George Galloway

George Galloway (born 16 August 1954) is a British politician, broadcaster, and writer who is currently leader of the Workers Party of Britain, serving since 2019. Between 1987 and 2010, and then between 2012 and 2015, Galloway was a Member of Parliament (MP) for four constituencies, first for the Labour Party and later for the Respect Party, the latter of which he joined in 2004 and led from 2013 until its dissolution in 2016.

Galloway was born in Dundee, Scotland. After becoming the youngest ever chair of the Scottish Labour Party in 1981, he was general secretary of the London-based charity War on Want from 1983 until his election as MP for Glasgow Hillhead (later Glasgow Kelvin) in the 1987 general election. In 2003, he was expelled from the Labour Party for bringing the party into disrepute. His charges included inciting Arabs to fight British troops and calling on British troops to disobey orders in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In 2004, Galloway became a member of the Respect Party, and then the party's leader by late 2013. Having decided not to seek re-election for Glasgow Kelvin, he stood for Respect in the 2005 general election for Bethnal Green and Bow, defeating the sitting Labour MP, Oona King. He served for one parliamentary term and did not contest the seat in the 2010 general election. He returned to the House of Commons for the 2012 Bradford West by-election, but lost his seat in the 2015 general election. He stood as the Respect candidate in the 2016 London mayoral election, finishing in seventh place with 1.4 percent of the vote. He stood as an independent candidate for Manchester Gorton in the 2017 general election and for West Bromwich East in the 2019 general election. Following the 2019 general election, he founded the Workers Party of Britain. He led All for Unity, a Scottish party that he founded to support British unionism in the face of rising support for Scottish independence and the Scottish National Party (SNP), into the 2021 Scottish Parliament election, where it captured 0.9 percent of the vote.

Galloway testified to the United States Senate in 2005 over alleged illicit payments from the United Nations' Oil for Food Program against Ba'athist Iraq. Among other international issues, Galloway has voiced his Anti-Zionism and supports the Palestinians in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and was also involved in the Viva Palestina aid convoys to the Gaza Strip. He opposes India's role in the Kashmir conflict with Pakistan, and has voiced support for the insurgency in Indian-administered Kashmir. He supported Jeremy Corbyn in the 2015 Labour Party leadership election and during Corbyn's leadership of the party. In the 2016 EU membership referendum, he advocated a "Leave" vote, campaigning with the cross-party, pro-Brexit organisation Grassroots Out, while before the 2019 European Parliament election he announced on Twitter, "for one-time only", he would support Nigel Farage's Brexit Party.

Galloway previously presented ''The Mother of All Talk Shows'' on Radio Sputnik and ''Sputnik'' on RT UK, until it was shut down in March 2022 following the Russian Invasion of Ukraine.

Early life and career

Background and education

Galloway was born in Dundee, Scotland. His father, George Galloway Sr., was a Scottish trade unionist, while his mother, Sheila O'Reilly, was of Irish descent. Initially raised in Lochee, Dundee, he has described himself as "born in an attic in a slum tenement in the Irish quarter of Dundee, which is known as Tipperary." His father began as an electrician, before becoming an electro-mechanical engineer at NCR. After being made redundant, he retrained as a teacher. His mother was a cleaner, and then a factory worker. According to Galloway, his father was patriotic, while his mother had Irish nationalist sympathies, and was critical of perceived British pretensions in the world. He took his mother's side in arguments, and has been a long-time supporter of Sinn Féin and Irish reunification. David Morley, his biographer, has written that people who knew both father and son have said that they shared similar Marxist opinions, common in the local Labour movement of the time.

He grew up in Charleston, Dundee and attended Charleston Primary and then Harris Academy, a non-denominational school, playing for the school football team as well as for West End United U12s, Lochee Boys Club U16s and St Columba's U18s. According to Galloway, he grew a moustache at the age of 15, and refused to shave it off when his headmaster objected. He decided, at the age of 18, never to drink alcohol; the reason was originally derived from comments by his father, and he has described alcohol as having a "very deleterious effect on people".

Labour Party organiser

Galloway joined the Labour Party Young Socialists aged just 13 (although he said he was 15) and was still a teenager when he became secretary of the Dundee Labour Party.

Galloway became vice-chairman of the Labour Party in the City of Dundee and a member of the Scottish Executive Committee in 1975. On 5 May 1977, he contested his first election campaign in the Scottish district elections, but failed to hold the safe Labour Gillburn ward in Dundee being defeated by the independent Bunty Turley.; Morley ''Gorgeous George'', pp. 30–32 He became the secretary organiser of the Dundee Labour Party in 1977 and at 26 was the youngest ever chairman of the Scottish Labour Party in March 1981, a post he held for a year after holding the vice-chairman post over the previous year.

After a trip to Beirut, Lebanon during 1977, Galloway became a supporter of Palestine, stating during his libel case against ''The Daily Telegraph'' in 2004 that "barely a week after my return I made a pledge, in the Tavern Bar in Dundee's Hawkhill District, to devote the rest of my life to the Palestinian and Arab cause." He supported Dundee City Council when it flew the Palestinian flag over the City Chambers building, and was involved in the twinning of Dundee with the Palestinian West Bank town of Nablus (Shechem) in 1980.

In late 1981, Galloway was interviewed for the ''Scottish Marxist'' in which Galloway supported the affiliation of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) to the Labour Party, in the same way as the Fabian Society does. Believing that a deficiency in political theory was being filled by the entryist infiltration of the party by the Trotskyists (such as the Militant group), he thought the problem was better resolved by communist thinking from members of the CPGB.Morley, p.74-75 (He was later opposed to the expulsion of members of Militant.)

In response, Denis Healey, Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, tried and failed to remove Galloway from the list of Prospective Parliamentary Candidates. Healey lost his motion by 13 votes to five. Galloway once quipped that, to overcome a £1.5 million deficit which had arisen in Dundee's city budget, he, Ernie Ross, and leading councillors should be placed in the stocks in the city square: "we would allow people to throw buckets of water over us at 20p a time."

In 1983, Galloway attempted to stand for the safe Labour seat of Rhondda after the Welsh Transport and General Workers' Union and the National Union of Miners had both nominated him to succeed Alec Jones, who had died. He hoped to be selected in the newly created seat of Dunfermline East where no incumbent was standing. Galloway failed to be selected for either seat, with Rhondda selecting Allan Rogers and Dunfermline East selecting future Chancellor of the Exchequer and later Prime Minister, Gordon Brown.

Standing as a candidate for a place on the Labour Party National Executive Committee in 1986, in a large field of 18 candidates, Galloway finished in 16th place.

War on Want

From November 1983 to 1987, Galloway was the general secretary of War on Want, a British charity campaigning against poverty worldwide. In this post he travelled widely, and wrote eye-witness accounts of the famine in Eritrea in 1985 which were published in ''The Sunday Times'' and ''The Spectator''.'Glasgow Hillhead' (PA number 263) in "General Election Constituency Guide", BBC Data, 1987. His deputy at the charity, Simon Stocker, recalled: "If you went into a fight with George, you knew you would never walk out with a win."

On 28 October 1986, the ''Daily Mirror'', in a front-page story by Alastair Campbell, claimed Galloway had spent £20,000 in expenses and had been "enjoying a life of luxury."Morley, pp. 129–30 An internal investigation, and later, an independent auditor, both cleared him of the accusation of any misuse of funds, although he did repay £1,720 in contested expenses. The official history of War on Want comments about Galloway that "even though the problems were not all of his own making, his way of dealing with them heightened tensions".

Political career (1987–2005)

Member of Parliament for a Glasgow seat

At the 1987 general election, Galloway was elected as the MP for Glasgow Hillhead gaining the seat for Labour from the SDP defeating Roy Jenkins with a majority of 3,251 votes. Although known for his left-wing political views, Galloway was never a member of the Campaign Group.

In a 2002 ''The Guardian'' interview, Galloway said he had supported the Soviet Union and said that its end was "the biggest catastrophe of my life". He told Robert Chalmers of '' The Independent on Sunday'' in June 2012: "I am not a pacifist. I am a revolutionary. I am a Socialist who doesn't like Capitalism and who likes Imperialism less. I am a revolutionary and I support the armed struggle where there is no alternative."

At a press gathering for War on Want in September 1987, when Galloway had stood down as general secretary of the organisation, a journalist asked him about his personal arrangements during the previous year's War on Want conference on the Greek island of Mykonos. The new MP replied: "I travelled and spent lots of time with people in Greece, many of whom were women, some of whom were known carnally to me. I actually had sexual intercourse with some of the people in Greece." By then separated from his first wife, Galloway made front-page headlines in the tabloid press at the time. Many years later, in a 2016 '' New Internationalist'' interview, he speculated that an incident of sexual abuse from a colonel, which he suffered when he was 12, has led to a "lifelong fear of being gay and this led me into ostentatious, rapacious heterosexual promiscuity".

In February 1988, the executive committee of his constituency Labour Party passed a vote of no confidence in him by 15 to 8.Morley, p. 175 The constituency's general management committee voted 54-to-44 in favour of the motion a fortnight later on 22 February, although just three of the 25 members in the trade union section supported it. According to Tam Dalyell in 2003, the new Member of Parliament "was heonly one MP that I can recollect making speeches about human rights in Iraq" in the House of Commons.

Galloway gained re-selection when challenged by Trish Godman (wife of fellow MP Norman Godman) in June 1989, but failed to get a majority of the electoral college on the first ballot. This was the worst result for any sitting Labour MP who was reselected, but Galloway gained 62% in total in the final vote. Galloway assured his party there would be a "summer of peace and reconciliation" in his acceptance speech, but this did not happen. Many members of the party who had supported Godman reportedly refused to work for Galloway in the next election, including Johann Lamont, who later became Leader of the Scottish Labour Party in 2011. The following August, 13 of the 26 members of the constituency party's executive committee resigned, including Lamont. According to her, Galloway "has done nothing to build bridges with the Members of the Executive ommittee of the Constituency Labour Partywho opposed his selection." She told a journalist from ''The Guardian'': "The quarrel we have is all about accountability, and democracy... working in harmony, rather than any personal matters."

The Labour Party leadership election in 1992 saw Galloway voting for the eventually successful candidates, John Smith for leader and Margaret Beckett as deputy leader. In 1994, after Smith died, Galloway declined to cast a vote in the leadership election (one of only three MPs to do so). In a debate with the leader of the Scottish National Party, Alex Salmond, Galloway responded to one of Salmond's jibes against Labour by declaring "I don't give a fuck what Tony Blair thinks".

In 1997, Galloway's Glasgow Hillhead constituency was abolished and, although facing a challenge for the Labour nomination as the candidate for Glasgow Kelvin at the 1997 general election, Galloway defeated Shiona Waldron. He was unchallenged for the nomination for the 2001 general election. He was elected with majorities of 16,643 and 12,014 votes respectively. During the period he was Labour MP for Glasgow Kelvin, from 1997 to 2003, he voted against the whip 32 times, five votes out of 665 (0.8%) in the 1997–2001 parliament and the majority (27 votes out of 209 or 12.9%) in the period before he was expelled from the Labour Party. He was one of several politicians arrested in February 2001 during a protest at the Faslane nuclear base in Scotland, which led to him being convicted of a breach of the peace and fined £180.

Iraq from 1991

The first Gulf war

Galloway opposed the 1991 Gulf War and was critical of the effect that the subsequent sanctions had on the people of Iraq. In his book '' I'm Not the Only One'' (2004), Galloway expresses the opinion that Kuwait is "clearly a part of the greater Iraqi whole, stolen from the motherland by perfidious Albion", although Christopher Hitchens claimed the state existed before Iraq had a name. This essay is reprinted in The text of Galloway's book differs in reprints. The massacre of Kurds and Shias just after the 1991 Gulf war, was according to Galloway, "a civil war that involved massive violence on both sides".

Writing for ''The Observer'' in April 2003, David Aaronovitch speculated that Galloway changed his opinion of Saddam Hussein under "the belief that my enemy's enemy is my friend. Or, in the context of the modern world, any anti-American will do. When Iraq stopped being a friend of the West it became a friend of George's."

Meeting with Saddam Hussein in 1994

In January 1994, Galloway faced some of his strongest criticism on his return from a Middle Eastern visit during which he had met Saddam Hussein. At his meeting with the Iraqi leader, he reported the support given to Saddam by the people of the Gaza Strip which he had just visited: "Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability... I can honestly tell you that there was not a single person to whom I told I was coming to Iraq and hoping to meet with yourself who did not wish me to convey their heartfelt, fraternal greetings and support." He ended his speech with the statement "Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability." He said that he was saluting the Iraqi people, rather than Saddam Hussein, in the speech, which meaning was accurately translated for the Iraqi leader.

As news of the incident reached the UK, Labour leader John Smith, in a statement, said: "I deeply deplore the foolish statement made in Iraq by Mr. George Galloway. In no way did he speak for the Labour Party and I wholly reject his comments." Shortly after his return, Galloway was given a "severe reprimand" by the Labour Chief Whip, Derek Foster, for his unauthorised trip to Iraq. The MP apologised for his conduct and undertook to follow future instruction from the whips.

For his visit with Saddam, Galloway was dubbed the "MP for Baghdad North". Galloway said, when he spoke before the U.S. Senate on 17 May 2005, that he had "met Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld met him." Whereas "Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns", Galloway had "met him to try to bring about an end to sanctions, suffering and war."

The Mariam Appeal

In 1998, Galloway founded the Mariam Appeal which was intended, according to its website's welcome page in 1999, "to campaign against sanctions on Iraq which are having disastrous effects on the ordinary people of Iraq". The campaign was named after Mariam Hamza, a child flown by the fund from Iraq to Britain to receive treatment for leukaemia. The intention was to raise awareness of the suffering and death of hundreds of thousands of other Iraqi children, due to poor health conditions and lack of suitable medicines and facilities, and to campaign for the lifting of the Iraq sanctions that many maintained were responsible for that situation. In 1999, Galloway was criticised for spending Christmas in Iraq with Tariq Aziz, who was Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister at the time. In a 17 May 2005 hearing of the United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Galloway stated that he had many meetings with Aziz, and characterised their relationship as friendly. In all, he has admitted to more than 10 meetings with Aziz.

During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the fund received scrutiny after a complaint that Galloway used some donated money to pay for his travel expenses. He responded by stating that the expenses were incurred in his capacity as the appeal's chairman. Although the Mariam Appeal was never a registered charity and never intended to be such, it was investigated by the Charity Commission. The report of this year-long inquiry, published in June 2004, found that the Mariam Appeal was undertaking charitable work (and so ought to have registered with the commission), but did not substantiate allegations that any funds had been misused. It emerged some years later that Galloway had appealed in a letter dated 24 April 2003 to Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney-General, to stop the investigation into the Mariam Appeal. According to a report in ''The Times'', after the letter was released under the Freedom of Information Act, Galloway falsely asserted that the appeal "received no money from Iraq".

A further Charity Commission Report published on 7 June 2007 found that the appeal had received funds from Fawaz Zureikat that originated from the Oil For Food programme, and concluded that:

Galloway, in response, stated: "I've always disputed the Commission's retrospective view that a campaign to win a change in national and international policy – a political campaign – was, in fact, a charity".

Iraq and Saddam Hussein

In a House of Commons debate on 6 March 2002, Foreign Office minister Ben Bradshaw said Galloway was "not just an apologist, but a mouthpiece, for the Iraqi regime over many years." Galloway called the minister a liar and refused to withdraw on the grounds that Bradshaw's claim was "a clear imputation of dishonour", and the sitting was suspended due to the dispute. Bradshaw later withdrew his allegation, and Galloway apologised for using unparliamentary language. In an article by Ewen MacAskill published by ''The Guardian'' in March 2000 about a visit by Galloway to Iraq and the Middle East, the politician describes himself as a supporter of the Iraqi people and the Ba'ath Party, but not Saddam Hussein himself.

In August 2002, Galloway returned to Iraq and met Saddam Hussein for a second and final time. According to Galloway, the intention of the trip was to persuade Saddam to re-admit Hans Blix, and the United Nations weapons inspectors into the country.

Giving evidence in his libel case against ''The Daily Telegraph'' newspaper in 2004, Galloway testified that he regarded Saddam as a "bestial dictator" and would have welcomed his removal from power, but not by means of a military attack on Iraq. Galloway also pointed out that he was a prominent critic of Saddam Hussein's government in the 1980s, as well as of the role of Margaret Thatcher's government in supporting arms sales to Iraq during the Iran–Iraq War. In his memoir, ''I'm Not the Only One'' first published in 2004, he wrote that "just as Stalin industrialised the Soviet Union, so on a different scale Saddam plotted Iraq's own Great Leap Forward." He continued: "He managed to keep his country together until 1991. Indeed, he is likely to have been the leader in history who came closest to creating a truly Iraqi national identity, and he developed Iraq and the living, health, social and education standards of his own people."

In 2006 a video surfaced showing Galloway greeting Uday Hussein, Saddam's eldest son, with the title of "Excellency" at Uday's palace in 1999. Galloway is heard saying he will be with Uday "until the end". By his own account in ''I'm Not the Only One'', Galloway advised members of Saddam Hussein's government about the ways to deal with a potential American invasion:

The Iraq war and Labour Party expulsion

Galloway became the vice-president of the Stop the War Coalition in 2001. Actively involved, he often delivered speeches from StWC platforms at anti-war demonstrations. After permission for a rally in Hyde Park during the international anti-war protests on 15 February 2003 was initially refused, Galloway said the government had a choice between "half a million people at the rally or half a million people in a riot".

Just over a month later, Galloway said in a 28 March 2003 interview with Abu Dhabi TV that Tony Blair and George W. Bush had "lied to the British Air Force and Navy, when they said the battle of Iraq would be very quick and easy. They attacked Iraq like wolves," and added that "the best thing British troops can do is to refuse to obey illegal orders". This incitement for "British troops to defy orders" was later among the formal reasons for his expulsion from the Labour Party.

On 18 April 2003, '' The Sun'' published an interview with Tony Blair who said: "His comments were disgraceful and wrong. The National Executive will deal with it". At this time, Labour MP Tam Dalyell commented in Galloway's defence: "I think he is a deeply serious, committed politician and a man of great sincerity about the causes he takes up." On 6 May 2003, David Triesman, then general secretary of the Labour Party, suspended Galloway from holding office in the party pending a hearing on charges that he had violated the party's constitution by "bringing the Labour Party into disrepute through behaviour that is prejudicial or grossly detrimental to the Party." Speaking on BBC Radio, Galloway said he stood by every word of the Abu Dhabi interview.

The National Constitutional Committee, responsible for internal disciplinary matters, held a hearing on 22 October 2003, to consider the charges, taking evidence from Galloway himself, from other party witnesses, viewing media interviews, and hearing character testimony from former cabinet minister Tony Benn, among others. The following day, the committee decided in favour of four of the five charges accusing Galloway of "bringing the party into disrepute," and expelled Galloway from the Labour Party. A claim that, in a speech, he had congratulated a successful anti-war candidate from the Socialist Alliance in Preston was rejected.

According to Ian McCartney, Labour Party chairman at the time, Galloway was the only Labour MP who "incited foreign forces to rise up against British troops" in the Iraq War. Galloway said after the NCC had decided on his expulsion: "This was a politically motivated kangaroo court whose verdict had been written in advance in the best tradition of political show trials." He claimed at the time that other MPs who had opposed the war, such as Bob Marshall Andrews and Glenda Jackson, would be expelled in due course, but no other MP was expelled from the Labour Party for their statements about the Iraq war. After an article by Galloway was published in the ''Morning Star'' attacking the Labour Party, Tony Benn wrote in his diary in June 2004, quoting from the article, that if he had persuaded the NEC not to expel him, Galloway would have remained "a member of a party currently run by a 'blood-splattered, lying, crooked group of war criminals'. It put me off George Galloway in a fairly fundamental way".

In 2005, at the time of the Iraq War, Galloway called President George W. Bush the world's "biggest terrorist".

Iraq after Saddam Hussein

Galloway defended Iraqi insurgents targeting Western forces as "martyrs" during August 2005 in appearances on Middle Eastern television channels, calling Iraqis who were with the allies security forces "collaborators" and said it was "normal" for them to be the targets of suicide bombers. He said: "These poor Iraqis – ragged people, with their sandals, with their Kalashnikovs, with the lightest and most basic of weapons – are writing the names of their cities and towns in the stars, with 145 military operations every day, which has made the country ungovernable. We don't know who they are, we don't know their names, we never saw their faces, they don't put up photographs of their martyrs, we don't know the names of their leaders". Galloway was challenged by the BBC but denied making the "martyrs" comment.

Galloway continued to praise Tariq Aziz. In April 2005, on Al Jazeera during that year's general election campaign, he described Aziz as "an eminent diplomatic and intellectual person". In his opinion, Aziz was "a political prisoner" and advocated his release.

Oil for Food

''Daily Telegraph'' libel case

On 22 April 2003, ''The Daily Telegraph'' published news articles and comment describing documents found by its reporter David Blair in the ruins of the Iraqi Foreign Ministry. The documents purported to be records of meetings between Galloway and Iraqi intelligence agents, and they stated that he had received £375,000 per year from the proceeds of the Oil-for-Food Programme. Galloway completely denied the claims and pointed to the nature of the discovery within an unguarded, bombed-out building as being questionable. He instigated legal action against the newspaper, which was heard in the High Court on 14 November 2004.

On 2 December, Justice David Eady ruled that the story had been "seriously defamatory", and that ''The Daily Telegraph'' was "obliged to compensate Mr Galloway... and to make an award for the purposes of restoring his reputation." Galloway was awarded damages of £150,000 plus, after a failed appeal in 2006, legal costs of about £2 million.

Both sides regarded the libel case as an important test of the Reynolds qualified-privilege defence. ''The Daily Telegraph'' did not attempt to claim justification (where the defendant seeks to prove the truth of the defamatory reports): "It has never been the ''Telegraph's'' case to suggest that the allegations contained in these documents are true". The newspaper argued that it acted responsibly as the allegations it reported were of sufficient public interest to outweigh the damage caused to Galloway's reputation. The trial judge did not accept this defence, noting that comments such as Galloway being guilty of "treason", "in Saddam's pay", and being "Saddam's little helper" caused him he judgeto conclude that "the newspaper was not neutral but both embraced the allegations with relish and fervour and went on to embellish them"; additionally, the judge ruled, Galloway had not been given a fair or reasonable opportunity to make inquiries or meaningful comment upon the documents before they were published.

Other libel claims

The '' Christian Science Monitor'' also published a story on 25 April 2003, stating that it had documentary evidence that he had received "more than ten million dollars" from the Iraqi government. However, on 20 June 2003, the ''Monitor'' reported that its own investigation had concluded that the documents were sophisticated forgeries.

Galloway sued the ''Christian Science Monitor'' for libel. In March 2004, he accepted damages and a public apology from the ''Monitor''.

In January 2004, a further set of allegations were made in the Iraqi newspaper ''Al-Mada''. The newspaper claimed to have found documents in the Iraqi national oil corporation showing that Galloway received (through an intermediary) some of the profits arising from the sale of 19.5 million barrels (3,100,000 m³) of oil. Galloway said that money had been paid into the Mariam Appeal by Iraqi businessmen who had profited from the UN-run programme. He stated he had not benefited personally and that there was nothing illicit about the transaction:

It is hard to see what is dishonourable, let alone "illicit", about Arab nationalist businessmen donating some of the profits they made from legitimate UN-controlled business with Iraq to anti-sanctions campaigns, as opposed to, say, keeping their profits for themselves. It's equally difficult to understand why ''The Guardian'' should put seven of its finest journalists to work roping Tam Dalyell and Albert Reynolds into the rightwing witch-hunt against me, particularly on the basis of documents that may have been faked or doctored in the forgery capital of the world.

In May 2005, ''The Guardian'' reported that "despite all the investigations in the oil-for-food programme, no one has ever produced any evidence that Iraqi oil money ended up in Mr Galloway's pocket".

US Senate

Allegations

In May 2005, a United States Senate committee report accused Galloway along with former French minister Charles Pasqua of receiving the right to buy oil under the UN's Oil-for-Food programme. The report was issued by the US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, chaired by Senator Norm Coleman, a Republican from Minnesota.

Coleman's committee said that Pasqua had received allocations worth from 1999 to 2000, and Galloway received allocations worth from 2000 to 2003. The allegations against Pasqua and Galloway, both outspoken opponents of U.N. sanctions against Iraq in the 1990s, have been made before, including in an October report by US arms inspector Charles Duelfer as well as in the various purported documents described earlier in this section.

Galloway countered the charges by accusing Coleman and other pro-war politicians of covering up the "theft of billions of dollars of Iraq's wealth... on your watch" that had occurred under a post-invasion Coalition Provisional Authority, committed by " Halliburton and other American corporations... with the connivance of your own government."

Senate hearing (17 May 2005)

On 17 May 2005, the committee held a hearing concerning specific allegations (of which Galloway was one part) relating to improprieties surrounding the Oil-for-Food programme. Attending Galloway's oral testimony and questioning him were two of the 13 committee members: the chair (Coleman) and the ranking Democrat ( Carl Levin).

On arriving in the US, Galloway told Reuters, "I have no expectation of justice from a group of Christian fundamentalist and Zionist activists." He described Coleman as a "pro-war, neocon hawk and the lickspittle of George W. Bush," who, he said, sought vengeance against anyone who did not support the war in Iraq.

In his testimony, Galloway made the following statements in response to the allegations against him:

Senate report (October 2005)

A report by the then-majority Republican Party staff of the United States Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations published in October 2005 stated that Galloway had "knowingly made false or misleading statements under oath". The report exhibits bank statements, which the authors claim show that $150,000 of proceeds from the Oil-for-Food programme had been paid to Galloway's wife Amineh Abu-Zayyad.

It also stated that Galloway (and the Mariam Appeal) received eight allocations of oil from the Iraqi government amounting to 23 million barrels from 1999 to 2003. The Mariam Appeal was also found to have improperly received $446,000 via the Oil-for-Food programme. Tariq Aziz was said to have told the investigators that oil had been allocated in the names of two of Galloway's representatives, Buhan Al-Chalabi and Fawaz Zureikat. Aziz had told the investigators: "These oil allocations were for the benefit of George Galloway and for Mariam's Appeal. The proceeds from the sale benefited the cause and Mr Galloway".

Galloway reiterated his denial of the charges and asked the US Senate committee to charge him with perjury so that he could confront the charges in court. He said the investigation was an attempt to divert attention from the "pack of lies" that led to the Iraq invasion in 2003. He claimed Coleman's motive was revenge over the embarrassment of his appearance before the committee in May.

Galloway also said the claim Aziz had told investigators he had benefited financially, via Zureikat, from the Oil for Food programme had been rejected by Aziz, via his French lawyers. A contemporary UN-supported report written by Paul Volcker, the former American Federal Reserve chairman, stated that eleven million barrels of oil had been reserved in Galloway's name. For Volcker's report, Aziz was interviewed, but his account on this occasion differed from the one he had given the Senate, a change they considered unconvincing.

Before and after the 2005 general election

Foundation of Respect

Galloway announced in December 2003 that he would not force a by-election and did not intend to contest the next general election in Glasgow. His Glasgow Kelvin seat was to be split between three constituencies for the next general election. In one of these, the new Glasgow Central constituency, Mohammad Sarwar, the first Muslim Labour MP, wanted to be selected as the candidate. Galloway chose not to challenge him, announcing this decision at the end of May 2004 in his '' Mail on Sunday'' column.

Galloway wrote in an article for ''The Guardian'' at the end of October 2003 that he would soon be part of a coalition consisting of the "red, green, anti-war, Muslim and other social constituencies radicalised by the war." In January 2004, it emerged that Galloway would be working with the Socialist Workers Party in England and Wales, and others, under the name Respect – The Unity Coalition, generally referred to simply as "Respect". In the opinion of Nick Cohen of ''The Observer'' it was an "alliance... between the Trotskyist far left and the Islamic far right."

After the 2004 European Parliamentary election results became known, in which Galloway stood in London, but did not gain a seat, he announced that he would stand in East London at the next general election. On 2 December, he confirmed that he was aiming to be nominated as the Respect Party candidate for Bethnal Green and Bow.

Election campaign

The ensuing electoral campaign in the seat proved to be a difficult one with heated exchanges between Galloway, Oona King (the incumbent Labour MP for Bethnal Green and Bow), and their respective supporters. Galloway and Respect threatened to sue King, whose mother is Jewish, if she repeated her assertion in the ''Evening Standard'' on 10 April 2005 which reported her as saying: "I have been told by several people that members of Respect have told Muslim voters "not to vote for me because I am Jewish"".

Galloway was asked at a hustings early in the campaign why he was standing against one of only two black female MPs to which he replied that King had "voted to kill a lot of women in the last few years. Many of them had much darker skins than her". Claiming to be the ghost of Old Labour, Galloway told ''The Sunday Times'' contributor A. A. Gill that "we’re here to haunt new Labour". Bethnal Green and Bow is "where Labour was founded. We’re giving birth to the Labour Party all over again".

Galloway said at a hustings event that the Labour Government had been pursuing a "war on Muslims" while King said her stance against Saddam Hussein had been "principled". Galloway received death threats from an offshoot of al-Muhajiroun (a banned extreme Islamist group). On 19 April, about 30 men forced Galloway's meeting with a tenants’ association to be abandoned after claiming he was a "false prophet" for encouraging Muslims to vote. Galloway was held by the group for about 20 minutes before the police arrived at the scene. All the major candidates united in condemning the threats and violence. Both the Labour and Respect candidates were given police protection.

On 5 May, Galloway gained the seat from the Labour Party with a narrow majority of 823 votes, and denounced the returning officer for alleged discrepancies in the electoral process. After the election result became known, Galloway's spokesman, Ron McKay, rejected claims that King had been racially abused during the campaign and said it was King who had brought up her Jewish background.

Result and subsequent developments

During the BBC's election night coverage, Jeremy Paxman asked Galloway about whether he was happy to have removed one of the few black women in parliament, He replied: "I don't believe that people get elected because of the colour of their skin. I believe that people get elected because of their record and because of their policies".

Oona King later told BBC Radio 4's '' Today'' programme that she found Paxman's line of questioning inappropriate. Galloway "shouldn't be barred from running against me because I'm a black woman.... I was not defined, or did not wish to be defined, by either my ethnicity or religious background".

It emerged in a Channel 4 '' Dispatches'' programme in 2010 that the Islamic Forum of Europe

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