOWS who is a Muslim. And he KNOWS who is not. Instinctively, so do you. Let me point out to all the Muslim brothers and sisters what I stand for." Top of the list was the fact that he doesn't drink alcohol.
He said he was "increasingly angered" by Labour campaigners pointing out their candidate being Muslim and from Pakistan.
Also it has been reported that Galloway is taking legal action against a Labour Councillor: George Galloway sues but he probably won't sue you.
UPDATE 26 March 2012: Last night on BBC Radio 4's Westminster Hour (30 minutes into the programme) BBC Yorkshire's political editor Len Tingle said: "Most of his (George Galloway's) posters tend to be in the Asian areas. He says that's just fortune, his supporters put up the posters and he doesn't have any choice. When you move out into those areas where predominantly white families live you see lots and lots of Labour and Conservative posters you don't see any George Galloway ones."
In 2005 non-Muslim voters in Bethnal Green and Bow were completely unaware of the support Galloway had gained in the Bangladeshi community or the promises he had made to win that support - as described below.
Mainstream politicians also failed to keep tabs on Galloway's tactics. In an interview with the East London Advertiser before the 2005 election Gordon Brown refused to mention George Galloway at all. Despite it being the highest profile battle in 2005 election with daily coverage in national newspapers, voters in the East End appeared relatively apathetic with turnout only rising from 48% to 52%.
Yesterday (25 March 2012) the BBC also reported Galloway saying that five soldiers from 3 Battalion the Yorkshire Regiment, on from Bradford, had "died in vain. They shouldn't have been sent there."
Efforts by Times journalist Dominic Kennedy to find out what the Charity Commission knows about Galloway's Mariam Appeal might also be worth watching but may not have much to do with this election (details from UK Human Rights Blog and The Lawyer).
Bradford vs Bethnal Green
In 2005 I spent a lot of time watching George Galloway and even followed him to Bangladesh where most of these pictures were taken. But trying to understand him turned out to be a problem - once you started you couldn't stop.
Unfortunately his reappearance in Bradford West has caused a relapse: a re-examination of his 2005 General Election campaign and the tactics he used to beat Oona King by 823 votes.
Now Galloway is a candidate in the Bradford West by election due to take place on 29 March 2012.
So can Bradford West be compared to Bethnal Green and Bow?
Both have large Muslim populations but Bradford West was higher up the list of Muslim Council of Britain's top 10 target constituencies in 2001.
Bradford City had the highest concentration of Muslims in the UK (15%) while the Bradford West constituency was 38% Muslim. Since then the Muslim population in the city has grown making it more attractive to politicians focusing on Muslim voters.
Bradford's political scene looks at least as complex and sensitive as Bethnal Green.
But it could be more volatile. Race riots in 2001 prompted the government to commission the Ouseley Report (published in 2005) which said the city had "witnessed growing divisions among its population along race, ethnic, religious and social class lines - and now finds itself in the grip of fear." This New Statesman piece suggested that this tension remained in 2010.
Galloway's 2005 campaign appeared to exploit these kinds of divisions and communication failures enabling him to promote conflicting messages to different groups.
Vote fraud
This piece is mainly negative but one of Galloway's few positive campaign tactics in 2005 was his battle against electoral fraud. The effects are still being felt.
Bradford has similar problems and Galloway has already issued an election fraud alert: "I am particularly concerned about fraud in the Bradford West by-election because the election is likely to be very close and it is in these circumstances that corruption most often occurs."
Divide and rule
But the negative stuff springs to mind more easily. Like the rumours that emerged about him stepping aside for a Bangladeshi candidate. When I asked him about this before the election he told me: "I'm not going to ensure anything about who replaces me. It will be up to the members of the local constituency party to decide who, if anyone, they want as a successor when I stand down from parliament, whenever that is."
But hours after the election he told one of my colleagues: "We have a consensus in our party that the (next) candidate must be Bengali."
He also said: "If your readers don't like it, they don't have to vote for it."
But the election had already happened and this vital promise had been hidden from the majority of his new constituents.
For your ears only...
Bethnal Green's Muslims mostly come from a specific part of Bangladesh called Sylhet. Bradford West is similar because the majority of its Muslims come from a particular area of Pakistan-administered Kashmir called Mirpur District.
In 2005 Galloway campaigned in Sylhet in Bangladesh to help his election in Bethnal Green. Similar electioneering in 'Little Britain' in Mirpur district could help politicians in places like Bradford according to the BBC (2010).
When he was in Bangladesh Galloway told audiences: "If I'm a member of Parliament in 7 weeks time I'll be going into the High Commission building in Sylhet and Dhaka to make sure every person in it is treated with dignity and respect like in New Zealand, Australia and Canada. So I'm going to be a champion of Bangladesh in London."
As far as I know he hasn't been back to Bangladesh since 2005.
On his return to London in 2005 he was asked "Do you still intend to become a "Champion of Bangladesh" if you are elected in Bethnal Green and Bow?"
His answer was no: "Taking a few words out of the context of thousands I delivered, publicly and privately on a recent visit to Bangladesh, inevitably leads to misrepresentation. My job is not to represent any foreign country or its interests in parliament, nor, of course, would I do so."
It seemed like no one in London was supposed to know that these promises had been made.
So it looks like he never fulfilled that promise - unless the people of Sylhet failed to keep their side of the bargain set out by Galloway: "I'm asking you, my brothers, to telephone every relative and friend in East London, to write them a letter, to send a message, tell them what you heard here. Tell them I'm the only British member of Parliament to come here."
So it looks like he never fulfilled that promise - unless the people of Sylhet failed to keep their side of the bargain set out by Galloway: "I'm asking you, my brothers, to telephone every relative and friend in East London, to write them a letter, to send a message, tell them what you heard here. Tell them I'm the only British member of Parliament to come here."
Human right-off
Three months before leaving for Bangladesh Galloway gave the impression that he would challenge Bangladeshi MPs on the shocking human rights record of successive governments.
He said: "I am not for the Awami League (in 2005 it was the left leaning opposition party in Bangladesh), I am not for the BNP (the then ruling Bangladesh National Party) and I am not for the Islamists. I am for human rights."
He said that he would criticise Bangladeshi politicians and their parties for human rights abuses.
However his willingness to challenge the Bangladeshi political establishment had mysteriously disappeared at his first press conference in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh on February 27 2005.
"I work to represent the Bangladeshi Community in Tower Hamlets... I don't want to run the political affairs of Bangladesh, that would be colonialist. I don't want to interfere in the political situation in Bangladesh."
More likely he realised that Bangladeshis in Bethnal Green supported one party or the other and if he criticised either he would have upset potential voters in the UK.
Galloway has not been so restrained about interfering in Pakistani politics.
In 2007 he called for a parliamentary debate about Democracy in Pakistan in which he criticised it's then president Musharraf and said: "I have an interest in Pakistan. I hold the highest civil award that the country can bestow, the Hilal-i-Quaid-i-Azam, given to me at the end of the 1980s for my work for the restoration of democracy in Pakistan..."
He said his "primary concern, and that of most Pakistanis living in Britain" was a Pakistani politician called Altaf Hussain who he said was conducting "a terrorist campaign" from a sofa in Edgeware.
Geoff Hoon provided a response that didn't address any of his questions.
(It would also be interesting to know if Galloway has changed his view on the human rights problems posed by President Bashar Assad of Syria.)
Galloway and the police
A dramatic event in the 2005 election in Bethnal Green was the alleged hostage taking of George Galloway in which he claimed his life was threatened.
In August 2005 Galloway told his local paper that he had informed Tower Hamlets' borough commander Mark Simmons that Omar Brooks (AKA Abu Izzadeen) was "the ringleader of the group of fanatics who briefly held me a prisoner durning the election and threatened to hang me... he should be rigorously prosecuted for this or any other breach of our laws."
But Galloway still hasn't made an official statement to the police about the incident - (Some background).
In other words a man who had allegedly held a British MP hostage on British soil and who had threatened to hang him was left unpunished. Questions had already been raised about whether the incident was a hostage taking or if any threats had been made.
City, 43.9
Clayton and Fairweather Green, 4.8
Heaton, 25.9
Manningham, 58.9
Thornton and Allerton, 4.8%
Toller 63.6%
Posts
What you fail to mention is Bradford West is a Labour stronghold with a 6000 solid majority. And most importantly that the Labour candidate that Galloway is up against a PAKISTANI, MIRPURI, MUSLIM in Bradford. So its not exactly possible for him to use race or religion to win this election is it?
ReplyDeleteThe fact of the matter is that I would have been voting Labour had Galloway not entered the mix. I am voting Galloway, because unlike the Labour Candidate he is able to speak, has the experience, the contacts and the charisma to represent me and my community well.
The writer of this article should be ashamed of thinking so little of Pakistani Muslims that we somehow are uncapable of voting for someone based upon merit and that we are acustom or prone to being taken for fools. Just accept the fact that GG is a heavyweight of British Politics who is elected because the people want him...and accept the fact that you will not be getting an interview for a job at the Guardian any time soon!
What you fail to mention is Bradford West is a Labour stronghold with a 6000 solid majority. (So this is a two horse race, its Respect V Labour) And most importantly that the Labour candidate that Galloway is up against is a PAKISTANI, MIRPURI, MUSLIM from Bradford. So its not exactly possible for Galloway to use race or religion to win this election is it?
ReplyDeleteThe fact of the matter is that I would have been voting Labour had Galloway not entered the mix. I am voting Galloway, because unlike the Labour Candidate he is able to speak, has the experience, the contacts and the charisma to represent me and my community better than the other candidate.
The writer of this article should be ashamed of thinking so little of Pakistani Muslims that we somehow are uncapable of voting for someone based upon merit and that we are acustom or prone to being taken for fools.
I challenge you to Pop down to Bradford for yourself and see what's going on. There is a revolution happening. People are tired of the same old LAB/CON Mp's and Councillors who do NOTHING to help our failing city. We want change and we believe Galloway is the best man of the candidates we have, who can deliver. That, and the fact that the Labour Candidate can barely string a few sentences together in a coherent manner, are the ONLY reasons why Galloway looks likely to be riding into Westminster soon after delivering the biggest political earthquake Bradford has ever seen.
Just accept the fact that Galloway is a heavyweight of British Politics who is elected by the people because the people want him...and accept the fact that you will not be getting an interview for a job at the Guardian any time soon!
Thanks for the comment. I agree with a lot of what you are saying and I think I can understand why you might want to vote for George Galloway.
ReplyDeleteI thought I’d look at this comment: “The writer of this article should be ashamed of thinking so little of Pakistani Muslims that we somehow are uncapable of voting for someone based upon merit and that we are acustom or prone to being taken for fools.”
The voting habits and motives of Muslim Asians were the subject of a lot scrutiny after the race riots in 2001 and the conclusions were not positive:
The Ritchie Report (http://www.oldhamir.org.uk/OIR%20Report.pdf) said: “There appears to be a clan or client based approach to politics and public life within the Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities which does not fit easily with traditional British processes and which has been exploited by white party leaders, to get votes, and Asian Community leaders, to secure influence.”
The Cantle Report said something similar: “In some areas, the Asian community has drawn our attention to a situation where some local political activities, including the selection of candidates, owe more to familial and other inappropriate connections, than to the legitimate and pressing concerns of the local electorate.”
And the Ouseley Report (http://www.bradford2020.com/pride/report.pdf) about Bradford said the same too, it just didn’t specify which communities it was talking about: “Political leadership has been weak in kowtowing to community leadership and operating within a "doing deals" culture to avoid "disturbances" and to "keep the peace". So-called "community leaders" are self-styled, in league with the establishment key people and maintain the status quo of control and segregation through fear, ignorance and threats. Community leaders tend to retain their power base by maintaining the segregated status quo even when unrepresentative.”
I don’t know if you’d agree with these views.
Anyway, I was writing about Galloway’s habit of making different promises to different sets of people, a habit made a lot easier when communities are split – which they appear to be in Bradford. If however he uses this bad habit to do a good thing, then it’ll be a good thing.
Good luck with the revolution.