Marching in London for Palestine in November (Picture: Guy Smallman)
If George Galloway wins the Rochdale by-election on Thursday next week it will be because of his support for the Palestinians. It will be a searing judgement on Keir Starmer and the Labour Party’s backing for genocide. But there are strong reasons why Socialist Worker can’t call for a vote for Galloway.
He is focusing the movement for Palestine around the rotten politics of the Workers’ Party of Britain (WPB). It peddles the reactionary “for the workers not the wokers” line. This spurns many battles that are part of the working class fight, such as oppression and environmental collapse.
The WPB says, for example, that it “offers a migration policy that reflects the anxiety felt among the working class about an influx of migrants which appears to be out of control”. It adds, “People are not wrong to worry about undue burdens being placed on local services and about the cost of hosting escalating numbers of asylum seekers.”
It’s a party against “apocalyptic Green hysteria that floods our media”, will “keep an open mind” about the reality of climate change and says there is “no need to be rushed” into a green economy. It denounces “increasingly unhinged identity politics”—by which it means struggles for full trans rights.
As for crime, the WPB warms the cops’ hearts when it says, “We are not soft-hearted liberals who believe everyone is capable of redemption.” We need a much better expression of Palestinian freedom than Galloway’s party.
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