Craig Murray Stands for Palestinians

The Workers Party's Northern Lights Shine on Gaza

Apr 17, 2024

Published: 2024-0

A Candidacy

At the end of February, 2024, George Galloway was elected in the seat of Rochdale in the north of England to the British parliament. He had formed the Workers Party. As its only sitting member he is its leader. This week, former Ambassador, CIA torture whistleblower and friend of Julian Assange and Wikileaks, Craig Murray, declared his entry onto the electoral ballot for the northern seat of Blackburn which he had contested in 2005.

Murray also announced his candidacy to his readership on his web site on April 16th. He has been closely following the genocide in Gaza. He queued in freezing temperatures on both dark mornings to take one of the only 14 places in the public gallery of the International Court of Justice for its hearing of the prosecution (South Africa) and defense (Israel) for the case of genocide. He has published many articles on his website regarding the crimes being committed in Gaza. Many of these have been republished at leading sites like Consortium News.

In his announcement he listed his motives for standing in Blackburn as being opposition to the genocide and the prevention of the export of British munitions to Israel. His final reason is that "the Blackburn Independent Councillors and the Workers’ Party invited" him to stand. He is standing as a Workers Party candidate.

The party's rapid growth is allowing it to field candidates in many local elections and for many seats of parliament in the upcoming British national election expected this northern autumn.

Evacuating the Left

Europe's center left parties' slide to right of center has left a gaping hole in its politics. This slide can be seen in a series of establishment policies which abandoned the working class, embraced technocratic policies under a green agenda, implemented neoliberal austerity and supported the destruction of Ukraine, first undermining peace (the Minsk II Accords) and then advocating war by funding and arming Ukraine.

The EU is not meaningfully standing against the genocide in Gaza. It has including unreasonable demands in its call for a ceasefire. The Irish MEPs Clare Daly and Mick Wallace have been vociferously scolding their EU parliamentary colleagues and the executive for their total failure to stand for the principles which the EU claims to uphold. Germany and Britain are actively supporting the genocide via weapons sales or surveillance flights and missile defence. France's Macron has been proposing to send the Foreign Legion into Ukraine to continue the war there.

Political movements against this ideological shift emerged a decade ago. With the European support for the horror in Gaza, a political moment has arrived for these and more recent political organisations to stand in stark contrast to the European establishment.

A Greek Marxist Economist is Banned in Germany

The Greek Syriza party grew from a few percentage points of support to be voted into government in early 2015. The issue which led to their electoral victory was the austerity being forced upon Greece by the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Greek Professor of Economics Yanis Varoufakis was asked to join Syriza to become Greece's finance minister. He gained considerable experience in the European halls of power during his ministerial role. It including attending closed meetings of European finance ministers in which statements which would never be issued in public were made. These amounted to unveiled threats and personal abuse. His response in public was to recommend the live-streaming of these events. He was forced to leave government, resigning in protest, when his Prime Minister capitulated to demands from the financial institutions against the will of the Greek electorate.

From the dust of that defeat Varoufakis co-founded the Democracy in Europe Movement with a target of achieving political change in Europe by 2025. The pan-European movement is called DiEM-25 following the acronym and target year.

DiEM-25's Europe wide community linked arms with the UK Labour Party's Jeremy Corbyn and US Independent Bernie Sanders to advocate for progressive policies and against growing income inequality. Sanders was defeated by Hillary Clinton using her control of the Democratic National Committee to undermine his campaign. The RussiaGoat hoax was a key part of her strategy to defeat Sanders. It set Clinton up against Trump, an election Clinton's campaign group wrongly expected to easily win.

In the UK, the Israel Lobby attacked Corbyn as the Labour leader after he had lead the largest growth in party membership in many decades through grassroots organizing. The current leader, elected by the party to replace Corbyn, Kier Starmer, 'expelled more Jews from the Labour Party than every previous Labour leader combined – under the excuse of “anti-semitism”'. [Craig Murray in his candidacy announcement]

This last weekend (2024-04-13,14) an event titled Palestine Conference was organized in Berlin. DiEM-25 leader Varoufakis was scheduled to deliver a speech via live-stream. Before the event began, German police demanded that all media were admitted, potentially overcrowding the venue. They then prevented attendees from entering and led some away.

Germany then banned Varoufakis from entering Germany and participating in any political event in Germany, even via the internet. This political suppression by German police, of an event in support of Palestine against a Zionist genocide, is a worrying development in Europe.

Varoufakis has published his speech and a reading of it (see sources for the video). The German police do not yet control the internet so that we may all, Germans included, inform ourselves of its undangerous rhetoric and exercise of political speech. The German police's disruption of the event and banning of Varoufakis is likely to completely backfire, raising more awareness of the plight of the Palestinians, of Varoufakis' stature, and that Germany is the second largest exporter of arms to Israel after the US.

The Workers Party

Galloway's Workers Party are galvanizing support by standing against to the ongoing genocide in opposition to both major parties in Britain. At their recent event in Blackburn, Galloway remarked that freedoms won by struggle can be lost. He cited an all to real circumstance of a war in southwest Asia leading to political repression in Britain or on the continent due to policies justified by the hypothetical war. He also mentioned the recent political repression in Germany.

As the US, Britain and EU undermine their proclaimed values by supporting the evil of a genocide, a vacuum in politics has been created. Galloway's political instinct spotted the opportunity in Rochdale. Now, with that success and with rapidly growing support from Muslims and the working class that vacuum is being filled to the shock of Britain's political establishment. A uniparty duopoly member of parliament can not only be unseated, but their government threatened.

At the event in Blackburn, and in Murray's announcement the Worker's Party's approach to fielding candidates against other independents standing in electorates is presented. This is a 'split the vote' consideration which US voters will be very familiar with as it serves as the argument to vote for "the lesser of two evils". The result of this choice is that one always gets evil.

In the Workers Party vs. other independents consideration, the mission is to deny the seat to both halves of the "same backside" which Galloway "spanked" in Black, to use his metaphor for the British political duopoly. The Workers Party informed other independents that if they believe they have better chance of winning they will field a candidate against an independent. They also stressed that there is strength in a union or party and encouraged independent candidates to join them. The Workers Party have other cards to play, namely Jeremy Corbyn, who "will romp back into parliament in Islington North" [Murray again].

If a significant unity of purpose can be achieved this will likely result in a split in the Uniparty as they are then caught fighting each other to achieve a government by whatever slim majority they can. In the end, its all about voters. Craig Murray reminded the electorate of the seat for which he is standing that the Labour Party had abandoned them. It was time for them to abandon the Labour Party.

All of these subtleties of political outcomes and tactics are awaiting us in Britain as the Workers Party fills the moral vacuum left by the two cheeks of the same backside which may once again get politically spanked.

A Trio of Erudite Troublemakers

To obtain a sense of the frustration and anger which the duopoly must feel, one can listen to Geoge Galloway in the British House of Commons during Question Time earlier this week after the Iranian response to Israel’s missle attack on the Iranian diplomatic mission in Damascus.

When listening, please imagine two more of these difficult voices coming from the back bench with the names of Craig Murray and Jeremy Corbyn. One may then conceive the size of effort and manner of tactics which will be used to prevent this escalation of democracry.