George Galloway MP

George Galloway could hardly object to being called a polarising figure. And indeed, he’d surely be happy to accept the label – his whole approach to politics is brash, abrasive and designed to provoke a strong reaction. But hostility to Galloway isn’t confined to supporters of the Iraq war and conservative elements in general – many socialist and anti-war militants find him infuriating. It’s worth asking why.

First of all, it’s necessary to set out the virtues of Galloway, which should not be obscured by the negative features of his political practice. Most importantly, he has been a strong, uncompromising voice for the anti-war movement in British politics. There has been no pussy-footing around from Galloway in this regard – he has condemned the colonial adventure in Iraq from the very start, in the harshest possible terms, and cut through the haze of propaganda to describe the bloody fiasco as what it is.

Galloway is not the only prominent figure in Britain to take an unflinching anti-imperialist position – Tony Benn, John Pilger, Tariq Ali are just a few of the names that could be mentioned. But Galloway has enjoyed a unique status as an elected parliamentarian who has used the platform of the House of Commons to condemn his government and his former party. The Scottish MP also delivered a major blow against the Blairites by unseating one of their favourites in the last general election.

It must be remembered, when we hear establishment pundits attack Galloway, that it’s this principled stand against the occupation of Iraq which motivates them, not his real vices (we’ll get to those soon). His attempt to build a left-wing alternative to the Labour Party is another “sin” which must be punished. The New Labour / Tory attacks on Galloway are driven by sordid political agendas that deserve the contempt of any socialist. His recent suspension from the House of Commons is another example of this – having been unable to lay a finger on Galloway, a committee of pro-war MPs then suspended him for daring to question their own saintly conduct.

It would be nice if we could leave it at that. Unfortunately, there’s more to be said about Galloway’s record, that socialists should find discomforting. For starters, his opposition to the Iraq war has always been tainted by the memory of his appalling, sycophantic performance in Baghdad. The vast majority of anti-war campaigners in the West had a flawless record of opposition to Saddam Hussein’s regime – but Galloway’s shameful tribute to the Iraqi leader has been resurrected on countless occasions by the pro-war camp as a useful distraction from the disaster their policies have created in post-Saddam Iraq.

Secondly, Galloway himself has cultivated a style of leadership that repeats some of the worst habits of the socialist movement in the past. He clearly believes in the idea of charismatic leaders who are able to give direction to their followers without any need for structures or accountability. The Celebrity Big Brother farce, which did a lot of damage to the Respect coalition, was a symptom of this – if Galloway was in the habit of consulting widely and regularly with his comrades before taking important political decisions, he should have been able to avoid scoring such a blatant own-goal.

Electing socialists to parliament has been a problematic strategy for more than a century. Inserting radical campaigners into a system Nye Bevan once described as a “shock-absorber” can lead to a blunting of their edge, and of the movement’s politics. Long, hard-won experience shows how important it is for socialist MPs to be accountable to the activists of their party. Galloway’s brazen defiance of any form of collective discipline is bound to cause severe problems.

Neither Galloway nor his allies in the SWP have shown any inclination to set up proper democratic structures for Respect, or indeed to establish it as a functioning party rather than a loose alliance. This refusal will surely mean doom for the project in the long run, unless it’s reversed – and there’s no sign of that happening.

This is not a matter of sectarian point-scoring: it would be great if there was a strong basis for optimism about the future of Respect. Britain desperately needs a left-wing alternative to New Labour (whose agenda will clearly remain the same under Gordon Brown as it was under Tony Blair). The failure of the Labour Left to even force Brown to a vote before he could replace Blair suggests that challenge will have to come from outside the Labour Party. No left-winger with their head screwed on could actively desire the failure of the Respect experiment.

But equally, there’s no point burying your head in the sand and ignoring the obvious problems. If the experience of twentieth-century socialism taught us anything, it was that organisations without democratic structures are bound to fail sooner or later. There are other grounds for pessimism. Respect has an impressive record of winning support from a section of the British Muslim community – a record that the French Trotskyists should envy. It’s worrying, though, that this base has been established by appealing to Muslims as a community, rather than on the basis of class politics. It may prove to be a very fragile bridge-head when circumstances change. And the image of Respect as a Muslim-oriented party makes it harder to broaden its support base across the whole working class.

If Respect goes under, that will mean three attempts to build a left-wing alternative to Blairism at a UK level have failed. The Socialist Labour Party and the Socialist Alliance were ship-wrecked by authoritarian control-freakery. A much more successful organisation, the Scottish Socialist Party, was crippled by its leader’s descent into tabloid hell and crass sectarian opportunism from the two leading Trotskyist currents in the UK. Successive failures have a demoralising effect, and it’s hard to imagine right now where the forces for yet another left-wing project could be assembled in Britain.

It’s a great pity that John McDonnell’s ambition to challenge Brown was sabotaged by the Labour parliamentary party. Not because McDonnell had any chance of winning, of course, and not because any long-term project of “reclaiming Labour” appears likely to succeed. But a leadership contest would have given McDonnell a chance to highlight the clear popularity of many issues that would form part of a left-of-Labour campaigning agenda – opposition to the Iraq war, re-nationalisation of public utilities like the railways and the eviction of private interests from the health and education systems. Not to mention the fact that his own down-to-earth style of leadership set a much better example than Galloway’s grand-standing.

There’s a strong temptation to believe that the British media singled out Galloway for coverage ahead of equally staunch anti-war Labour MPs like McDonnell and Alan Simpson, simply because of their well-known fondness for building people up so they can in due course knock them down again. If and when the Galloway bandwagon begins to disintegrate, we can only hope that he doesn’t bring down the prospects for a left-wing revival in Britain with him.