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On Monday, George Galloway was sworn into Parliament as the MP for Rochdale. His victory in the by-election, on a ticket supporting Palestine, sent shockwaves through the political establishment, resulting in Rishi Sunak’s impromptu speech describing his victory as “beyond alarming” and calling for further restrictions on protest in the UK.
Few will fail to recognise Galloway due to his contentious headline-grabbing political career, but for many, this will be the first time they’ve heard of The Workers Party of Britain (WPB).
So, what do they stand for, and what does their victory hold for Rochdalians? Galloway is a founding member and current leader of the WPB, which was set up as a left- wing alternative to Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour following their defeat in the 2019 general election.
You might suspect a left-wing party would primarily be campaigning against the Tories, but topping the WPB’s hit list is the Labour Party. Galloway, a former Labour MP, was ejected from the party in 2003 for bringing the party into disrepute over his comments on the Iraq war.
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The 2023 WPB manifesto states, “the greatest block to working-class aspirations is not the Conservative Party but the Labour Party”, and it calls for trade unions, the primary source of funding, to disaffiliate from Labour.
Galloway emphasised the WPB’s enmity towards Labour by declaring he wanted to oust Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner from her Ashton-under-Lyne constituency following his swearing-in as an MP. The 69-year-old from Dundee has also branded Labour the “greater of two evils” out of them and the Conservatives.
Many in Rochdale’s significant Muslim community, who swung away from Labour due to their initial failure to demand a ceasefire in Gaza, are celebrating the Workers’ Party win. Many voted for Galloway due to his long-standing support for Palestine during this latest episode in the long-running humanitarian disaster. Not everyone will be familiar with the WPB’s background or wider ideas however.
The Ideology
The socialist and anti-imperialist credentials of the WPB are laid out in their manifesto, as is the support setting-up they received from the Stalinist Communist Party of Great Britain Marxist-Leninist (CPGB-ML).
As with many communist-inspired groups, the WPB steer clear of criticising communist parties and countries who they state “have attempted to break free of imperialist domination and build a different kind of world.” “We defend the achievements of the USSR, China, Cuba etc.” the Workers’ Party adds.
The WPG and Galloway have often sung Russia and China’s praises, while failing to acknowledge Russia’s alleged war crimes in Ukraine and a global assassination programme killing dissidents to Putin’s regime.
The communist chops of the WPG are also evidenced by the factionalism and splits that often afflict left-wing organisations. The Workers’ Party and the CPGB-ML are no longer affiliated.
Intriguely, the WPG accounts for 2022 lodged with the Electoral Commission document a further split within the party caused by a group of “self-proclaimed revolutionary socialists” playing the “role of a Fifth column” (an enemy within), accusing the internal group of trying to create a social democratic party “in the same mould as the imperialist Labour Party.” The WPG’s apologist response to Putin’s war on Ukraine is understood to have played a role in the split.
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On Russia
The Ukrainian community in Rochdale stretches back to refugees arriving during the Second World War. Their numbers have since been bolstered by refugees forced from the country by the Russian invasion in January 2022. They have some reason to question their new MP – who refuses to criticise Russia or Putin’s actions.
In 2016, Galloway conducted an interview with former UKIP leader Nigel Farage on his Russia Today television show, Sputnik. The then-RT presenter said he believed the EU had incited Vladimir Putin to annex Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, adding: “I respect Putin and I think he’s very popular in Russia and that’s the point, he’s the leader of Russia” (Farage responded with “of course”, HuffPost reported).
The Kremlin-funded Russia Today channel had its terrestrial TV broadcast licence revoked by Ofcom in 2022 for breaching the impartiality rules in its coverage of the war in Ukraine. Galloway went on to stream his own ‘Mother of All Talk Shows’ online and via Russian-funded Sputnik radio.
On X/Twitter, Galloway has been accused of producing a stream of misinformation since the war in Ukraine began. He claimed Ukraine was “importing hundreds of Islamist fighters from Syria” into the conflict,” which they hadn’t.
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The Kremlin itself later boasted Russia was recruiting Syrian soldiers to fight in Ukraine, with the blessing of Putin’s ally President Bashar al-Assad, who owed his survival as President to the intervention of Russian forces helping defeat the Syrian freedom fighters who rose against Assad’s brutal dictatorship during the civil war.
Galloway’s has backed Putin’s stated reason for invading, which he claimed was to “demilitarise and de-Nazify Ukraine.” Ukraine’s democratically-elected President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is Jewish, which makes the ‘Nazi’ claim laughable.
The WPB and Galloway are long-time critics of NATO, the military alliance which countries bordering Russia have been scrambling to join since Ukraine’s invasion. The WPG’s manifesto calls for a referendum on NATO membership, saying the alliance is a “clear and present danger to the security of the British population” and that they will “seek new collective security arrangements.”
These new security arrangements would be with rising powers “led by China”, according to a report on Galloways No2Nato campaign’s initial meeting in London last year. It suggests a fundamental shift in diplomatic relations and alliances away from Europe and the US towards China and Russia.
The new MP for Rochdale is poles apart from the previous incumbent, the late Sir Tony Lloyd, whose death in January triggered the by-election. In parliament, Lloyd expressed his admiration for the Ukrainian armed forces in opposing the Russian invasion, shortly after it occurred, and requested adequate arms supplies be sent to the Ukraine. He also called for a fast track visa scheme to be implemented to help displaced Ukrainian students and academics continue their work in the UK.
One Ukrainian in Rochdale, who did not wish to be named, told Byline Times the late MP was “very supportive of the Ukrainian community in Rochdale” and would be “very sadly missed.”
On Galloway and his stance regarding Putin and Ukraine, she added: “As to how we feel about him as Ukrainians, we’re sad that he is pro-Putin, obviously, and we don’t know what, if any, influence he can have for or against the war in Ukraine. It’s just a wait-and-see. And I am not very happy about that wait-and-see.
“We’re obviously not going to be supportive of anyone who is pro-Putin: Putin has invaded Ukrainian territory for no reason at all, apart from his wanting to erase the Ukrainian nation as he has said on a number of occasions.”