Time for MPs to go

By George Galloway on May 18, 09 06:47 AM in the Daily Record

In fact, it's time for all of us to leave.

The only possible solution to this, the greatest crisis in modern Parliamentary history, is to disolve this Parliament and elect a new one. Now.

If no catharsis can be possible under Speaker Michael Martin - something a clear majority in the House now believes - then neither can this morally bankrupted Parliament, stinking in the ordure, command the confidence of the people to clear out the Augean Stables.

If Gordon Brown will not go to the palace to ask the Queen to disolve Parliament, then her majesty will have to go to him, and tell him, in the name of God, for all the good that you have been doing: "Go now."

George Galloway

The Guardian, Wednesday 20 May 2009

English snobbery can do a morris dance of delight at the political demise of the Speaker, Michael Martin. The bigots have put the taigs back in their place. Above all the MPs desperately seeking solace from the evisceration of the expenses scandal hope this will be enough to staunch the haemorrhage in public confidence.

For a certain class of Englishman every Catholic is a Mick and every working-class Scot is from the Gorbals. In fact, Michael Martin – it was always Michael! – has no connection to the Gorbals, but his elevation was a fillip to both: the first manual worker to sit in that ancient seat and the first Catholic since Cromwell to surmount the still considerable prejudice. Thanks to Speaker Martin my grandson Sean enjoyed the first Catholic baptism in the House of Commons Crypt since Cromwell turned it into a stable.

His accent never cut through the cut-glass ceiling, he appeared mentally sluggish and the arcane vocabulary of great parliamentary occasions seemed beyond him. His tearoom skills are what had landed him the job. He lay in wait for a generation of MPs to charm avuncularly. Government office was never likely to come his way, and a remaining parliamentary lifetime of high teas and grand tours seemed ample compensation.

But that which seemed charming and solicitous offstage in the warren of Westminster was cruelly exposed in the unforgiving glare of the television lights. It was Martin's bad luck to have been caught up in a maelstrom of crises andpublic odium. He did not invent the discredited system of parliamentary allowances – that came largely under the "distinguished" speakership of Lord Weatherill and became especially lucrative during the golden era of Betty Boothroyd. Under both, MPs believed that allowances were but a supplementary salary, their receipts notional and in any case highly secret. The consistent deferment of recommended salary increases, the tearoom mafia would nod and wink, justified this deceit.

But caught in the white heat of this unprecedented focus, the former sheet-metal worker melted. He might have avoided the complete destruction had he decided to leave over the Damian Green affair where policemen were allowed to trample through the parliamentary estate on a political witchhunt of an opposition politician merely doing his job. If Martin didn't know they needed a warrant to be there he was too stupid to be Speaker; if he knew but turned a blind eye then he was too wicked. But that was also an opportunity. He could have admitted an error, apologised humbly and gone back to Springburn with a grain of respect left. MPs might have even shaken his hand for doing the decent thing while looking over his shoulder for a successor.

Martin's fall from grace is necessary but not sufficient. The election of a new Speaker in this parliament will be effected by the same people who brought it into disrepute. Similarly the "constitutional convention" now being touted would merely be a conclave of the self-regarding great and good and the conclusions would crucially lack credibility in the harsh public spotlight. Only a new parliament where the public have cast judgment on those who have disgraced our political life can be trusted to set in place the new dispensation.

We need a revolution in public life, halving the size of the lower house, and directly electing the revising chamber – all by proportional representation. We need transparent and contemporary disclosure of all financial details – publish the income tax returns and all details of perks, outside jobs and jollies. Party funding and election spending decisions must be part and parcel of the reform. None of this can be done by the current discredited House of Commons.

To the Charity Commission,
 
I have been travelling for many weeks in North Africa and the Middle East, Europe, and North America. I have returned to a London address I seldom visit to find a blizzard of correspondence from you. Your correspondence, when read together, as I have just done, seems to represent a wildly disproportionate and inappropriate reaction to our recent delivery of aid to the suffering Palestinians in Gaza, and must raise the question: Why?
 
The peremptory letters from you, and by you I mean the Charity Commission, are full of bluster and threat, issuing absurd deadlines to people it does not seem to occur to you are not even receiving your letters, either because they are working abroad (Ms Razuki and Mr Al-Mukhtar), travelling abroad on high profile political business (myself), or you are writing to them at the wrong address.
 
In my own case, Easter Saturday opened with your, latest, threat to go before a High Court judge in a bid to force me to appear before you. That will not be necessary. I look forward to telling you to your faces what I think of you. Which is this.
 
I have become increasingly concerned about the abuse of your powers displayed in your brazenly obvious political double standards. About your attempts, under the guise of regulating British charities, to police the democratic efforts of political activists in Britain in a way never envisaged by parliament. About your preparedness to waste large sums of public money in political stunts, either at the behest of others or in the hope that you are properly anticipating their wishes. And above all, in the context of this issue, your almost laughably obvious prejudice against the Palestinian cause and against Britain's two million-strong Muslim community.
 
Just one example will suffice for now, although I have more, much more.
 
During Israel's 22-day attack on virtually defenceless Palestinian civilians in Gaza - condemned by virtually everyone in the world from the United Nations to the Pope and including the British government – an organisation The Zionist Federation took out a full page advert in the Jewish Chronicle on 9^th January asking readers to send "care packages" to "our [ie Israeli] soldiers fighting on the front line” in Gaza and to send charity vouchers to a British registered charity Operation Wheelchairs Committee (charity number 263089) for the same purpose.
 
Although this was immediately drawn to your attention you appear to have done absolutely nothing at all about such an abuse of charitable status. The Zionist Federation is presumably not a registered charity any more than Viva Palestina was. The Zionist Federation appeal was for money for “care packages” with donations possible online to www.zionist.org.uk and to the charity Operation Wheelchairs Committee. By the logic of your actions towards Viva Palestina, surely you should have immediately declared the Zionist Federation to be a charity with all that that entails. But you did not do so. Why? In any case, the Operation Wheelchairs Committee is a charity, soliciting for funds in this advert to support a foreign army involved in a widely condemned military action, in which thousands of civilians were killed, maimed and orphaned. Yet the Charity Commission did nothing. No freezing of bank accounts, no press releases, no carefully briefed "concerns", no threats of High Court judges.
 
It will only take the reader (I am publishing this letter as widely as I can) a moment's thought to imagine what the Charity Commission's attitude would have been if a British - Muslim - Charity had taken a full page advertisement in a different British newspaper raising money for "care packages" for "our [ie Palestinian] soldiers fighting on the front line” in Gaza.
 
Not only would you have gone into overdrive and immediately begun freezing their assets, the hue and cry in the press you would have fed, would have seen the charity's trustees under arrest.
 
This is an incontestable example of your persistent bias. Because in contrast to your inaction on a British charity raising money for the Israeli army and in the absence of such a hypothetical Muslim charity, you have launched this hysterical campaign to try and wreck the work of Viva Palestina instead.
 
Without any knowledge of the intentions of Viva Palestina and on the basis of press reports, you pronounced, as is your wont, that we were in effect a charity, to give yourselves locus in our affairs. You misunderstood - I believe deliberately - the structure of our Gaza convoy, purporting to believe that we - the subscribers (whatever that means) - were holding more than a million pounds about which you expressed "concerns", when in fact, as you have been told but continue to ignore, this was never the case.
 
You first frightened the banks into refusing our attempts to open a bank account. When we finally found a bank which would allow us to open an account you intimidated them into freezing it, I believe exceeding your powers. You then began procuring documents - possibly illegally - about us from the Islamic Bank. As a result of your press briefings about your "concerns" newspapers began to refuse to accept advertisements from us, donors turned away, and the public were encouraged to believe that Viva Palestina was something to be avoided - conjuring-up an undisclosed but lurking suspicion about it.
 
In all this you acted not as the public would expect a Charity Commission to do, but rather as a self-appointed state policeman of the activist sector, a mission-creep towards a style of work which simply must be contested.
 
Here are the facts. Accept them and save the public purse a lot of money it can't afford. And get off the backs of Britain's Muslims and the Palestinian people.
 
I am not a trustee of Viva Palestina. You say I am a "subscriber" though you do not say what that means. I have nothing to do with Viva Palestina's finances, I am not a signatory to its frozen bank account. I will attend the meeting with you, because I intend to launch a parliamentary campaign, and take it to the country, to put you back in your place.
 
I did inspire the creation of Viva Palestina and I am very proud of that. If those running it listen to me they will refuse to take anything off their website at your behest. The example you cite of an item which should be taken down, could just as easily have been any one of a hundred items. And would become so, once your right to dictate the activities of a political campaigning organisation was conceded.
 
For that is what Viva Palestina was, and is. Its constitution - its actual constitution not the one you wish it had - makes this abundantly clear. So does everything it says and does. If all that renders Viva Palestina not eligible to be a charity, then that's fine. Let me emphasise this as strongly as I am able. Viva Palestina does not want to be a charity.

It is you, for transparently political reasons, who insisted that charitable status should be sought. You registered Viva Palestina as a charity in record quick time and without the great bulk of the information you normally required. And then you froze the record-quick new charity's bank account so that it could not operate. These are police state tactics, entirely inappropriate and without any basis.
 
Viva Palestina simply provided a focus for an aid convoy from Britain to Gaza. It was de-centralised. Each participant was responsible for raising their own money, bringing their own vehicles, filling their own vehicles with their own aid, making their own donations in Gaza. You have been told this but continue to misrepresent the position. The money raised by Viva Palestina itself - a much smaller amount - was publicly declared to be intended as a donation to a British charity for work in Gaza - Interpal, with which you are depressingly familiar for having harassed it for years on repeatedly debunked smears.
 
The vast majority of the participants in the convoy, and the vast majority of those who helped them with money and aid, were British Muslims.

Having exerted that mighty effort, those British Muslims now find that their peaceful democratic response to the crisis in Gaza has been criminalised by you, and their aid confiscated. This all follows the high-profile police raid on vehicles from the Muslim community in the North West heading to join the convoy the night before its departure. This raid, blazed across the media, saw the arrest of ten Muslims headed for the convoy. All ten of them were later released without charge, but not before sowing the seeds of tremendous bitterness in the communities from which the men came.

This is dangerous as well as foolish. There are extremists on the edge of the Muslim community even now saying "I told you so" to those who had been naive enough to think Britain was still the kind of country where efforts like ours could be appreciated and, at least, be free from the kind of arbitrary and unjust actions taken by you. These actions undermine the confidence of British Muslims in the democratic system in Britain and are therefore dangerous and against the interests of our country. 
 
I understand from my colleagues that you have now frozen more than £100,000 intended to help the suffering Palestinian people. Shame on you. I suppose it is too much to hope that you might have that on your conscience. But be sure I intend to let as many people as possible know, here and abroad, what you have done.
 
Viva Palestina's work has effectively come to a halt since your intervention in its affairs and in my absence. This was, I'm sure, your intention. Viva Palestina has not spent any money improperly. It would not do so. Indeed it could not do so. It has spent hardly anything at all - thanks to you. But it intends to get its money back from you. Viva Palestina have instructed lawyers to deal with you and a barrister will accompany us to the meeting with you. If necessary we will start a new organisation free from your wrecking efforts. But we want this money back, please be sure about that. There are Palestinians dying as a result of the malignant, sinister, cynical actions taken by you. Trust me you'll be hearing more about this.
 
Yours faithfully
 
George Galloway MP

I say to the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, who is not in his place, that the international community is not impotent, but merely feigns impotence as an excuse for its failure to carry out its duties. Although the Minister's words were more robust, he essentially masked the same inaction as the languid and complacent Foreign Secretary, who performed in front of us on Monday.

Compare and contrast British diplomacy on the subject that we are discussing with our response to Zimbabwe or, more particularly, the Russian conflict with Georgia. The Foreign Secretary was everywhere then, lecturing the Russians on what they must do. He even flew to Kiev, stood on the dividing line, and told Russia what the international community required of it.

On Gaza, our Ministers boast of writing a UN resolution, which has been completely ignored. I would be embarrassed to say that I was the author of a resolution—which passed, not with international consensus, as the Minister claimed, but with the abstention of the United States, the only vote that mattered—if it were then ignored and the Government had no intention of doing anything to make its terms effective. That is what we have.

The Foreign Secretary says that he does not want what he calls gesture politics, which were supported widely in the House today, such as an arms embargo, recalling ambassadors and requiring the withdrawal of Israeli ambassadors, because he does not want to isolate Israel. However, he and the Government were at the forefront of those who isolated the elected Government of Palestine, which was Hamas. They do not like to talk about it now. They prefer to talk about President Abbas, who illegally occupies the presidential seat in Ramallah. They refuse to acknowledge that the Palestinian people voted for Hamas.

I have never been a supporter of Hamas. Like the noble and right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman), I was, all my life, a supporter and friend of the late President Arafat. The Israeli attitude to President Arafat and Fatah when they were in power was exactly the same as their attitude to the Palestinian Administration of Hamas. Israel drowned Arafat's Administration in blood through a policy of assassination, settlement, wall-building and economic embargo. The British Government wholeheartedly supported the embargo on Gaza to punish the Palestinian people for voting for a Hamas Administration.

The Government's double standards in this affair are so brazen that people outside are boiling with rage. If that is not so clear in this building, people outside are furious. The danger of radicalisation, especially of the Muslim youth in this country, is clear and present. The Government are always looking for some cleric to whom to refuse a visa, or some Islamic organisation to proscribe to try to curb radicalisation. How radical does the Minister believe that British Muslims feel now, as they watch on the news the bombing of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency and the slaughter of children that has been adumbrated here today? The Government's policy of tackling extremism and radicalisation has been set back by their complacency and ineffectual policy on Gaza, especially when compared with their militancy on subjects such as Russia and Georgia.

I do not have time to say all that I have to say, but I want to say something to those who have been boasting about going to Sderot. I am amazed at how many Members of Parliament have been to Sderot. Did any of them see the ruins of the Palestinian villages on which Sderot is built or the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people from Sderot and the south of Israel? Did any of them know that the refugee camps of Gaza are filled with the people who used to live in the villages on which Sderot is built?

This did not start on ..27 December... With respect to Dr. Starkey, who made a great speech, it did not even start in 1967, when Sderot and other places were cleared. It started in this building, when Arthur Balfour, on behalf of one people, promised a second people the land that belonged to a third people. We are the authors of this tragedy.

Everything that has flowed has flowed as a result of that declaration. For that reason, if for no other, the British Foreign Office needs to pull its finger out and stand up and be counted, alongside the British people demonstrating on the streets of London, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Edinburgh, Glasgow and elsewhere. Let us see some urgency from the Minister. Action speaks louder than words. So far, we have had no action from this Government at all.

"Let's unify our efforts. Stop the Slaughter in Gaza. Hold the British government to account. Freedom for Palestine."

An Evening with George Galloway and Friends Sunday 30th November 2008, 7 pm

 
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