Election reaction
May. 6th, 2005 08:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livI woke up this morning to news of the Labour victory. Well, to be honest, I knew when I went to sleep last night that Labour were going to win, and really, I was pretty certain when I voted at 9 o'clock yesterday morning that Labour were going to win. And it's not exactly like I'd be dancing in the streets if the shambolic, unelectable band of racist scum calling themselves the Conservative party had defied all expectations by winning this election.
But what really socked me when I was woken by the radio this morning was hearing that George Galloway has taken Oona King's seat. Most politicians are lying, toadying, power-hungry demagogues; it's depressing, but that's human nature. However, Oona King is, I believe, a genuinely good person, and George Galloway is, frankly, actively evil. King is quite a bit to the left of Blair, so if the consituency wanted a socialist, why not a sane, dedicated, principled socialist rather than a nutter?
I'm just hoping that the people who voted for him were unaware of his violently antisemitic views. It's not something he emphasized in his campaign, unlike in the 70s when he was elected in Dundee on an overtly antisemitic platform, and very nearly drove the century-old Jewish community out of Dundee altogether, as well as inciting violence and nastiness which continues to this day. Perhaps people voted for him as a protest against the Blair government and the Iraq war. I can sympathize to a point. But, you know, people, he was thrown out of the Labour party for what amounted to treason. Not treason against the Labour party, actual treason against this country where he is now an MP again. Ugh.
All I can say is, at this moment I'm extremely glad that I have skills and qualifications which should make it easy for me to live anywhere in the world. And if![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rysmiel wants to hold forth about why democracy is a poor method of government, or indeed why Montreal is a wonderful place, at this particular moment I'm likely to be more than usually susceptible to such arguments.
Today is the 12th day, making one week and five days of the Omer.
But what really socked me when I was woken by the radio this morning was hearing that George Galloway has taken Oona King's seat. Most politicians are lying, toadying, power-hungry demagogues; it's depressing, but that's human nature. However, Oona King is, I believe, a genuinely good person, and George Galloway is, frankly, actively evil. King is quite a bit to the left of Blair, so if the consituency wanted a socialist, why not a sane, dedicated, principled socialist rather than a nutter?
I'm just hoping that the people who voted for him were unaware of his violently antisemitic views. It's not something he emphasized in his campaign, unlike in the 70s when he was elected in Dundee on an overtly antisemitic platform, and very nearly drove the century-old Jewish community out of Dundee altogether, as well as inciting violence and nastiness which continues to this day. Perhaps people voted for him as a protest against the Blair government and the Iraq war. I can sympathize to a point. But, you know, people, he was thrown out of the Labour party for what amounted to treason. Not treason against the Labour party, actual treason against this country where he is now an MP again. Ugh.
All I can say is, at this moment I'm extremely glad that I have skills and qualifications which should make it easy for me to live anywhere in the world. And if
rysmiel wants to hold forth about why democracy is a poor method of government, or indeed why Montreal is a wonderful place, at this particular moment I'm likely to be more than usually susceptible to such arguments. Today is the 12th day, making one week and five days of the Omer.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-06 01:36 pm (UTC)Let's see. I didn't make it clear in my post that Galloway was a local councillor here in the 70s, not an MP. He organized the twinning of Dundee with Nablus. That's well documented, and it's not intrinsically a bad thing, but the way it was done was in the spirit of a deliberate insult to the Jewish community. There was a lot of unpleasantness associated with that incident. (The town hall here still flies the Palestinian flag, though I think for most people today this is a symbol of Dundee's thriving Palestinian expat community and willingness to send aid to Palestine, rather than an antisemitic gesture.)
At around the same, he led a campaign to get the hundred-year old synagogue demolished. Eventually a compromise was reached whereby the synagogue was in fact knocked down to make way for a shopping centre, but the Jewish community received financial compensation and were able to build a new synagogue. But the debate over the whole issue was extremely acrimonious and involved a lot of really nasty comments about the Jews in general and specific members of the community.
The rest is, I'm afraid, a mixture of hearsay and guilt by association. Hearsay in that most of my Jewish friends who have lived here long enough to remember the Galloway era say that the relationship of the Jewish community with the town really went downhill at that time and there's still a lot of bad feeling. The Jewish cemetery has been vandalized repeatedly, the synagogue has been attacked, including being defaced with swastikas, and generally people feel less safe. Plus, the council and police have been reluctant to the point of obstructive when it comes to dealing with these things. I don't claim this is all due to Galloway's personal influence, that would be completely exaggerated! But it's something that has very much come to the fore after the nasty rhetoric when he was a significant political figure here.
Apart from that, my view is based on Galloway's long association with the nastier elements of the political left. The most recent incarnation is the Stop The War Coalition, which includes in its membership mostly perfectly decent people who genuinely oppose the war in Iraq (as do I), but whose power hierarchy is full of dubious organizations who want to blame the war and everything else on the "international Zionist conspiracy". Given Galloway's history, I'm unwilling to class him with the innocently misled crowds who were horrified to find themselves marching with people carrying 'Jews out' banners when they intended to be protesting against the war.
The Respect manifesto says they are anti-Zionist rather than antisemitic. I hope that's true, and more specifically I hope that most of the people who voted for them believe it.