GEORGE GALLOWAY ‘Just say Naw’ anti independence leaflet: Some reflections

Someone writes. 

George Galloway over forty years of political campaigning has built himself a reputation as a left wing socialist outsider, certainly outside the dominant Westminster political consensus! Over the last two decades especially he has proclaimed himself as a champion of political rights of the masses of people in the middle east, especially the Palestinians against American led imperialist political strategies rising to world wide international mass media prominence with his barnstorming performance against the hypocrisies and blindness’s of American policy after the invasion of Iraq in 2003 at an American Senate hearing in 2005! In all his years of attention grabbing anti western imperialist political campaigning he has become a hero to many millions of people in the Middle East and a pariah outcast to the political establishment at Westminster leading to his expulsion from the Blairite New Labour Party and his well publicised assertions that he has remained true to his socialist principles and his more recent election victories over the Labour Party in London and Bradford for the newly established ‘Respect Party.’  (1)

Given his well established credentials as a rebel against Westminster political orthodoxies an intervention by him into the political referendum independence campaign in his native country of Scotland where the attempt is being made to break away from Westminster political orthodoxies and control after over 300 years could not help but be an intervention warmly anticipated by all those in Scotland who from a Scottish political perspective wish to break the archaic reactionary Westminster dare I say it imperialist stranglehold on Scottish political life! For just as in the old saying, ‘Charity begins at home’ I would suggest that anti Westminster imperialist campaigning should ‘begin at home’ under the adage of that old socialist battle cry that a victory for one is a victory for all and that a Scottish successful break away from Imperialist Colonial Westminster control would be a victory for all those over the world who welcome any challenge to the Western capitalist nexus where ever it arises! This has been the view taken for instance by that redoubtable socialist international campaigner of more than four decades standing Tarig Ali. (2)  George, who entirely lacks the erudite historical, theoretical background of Tarig (3) takes the opposite view as outlined in this pamphlet!

What astonishes me most indeed in reading this pamphlet is its complete lack of any serious political argument and analysis of the fundamental issues underlying this Scottish referendum campaign. All we get in fact is a decidedly peculiar, idiosyncratic, egotistical, frankly in many places incomprehensible rehashing of all the dreary, stale, reactionary idealess smoke screening negativity and sneering belittling of everything Scottish and especially Scottish Nationalist that has characterised the overall Westminster led Unionist ‘Better Together’ campaign! The venomous concentration on the alleged personal character defects and power hungry selfish proclivities of Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon are given full expression! I know that the tradition of modern Scottish ideological and cultural discourse has been rightly criticised as seeing matters ‘through a glass darkly’ (4) with much too emphasis on destructive, nihilistic inclined, masculine remorseless excessively theoretical negativity but George takes this withering awful tradition to unconscious levels of bizarre self parody! He first warns us what life will be like in

‘Alex Salmond’s monocratic Scotland’ (5)

Here we have a classic example of the pseudo academic theorised abuse of language, with the author attempting to sound learned! What does the word ‘monocratic’ even mean? I’ve read in my time many excessively academic theoretical works over forty years but I can’t say I can recall coming across it before! I went to my Concise Oxford dictionary and came across ‘Monocracy’ which is defined as ‘government by one person only!’ In a way this is quite unconsciously illuminating of the author himself who has become notorious over his political career as decidedly not being what you would call a team player and on running a one man band and into the bargain causing fratricidal conflict wherever he goes from Dundee Labour Party to War on Want to Hillhead Labour Party right up to more recent splits and divisions in Respect! So you would think with George there is a danger with his own monocratic tendencies in ‘calling the pot black!’ so to speak! All humour aside though just what does George think he is going to achieve by this hyperbolic style of highly personalised abuse? In this pamphlet he is quite adept in painting generalised straw men and women caricatural villains that may well exist in George’s remarkable immature playground schoolboy imagination but have no or hardly any basis at all in the actual politics of those he is attacking but does reflect the general pervading ignorance and bigotry concerning all things Scottish that dominates in that most ‘Little Englander’ Uncle Sam kowtowing parochial of political villages at Westminster! Thus George writes,

‘Nigel Farage stands red faced on the cliffs of Dover waving an Union Jack and shouting ‘boo’ at Johnny Foreigner, thinking that is going to solve all our problems, just as Alex Salmond sits in his presidential quarters at Bute House shouting boo at the English, trying to con you into thinking that this will solve all your problems.’  (6)

How embarrassing it is to read such jejune ridiculous abusive trivialities in the place of a mature political discussion of the actual questions involved in this political referendum debate! I mean it is a political commonplace for anyone who has spent five minutes studying the growth of the modern SNP, particularly since Alex Salmond became leader in 1990, to realise that the SNP is a left of centre fundamentally social democratic party that espouses a civic political nationalism that has not built itself up on anti English rhetoric! Furthermore in coupling Alex Salmond with Nigel Farage George is exhibiting the same crass political ignorance that is characteristic of major figures in the Westminster political village which you would have thought would have been anathema to an alleged Westminster long standing outsider and rebel such as George!!!

On this particular matter let me quote possibly Scotland’s most pre-eminent political journalist and commentator, the author of a major history and TV programme on the Road to the Referendum, one Iain MacWhirther, where he specifically criticises Nick Clegg for,

‘Trying to equate Alex Salmond with Nigel Farage of Ukip calling them ‘breast beating nationalists’ No one who knows anything about Scotland could possibly confuse UKIP with a social democratic , pro Europe party, that campaigns for open borders and increased immigration and is called the SNP,’ (7)

Or further on the same theme,

‘Metropolitan commentators like the Times David Aaranovitch were still trying to equate Alex Salmond with Nigel Farage, ‘peas out of the same hard pod’ As if Alex Salmond supported withdrawal from the EU, a ban on immigration, welfare cuts and scrapping green energy. For a smear to stick it has to have some basis in reality. There are many legitimate grounds for criticising Alex Salmond…but suggesting he is a right wing Ukip fellow traveller is simply daft.’(8) 

‘Simply Daft’ are you listening George? Unfortunately George goes from the politically ‘simply daft’ to the politically reactionary atrocious when he condemns Alex Salmond for not condemning those spirited anti UKIP demonstrators in Edinburgh who made clear that his reactionary anti immigrant, little Englander, right wing xenophobic anti welfare bigotries were not welcome in Scotland! Even though he is the latest darling of the BBC London TV executives and hardly off their TV screens and beginning to enjoy significant political support in England though precious little in Scotland! Here UKIP have not yet saved a political deposit and getting about 1% vote in the 2011 Scottish parliamentary elections! This total lack of significant popular support in Scotland, the exact opposite of the situation in England, is hardly surprising, since the UKIP political party is in essence a brand new classic right wing English Nationalist Party which programme until just a few months ago called for the abolition of the Scottish parliament and its leadership in recent Scottish political news conferences has shown a complete ignorance of some of the most elementary facts concerning Scottish popular culture! (9) Why George any self respecting genuine anti imperialist Scottish socialist would have been part of that demonstration not condemning those who didn’t condemn it!!!

You begin to fear indeed on the basis of this incongruous strangely anachronistic little pamphlet that our ‘gorgeous George’ is beginning to lose not only his political bearings but his grip entirely on today’s actual political realities, particularly concerning Scotland! I mean what does it say about a present member of the Westminster House of Commons who is not even aware of how many Scottish MPs their now are in the House of Commons? Twice incredibly in this pamphlet he tells us that there are ’71 non – Tory Scottish MPs’ (10) when a first year secondary school child in their first modern studies lesson would be aware that after the setting up of the Scottish parliament in 1999 the number of Scottish MPs was reduced to 59! This ludicrous elementary error is surely indicative of a man strangely lost in a previous era of Scottish politics!

This whole pamphlet indeed is redolent with the Scottish Labourite rhetorical bile that used to be regularly flung at the SNP in the 1970’s and 1980’s. He even quotes that old Scottish Labourite canard of that time that the SNP are the ‘tartan Tories.’ (11) Once again the best critical dissection of such is by Iain MacWhirther when he states,

‘Labour keep going on about the Tartan Tories… I don’t know how they expect Scottish voters to believe this when it is so obvious that the Nationalists are to the left of Labour and have been for 20 years. Labour allowed the SNP to become the party of the NHS, nuclear disarmament and free education while it has become the party of the benefits cap, immigration controls and weapons of mass destruction…The rise of the SNP almost precisely mirrors the decline of Labour as a social democratic movement…The SNP landslide victory in 2011…was again built on the policies that Labour had abandoned – in particular opposition to university tuition fees. Scottish voters only avoided the restoration of tuition fees by voting SNP in 2011 and they know this perfectly well.’ (12) 

Well the Scottish political voters may ‘know this perfectly well’ but not our ‘Just say Naw’ Scotland Tour 2014 ‘Big Brother’ media celebrity vaunting George! Who is never one to report on actual Scottish political realities, never mind analyse them when he can instead do a bit of retrospective self glory advertising as when he bizarrely anachronistically boasts

‘The reason why you have free prescriptions, free care for the elderly and no tuition fees is.. because of the Barnett formula…negotiated, primarily by Labour politicians in Scotland…I did that. I’ve been their. Got the tee shirt, I negotiated that with Joel Barnett then.’ (13)

You might have thought that George would have been fully of the Scottish political earthquake which happened in May 2011 since he himself attempted to get elected to that Scottish parliament! Maybe his selective loss of memory can be explained by the fact that in these elections he got such a paltry vote that he didn’t even get close to being elected! No where in this pamphlet with all its rhetorical bluster does he face up to the essential political facts already quoted from Iain MacWhirther that rationally account for the astonishing loss of power for the Scottish Labour Party to the Scottish National Party in the 2007 and 2011 Scottish parliamentary elections! This is doubly remarkable for the very first section of this pamphlet is entitled ‘The Malaise of Scottish Labourism!’ (14) Though this pamphlet no where even begins to attempt to rationally explain the malaise of Scottish Labourism it certainly gives concrete proof of the disturbing deterioration in the political intelligence and grasp of modern Scottish political realities shown by its author! He bizarrely conflates the break up of the British State with the ‘break up of the unity of working people’ (15) Tis a very strange ‘socialist’ doctrine indeed that believes that the British State was either set up or has ever been constituted or will ever be  constituted to solidify the ‘unity of working people in this small island of ours!’ Only a purported ‘socialist movement’ that never ever in all its history acquired the most basic rudiments of socialist theory and practice could write such elementary nonsense without blushing! (15)

On the economy we get the standard ‘better together unionist message’ that there will be a colossal loss of investment, jobs and capital flight! In one paragraph we are told,

  ‘Far from Scotland becoming a Socialist country if it was independent, it would be dragged into a race to the bottom by a perpetual Tory government in England…cutting taxes, cutting wages and cutting regulations.’ (16)

Thus under this dad’s army Private Fraser ‘we’re all doomed scenario’ Scotland under independence would be a capitalist society of even greater exploitation, inequality and economic recession than now! Then in another paragraph, completely contradicting what he has just asserted that an independent Scotland by some iron law of economic necessity would be far more capitalist worst, he then asserts,

‘ Do you honestly think that a Uk company is going to situate in a more socialist Scotland (my emphasis) when the Tory UK government has created the perfect low tax, low regulation, low wage capitalist environment. Of course they would choose the Tory Uk over Scotland.’ (17)

So with a flicker of George’s fervid imagination Scotland becomes inevitably on the one hand more capitalist after independence and then more socialist, but no matter which imagined scenario George is happening to imagine at any given moment it makes little matter for it’s a classic case of heads you lose tails you lose, nothing but most certain unmitigated disaster awaits that horror of horrors a politically independent Scotland!!!

This kind of doom saying carping negativity as Carol Craig most cogently points out (18) is what led to the Scottish Labour Party defeats in 2007 and 2011 at the hands of the consciously accentuating the positive for Scotland campaigning tactics of the SNP, a tactic which positively changed the general atmosphere in Scotland for the better as if a most unexpected ray of sunshine had appeared after the never ending deluge of Labourite Calvinist gloom! A fundamental change in Scottish political atmospherics which has to this day seen the SNP retain a significant lead in the opinion polls for future Scottish parliamentary elections, though this has not translated into a majority for Yes in September 14! All this significant change in political mood passes George by, not surprising in a way since 2005 he has been very much an English MP and a roving international unofficial emissary for predominantly mass popular Arab discontent concerning the prevailing political situation in the Middle East! It could be indeed for all kinds of unconscious, unexamined reasons that desperately manically attempting to intervene in the Scottish political referendum brings the worst out in George! To produce the most immature, fractious frankly embarrassing, humiliating to read, never mind to write juvenile outbursts concerning the purported enormous cost of setting up Scottish embassies ‘everywhere in the world’ (19) of how Scotland if an independent country would be such a ‘minuscule member of the very same Nato alliance’ (20) so paltry and utterly insignificant that no one would listen to an independent Scottish government and indeed Trident will stay on the Clyde as long as any American president see’s fit!

It is indeed a salutary psychological lesson to read this torrent of classic self hating abasement from such a Scot who has prided himself on his international anti imperialist highly publicised campaigning! Would he write a pamphlet telling the Palestinians for example that all their aspirations for independent statehood, dignity and aspiration are utterly impossible to fulfil and will only lead to failure, gloom and disaster and that if you get anything it will only be at the whim of whoever occupies the White House! It would be interesting to see the reaction of a Palestinian audience in say occupied west bank Palestine to such a speech to such a pamphlet! It is only concerning his native country of Scotland that George has totally uncritically accepted the classic imperialist colonial message to the colonised that you are worthless insignificant uncivilised and utterly incapable of doing anything on your own and if you dare to try nothing but unmitigated disaster will ensue! Thus for George in these ‘storm tossed times’ we must remain in the ‘ocean liner’ of Westminster and not step into the ‘rowing boat’ of Scottish political independence (21) A Westminster which George as recently as December 2005 declared was now a place, ‘where only the most trivial of decisions were made like what colour to paint Whitehall!’  (22) Well it may be but it remarkably miraculously metamorphises back into a majestic ‘ocean liner’ when it comes to the political governance of Scotland. Such governance is evidently far superior to the ‘backward looking oddity’ (23) and ‘obsolescent dogma’ (24) of Scottish political independence!

But surely it is George who gives classic examples of ‘backward looking oddity’ and obsolescent dogma’ when he asserts that a ‘better option’ than an independent Scottish government negotiating the end of Trident would be, ‘a UK Labour thinking movement pushing from within Nato to have these weapons of mass destruction decommissioned altogether!’ (24)

Perhaps George could tell us where this mythical ‘UK Labour Thinking movement’ actually exists as a living growing political force? In the British Labour Party at Westminster?

In the British Trade Union Congress? Where is this body George? Can you like a miracle worker from an earlier age reawaken the dead Lazarus of British Labour Party and British Labour movement unilateral nuclear disarmament? Pray tell us how such a movement can be built when you elsewhere in this bizarre heated ludicrously self contradictory pamphlet declare that England without the Scottish connection faces a ‘perpetual Tory government…rich pickings for the Tory party and UKIP.’ (25) If England is condemned for all eternity to Tory rule then how possibly could an all British anti nuclear weaponry successful movement be built?

So I am afraid George we will just have to say naw to your Jeremiah doom laden prognosis concerning Scottish Independence which is nothing but the product of cultural, political and ideological forces built up over centuries on these islands that you have never critically examined and have indeed totally uncritically, unconsciously interiorised. No wonder the mandarins of the London BBC along with their new favourite media darling Nigel Farage are only too pleased to have you on programmes like Question Time! Your essential message is more grist to their mill. ‘Uncle Toms of whatever colour of skin are always welcome in such circles!!!

                                       M.J. STEWART    13/5/14   -   19/5/14

FOOTNOTES

1. For general biographical information I have used David Morley ‘Gorgeous George’

The Life and Adventures of George Galloway.’  Politico publishing 2007

2. Steve Biggs ‘Veteran campaigner Tarig Ali: Vote for Yes would end Decrepit

Labour Stranglehold.’   Sunday Herald 9/3/14

3. For some representative works published since the new millennium read ‘The Clash

Of Fundamentalisms.’  Verso  2003  ‘Pirates of the Carribean Axis of Hope’ Verso

2006. ‘The Obama Syndrome Surrender at Home War Abroad.’  Verso 2010

4. Carol Craig ‘The Scots Crisis of Confidence’ Chapter Two  Big thinking 2003

5  ‘Just say Naw.   Scotland Tour 2014 The Official Booklet  p1

6                           Op. Cit                                                                           p4

7. Iain MacWirther ‘Why are Yes so Confident? Because they Feel the Tide of History

Is moving their way.’   Sunday Herald  30/3/14

8  Op. Cit               ‘Yes or No, road to Referendum will lead us to a new Scotland.’

                              Herald 1/5/14

9                    Paul Hutchinson & Tom Gordon ‘Quizzed on Europe, infighting and football,

Farage and Ukip score another own goal.’ Sunday Herald  11/5/14

10 & 11        ‘Just say Naw’   p 2 & 1

12  Iain Macwhirther ‘Goodbye to Labour Complacency.’    S.H.   13/4/14

13 &14          ‘Just say Naw’   p5 & 1

15. For critical background see Tom Nairn ‘Anatomy of the Labour Party’ NLR 27/28

16 &17          ‘Just say naw’ p 2

18. Carol Craig ‘The Scots Crisis of Confidence’ Argyll publishing 2011

19, 20 &21    ‘Just say naw’ P5 &6

22  David Morley ‘Gorgeous George’    p 248 – 9

23,24 & 25    ‘Just say naw’   p4, 6 & 2