Hit Jobs and Establishment Stooges

The Attacks On The WPB Members And Smear Jobs On Galloway Must Be Called Out

We at the Class Consciousness Project utterly condemn the attack that has been carried out upon supporters of the Workers Party of Britain in Manchester earlier this week.  In a shocking incident, which has been captured on camera, an assailant runs over a WPB supporter leaving the person in question needing hospital treatment. It has been alleged that the driver of the car is a Labour Party activist in the area but this has not been confirmed by either the police or the Labour Party as yet.  What is certain though is that there has been an orchestrated campaign of hysteria whipped up against the WPB and its leader George Galloway by senior politicians starting from the Prime Minister himself who was followed by many reactionary figures in the capitalist media.

The intention of this intimidation campaign is clear, these politicians and paid propagandists want to protect the corrupt establishment parties by painting the WPB as somehow illegitimate. The attempt to discredit Mr Galloway and the WPB was joined in a more slimy fashion by the perennially charmless shyster Aaron Bastani and Novara media.  In a recent interview Bastani claimed to be shocked when Galloway stated that same sex relationships “weren’t normal”, Bastani and his crew immediately clipped this and circulated it online clearly hoping to provoke a backlash against Galloway and the WPB.  This is laughable opportunism for a number of reasons. Firstlyone can hardly accuse Galloway of having hidden his point of view on this question given that he has talked about how the WPB is to be “economically radical & socially conservative” on many occasions. Secondly it turns out that Galloway and Bastani are both Catholics and (though the current Pontiff has sought to soften this) the Church’s official doctrine still states that homosexuality is a sin. So if Bastani was shocked by Galloway how does he feel about the official line of the Church which they both adhere to? Clearly there is something more to this than simple sensationalism on Bastani’s part and here we must mention that the likes of Novara media are not the “independent” operation they portray themselves as being. In fact they play the role of gatekeepers, policing the British left and using their large platforms to attack anyone who strays too far from the path that is deemed acceptable by the ruling class. This is why Bastani himself has worked with the intelligence asset Paul Mason, why Ash Sarkar attacked those expelled from the labour party on false charges of anti-semitism and why Bastani backed the arrest of three women on charges of terrorism late last year for the heinous crime of wearing t-shirts with images of paragliders on them. These images were deemed to be “in support of terrorism” by the British state because the Palestinian fighters used paragliders to carry out their attack on October 7th, Mr Bastani was happy to endorse the repressive actions of the British state here. Whenever the British state needs certain boundaries reinforcing the likes of Novara media are there to provide loyal service to them.  Their attempted hit job on Mr Galloway is not out of character at all, in fact it is exactly what we expect from such a collection of slimy double dealers who are, sadly, typical of the British left.    

We at the Class Consciousness Project have our criticisms of Mr Galloway and his party. We are all former members of it and left for reasons we have specified on many occasions. We will continue to advance our critique of the WPB because we regard its reformist programme as inadequate to the needs of the British working class.  At the same time we have worked with WPB members in the past and will do so again in areas where we are in agreement with them.  We see no contradiction in this stance and it is an attitude we maintain towards many groups on the British left with whom we have differences but whom we recognise as doing valuable work.  Therefore we defend the democratic rights of the WPB to campaign in elections free of harassment and violence. We will also point out when they, or anyone, comes under attack from contemptible establishment stooges such as Mr Bastani and his gaggle of guardian wannabes. 

At this point we wish to emphasise the following points to all workers. 

1. We must all condemn the political violence that has been encouraged by Sunak and Starmer against the WPB and those who have stood in solidarity with the Palestinians 

2. We demand that the democratic rights of the working class be protected
3. The trade union movement must organise a campaign in support of the right to campaign, protest and rally without assault or intimidation by state forces or hired gangs of reactionaries.