Of Kerns and Gallowglasses

Farewell, then, Respect, the never very united Unity Coalition.

George Galloway's pro-family record is a bit ropey, but as a pro-life, pro-worker and anti-war figure he has been outstanding. True to his Catholic roots, he has never been a Marxist, for all that he was a Campaign Group member (is Austin Mitchell a Marxist?).

But Galloway's formation of Respect took him into league with Stalinists (the Communist Party of Britain), Trotskyists (the Socialist Workers' Party, most of whose members have never done a day's work in their lives, not least because people tend to leave it on leaving university) and Islamists (the Muslim Association of Britain).

By associating either with Trotskyists or with Islamists, Galloway placed himself at only one degree's remove from the neoconservatives, the disciples of Max Shachtman who cheered or cheer on the Islamists in 1980s Afghanistan, 1990s Bosnia, and today's Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Chechnya and Kosovo, as well as making life a million times easier for them in Iraq, and threatening to do the same in Syria. What is actually Galloway's or Respect's position on, say, the black-shirted, Holocaust-denying, heroin-trafficking, neocon-backed Kosovo "Liberation" Army?

Just as well that there is a real party of labour, of everyone who works for a living, of everyone who can be sacked.