George Galloway - Maverick Politician - Interview March 2003

George Galloway leans back in his comfortable contemporary reclining chair, toys with a button on his expensive outfit and gazes contentedly through the glass windows of his luxurious third floor Parliamentary office, as he prepares to be interviewed. This debonair politician, with the looks of an ageing moustachioed matinee idol, is in surprisingly ebullient mood considering that he is under investigation by the Labour hierarchy for his comments about Messrs Blair and Bush being "wolves" for attacking Iraq, whilst at the same time he is fending off accusations from a national newspaper that he is in the pay of the Iraqi regime.

The controversial views espoused by the MP for Glasgow Kelvin have made him not so much a thorn, as an unexploded cluster bomb in the side of the Parliamentary Labour Party ever since he became an MP 16 years ago. He makes no apologies for the views he gave on Abu Dhabi television regarding the Prime Minister and the American President. "The only regret is the insult implied to the noble wolf," he said, "which is an animal which does not deserve such a comparison."

Although small in stature Galloway exudes passion and fervour. With a greying moustache, which slightly protrudes over his thin lip and receding bouffant, he is a cross between Charlie Chaplin and Arthur Scargill with oodles of charisma thrown in.

His zeal for oratory is evident when he vents his anger against the Daily Telegraph's allegations that he received millions of dollars from the Iraqi regime. He lambasted these charges as "a pile of black propaganda” and "intelligence hocus-pocus based" on forgeries. "I am suing the Daily Telegraph and others for the publication of allegations that I received $15 million from the Iraqi regime by Saddam Hussein and his two sons," he said as his cheeks reddened, visible even under a deep suntan – the result of a recent stay in his Algarve villa.

"This campaign will be fought through the legal system to the end. I hope and believe that those responsible for the publishing of these lies of fantastic proportion will be severely punished." In the middle of his Churchillian defiance he unexpectedly pulls out from the breast pocket of his Saville Row battle dress brown rosary beads - a symbol of his strong catholic heritage - where he proceeds to adroitly shift the beads from one expensively manicured hand to the next as he holds forth on the evils of the press.

Galloway was born on August 16 1954 to a family of socialists of Irish descent, in a working-class neighbourhood of Dundee. Galloway fondly reminisces about his formative years which sounds like a tale of working class penury. “I lived my first three years in an attic in a slum tenement in the Irish quarter of Dundee which was known as Tipperary." He pointed earnestly to a notice board behind him. Pinned on it was a black and white grainy picture of him as an infant in a loft (thankfully without his trademark bristles).

His father, who was a member of the Labour Party and a Trade Union official, was a significant political influence on him, along with his grandfather who was an active communist. "It never occurred to me," he said, "that I would do anything other than have a political life."

This may explain his determination to rise quickly within the Scottish Labour movement. He joined the Young Socialists as a 13-year-old and became the youngest chairperson of the Scottish Labour Party at 26 and where he proceeded to be one of the youngest Scottish MPs at 32, beating the late Roy Jenkins of the SDP for the Glasgow Hillhead seat.

Reflecting on his early success, he said: "I am certainly driven and determined but I am not at all politically ambitious," he said. “If I was I would have definitely taken a different path and if I had done so I had would have been way up the greasy pole." Taking a phrase used in boxing parlance - a sport that Galloway follows religiously - he says: "I could of been a contender, but I refuse to compromise unlike the people who used to sit at Tony Benn's feet who now sit at the feet of the Prime Minister with exactly the same stars in their eyes."

A man who confesses to be a Marxist and mourns the collapse of communism is at odds with the media portrayal of him as a dandy who covets Italian suits, enjoys fast cars and puffs on expensive Cuban cigars. This has earned him the sobriquets of "Gorgeous George" and the "Bollinger Bolshevik". The former was chiefly attained after admitting to having a fling with at least two women at a conference in Greece.

A look of genuine exasperation spreads across his face. "This accusation is not so much unfair as quite ludicrous." He begins to run through the list of items he possesses. "I have a third hand motor that I brought for £17,000 which has done 100,000 miles which some have describe as some stretch limousine. I have never owned a pair of Gucci shoes or a Versaci suit and I never owned any of the paraphernalia of wealth I have read about in the gutter press." As to the ‘Gorgeous George’ tag,” he says with a smug, “it could have been worse, I could have been called ‘Ugly George’.”

Financial indiscretions have also attached themselves to the career of the maverick MP. They include accusations of lavish expenses while working for the charity War on Want plus misusing the funds from the Mariam Hamza Appeal, a charity founded by Galloway in 1998 to raise funds to treat a sick Iraqi girl. Galloway regards these rumours about his personal finances as poison spread by his critics. “My enemies need to have weapons with which to attack me and accusing me of financial irregularities in the projects I head is an obvious one,” he says.

Galloway’s passion for the Middle East began in 1974 with a chance encounter with a young Palestinian. At a time the young Scot was the organiser of the Dundee Labour party. The Palestinian student came to his office and spoke eloquently about the plight of his people. Galloway was immediately hooked. He soon visited a Palestinian refugee camp and twinned Dundee with the West Bank town of Nablus, flying the Palestinian flag over Dundee town hall.

In the 1990s he became less involved in the Palestinian cause and switched his attention to Iraq, becoming a fierce opponent against Iraqi sanctions. In 1994 he was vilified after gushingly praising Saddam Hussein for his 'indefatigability'. He concedes now that he could have handled the situation better. "I was not praising Saddam Hussein I was praising the Iraqi people," he said, taking a defensive posture on his recliner. "I wish I was bloody struck down with laryngitis that day," he confesses.

The MP for 'Baghdad Central', as he is jokingly referred to by his Westminster colleagues, denies he is an apologist for the Iraqi regime. Taking a deliberate swipe at the Prime Minister he says: "As long ago as the 1970s I was a founder member of the campaign against repression and for democratic rights for Iraq when Tony Blair was strutting the boards with his rock group 'Ugly Rumours' at Oxford University. I was the one demonstrating outside the Iraqi embassy in London for human rights, while inside British Ministers was selling guns and gas."

Under threat of expulsion and de-selection as an MP, Galloway still retains a steely determination. “It is my intention to seek the nomination for the new Glasgow Central seat, when my seat disappears,” he said. “It is my very firm belief that if the members of the Labour Party of Glasgow Central are allowed to freely choose their candidate they will select me and that is the Labour leadership's nightmare.”

Unquestionably, Galloway is a throwback to old Labour, a dinosaur of the hard-left. He maybe as unpopular in New Labour as the British entry in the Eurovision Song contest but even his sternest critics would not be so premature to write his political epitaph. Says Galloway "I have always taken my cue in the way I approach my life from the French Revolutionary, Georges Danton, whose motto was 'audacity, again audacity, always audacity'.”


The End