GG: Irish Times election feature

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Candidate seeks Respect for all, including himself
George Galloway estimates he will take at least 80 per cent of the Muslim vote
MARY FITZGERALD
irishtimes.com
26th April 2010

PUFFING ON a fat cigar, Respect MP George Galloway stands on top of his red open-topped campaign bus as it winds its way around the streets of London’s East End. “Respect – that’s what we’re fighting for. For all the people of Tower Hamlets, wherever they come from, whatever their colour, however they pray,” he yells, as snatches of Aretha Franklin’s Respect mixed with Bengali pop blare from loudspeakers.

The incorrigible Galloway, who famously upset east London’s political landscape when he unseated Bethnal Green Labour MP Oona King on an explicitly anti-war ticket in 2005, is running in another Tower Hamlets constituency – Poplar and Limehouse – this time. There are few constituencies that better illustrate Britain’s wealth divide.

Here, affluent denizens of Canary Wharf’s gleaming glass towers share an MP with the Bangladeshi Muslims, Somalis and white East Enders who populate the area’s decaying estates. A Conservative billboard poster featuring Gordon Brown with the strapline “I increased the gap between rich and poor. Let me do it again” looks particularly pointed in this, England’s third most deprived borough.

Poplar and Limehouse used to be a safe Labour seat until its boundaries were redrawn. Now locals talk of an even three-horse race between Jim Fitzpatrick, the Labour MP who has represented the area since 1997; Conservative challenger Tim Archer, who hopes to win the Tories their first East End seat in almost a century, and Galloway, the erstwhile Labour MP turned maverick rabble-rouser.

In typically salty language, Galloway draws parallels between Respect’s prospects and the Lib Dem surge. “The reason Clegg has broken through is that Labour and the Tories are Tweedledum and Tweedledee, or to put it less politely, two cheeks of the same arse,” he tells The Irish Times. “People can see that and they don’t like the look of it, so they’re looking around for something else. In Tower Hamlets, we are that something else.”

Galloway tallies his former party’s failings with relish. “The war in Iraq, the failure to close the gap between rich and poor, and the failure to build public housing with some of the largesse they enjoyed during the 10 richest years in British history – if they had done that in places like this, they would have been a shoo-in for a victory. Instead, they are reaping the whirlwind,” he blares.

Galloway is scathing about his rivals’ chances. “There hasn’t been a Tory MP in the East End since they used to put children up chimneys . . . and it certainly isn’t going to happen now,” he snorts, before going on to declare Fitzpatrick, the sitting Labour MP, “dead in the water”.

Locals say Fitzpatrick’s decision to walk out of a Muslim wedding last year after discovering that guests would be segregated by sex did not go down well in the Bangladeshi community, which makes up 40 per cent of the constituency.

Galloway estimates he will take at least 80 per cent of the Muslim vote – “Muslim voters will vote in greater proportion than others,” he claims. He is also counting on support of “the Guardian-reading, Newsnight-watching progressive middle class” and “the former dockers, printers and trade unionists who still exist in the East End”. For all his bluster, there are some who say he’s yesterday’s man. The memory of a lycra-clad Galloway mimicking a cat on Celebrity Big Brother lingers, as do grumblings over his lacklustre parliamentary record.

Some argue that anti-war sentiment is not as potent as it was in 2005. Nonsense, snaps Galloway. “Iraq is still very toxic . . . it’s a raw wound in this borough.” There are many friendly waves and fists raised in support as the Galloway bus trundles by. But there are also signs that this might not be such an easy fight for the man whose dapper appearance earned him the sobriquet “Gorgeous George”. At one stage, the campaign bus is pelted with eggs. If he noticed this beneath his tortoiseshell sunglasses, he didn’t show it.

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This Mary Fitzgerald at the Irish Times seems pre-tty desperate here... haha