good evening ladies and
gentlemen brothers and sisters comrades
and friends and I hope I don't have any
friends left at the end of the night
which sometimes happens to me by which I
mean I hope you'll all be my comrades in
listed in our uh campaign here in
Hastings and Ry my name is George
Galloway Member of Parliament for
Bradford West
constituency uh and the leader of the
resp
party uh I don't often find myself uh in
Hastings and I certainly almost never
find myself in a bar but this is a kind
of special bar I must say and I'm very
grateful to the owner for uh putting up
with us this evening and I hope that uh
whilst I'm the last person to encourage
people to drink alcohol I hope he does
well uh at the cash register uh as a
reward for allowing us to have this
meeting here this evening uh Hastings is
kind of a special uh place for me some
of my dear friends live here Steve fery
from Alabama 3 is there working with us
on the Tony Blair film uh that we are uh
going to be bringing out very soon
indeed so soon that Mr Blair's knees are
beginning to knock together I can almost
hear them the film's called the
killing of Tony Blair it doesn't involve
me actually killing Tony Blair though it
would be a very successful film if it
did uh it deals with the killings of
Tony Blair the killing of the labor
party as we knew it and needed it the
killing of a million people in Iraq and
Afghanistan and other places and the
financial killing which Tony Blair has
been making out of the previous two
killings in the seven fat years that he
has enjoyed if that's the word since
leaving office seven fat years for him
seven lean years for the British people
uh but even worse for the people of the
Middle East where I remind you uh he is
laughably engaged as the Middle East
peace Envoy that's going well in it um
so uh Steve lives here uh my friend
Lloyd Williams and other great musicians
come from Brighton uh David Lofts our
cander is also a musician uh and we've
got a bass player as well and quite a
few instruments lying around so later I
think there'll be quite a jam session uh
going on uh but let me uh just say a few
words uh more about
Hastings Hastings was the site of the
most important book that I've ever read
at least non-religious book uh the
Ragged trouser philanthropist written by
Robert Trestle who was buried until
recently in an unmarked grave in
Liverpool was uh one of the most seminal
uh books of my life it made the case for
the politics that I support and have
supported uh all of my life since my
early teenage years it made the case
Against Racism unbelievably written in
1901 in
Hastings it made the case against the
witch hunting scapegoating of immigrants
in almost exactly the same words as I'm
going to do tonight about the
scapegoating and witch hunting of
immigrants more than a 100 years later
of course the immigrants in question uh
when Trestle wrote that wonderful book
were Jewish immigrants but the discourse
around them was identical to the
discourse that we have today well they
dress different to us they eat different
to us they even insist on speaking their
own
languages even when we are around their
relations with their women are are
different from ours they don't go to
pubs they don't drink they
haven't integrated with our way of life
all of that is directly from the
dialogue in the Ragged trouser
philanthropist written here in
1901 and yet have any of you heard
similar discourse in the current climate
in which we're living I'm certain that
you have so I'm going to start with that
issue as I describe what respect stands
for we fight
racism and racism
includes islamophobia hatred fear of
Islam and anti-Semitism hatred fear of
the Jews we are
against false dichotomies in life
we think and I've just spent a long time
on the road in Scotland trying to kill
another false dichotomy that's out
running in our society namely that
Scotland's problem is the English and if
only Scotland could break away from the
English everything would be hunky dory
we reject that we reject the idea that
immigrants have anything to do with our
current problems
I came here today driving through the
city of London the richest square mile
on the earth in that square mile the
recklessness
dishonesty
absolute greed avarice and
Corruption of a small number of people
has brought this country to the brink of
Ruin indeed some parts of the country
actually to ruin and I promise you that
almost none of them were
immigrants I promise you that almost
none of them were black people almost
none of them were Asians they were white
people like me wearing white shirts like
me though they probably had a tie and I
don't the people who have brought this
country to the brink of Ruin were as
British as Roast Beef in Yorkshire p as
anybody in this land
and because of their recklessness for
which by the way they haven't paid any
kind of price as I always say if you
pick someone's pocket in the Liverpool
Street station in the city of London
you'll be behind bars pretty damn quick
but if you pick a bank if you pick a
finance house a stock broker company if
you are a part of the small Coty of
people that have almost bankrupted
Britain you're try chances of ending up
behind bars are practically zero none of
these people have paid a price either
legally or financially or economically
for the crimes of the bankers that
brought us to
this virtually none of them have gone to
jail and most of them are still earning
the same kind of obscene bonuses and
salaries that brought us to this pass
who's paid therefore who's paid are the
people who never caused the crisis in
the first place the people in the
industrial and po industrial parts of
Britain the people in Seaside places
like this one that are on their economic
uppers they are the people who have paid
the price for this crisis even though
they had no part at all in
bringing it
about so we say we will not
tolerate a strategy a policy that asks
the working people who are entirely
innocent of all offense to pay the price
for the crimes and greed of the Rich and
Powerful we say that to freeze public
sector wages year after year after year
and Ed Miland has just made clear that
if labor is elected in
May public sector wages will continue to
be
Frozen that that's simply unjust we say
that the people who depend on the public
services that the public sector workers
provide cannot be asked to pay the price
for this crisis why should they they're
already living on the edge of poverty
and
penury some of them on the edge of
Oblivion people disabled people for
example committing
suicide as a result of the harassment
that they feel under from atos the
agency set up by Tony Blair's government
continued by Camerons that witch hunts
witch hunts disabled people as if they
were somehow the cause of our problems
so we reject the idea that the workers
and the poor must be made to pay and it
follows as I implied that we certainly
reject the idea that the problem of
ordinary people here in Hastings is
Muhammad who runs the corner shop or
ravinder uh who uh who runs the local
cafe or Indian restaurant they
contributed nothing to the problem we
had and as a matter of fact the
immigrants in this country are often
times doing jobs that no one else can
either do or wants to do in many cases
people are in this country because we
have been bombing and attacking their
country and it seems particularly
perverse to be making War around the
world creating wave of refugees and then
making a human and cry when relatively a
tiny number of those refugees end up on
our Shores I mean if I was going to put
it bluntly it would be if we stop
invading and occupying other people's
countries fewer of them would be
refugees and fewer of them would be here
so we reject the idea that our problems
are anything to do with the Immigrant
population and the children and
grandchildren now of those immigrants
because when farage talks about
immigrants he's not differentiating
between somebody whose grandfather was
an
immigrant but whose father and mother
were not immigrants still less is he or
she an immigrant but they look different
to us just like those Jews in the Ragged
trouser philanthropist written in
1901 equally we reject farage's idea
that our problems are to do with Johnny
forigner across the channel in fact the
SNP in Scotland are the mirror image of
njel farage according to the SNP
Scotland's problem is the English
according to njel farage England's
problem is Johnny forigner across there
both of these are entirely for
false
analysis our problems are not that we're
in the European
Union in fact if we pulled out of the
European Union for all of its faults
which are many and deep and
profound Britain would be up a gum
tree we would be up the proverbial creek
without a paddle and I'm here to say to
you that the constant search for
somebody else to
blame other than the economic and
political system that we ourselves allow
to be implemented against our own
interest is a false dawn it's a it's
chasing a false a chimera which will
lead to nothing but further trouble I
alluded earlier uh to the question of
War if we stand for three things it
would be these the one I've just talked
about the reality of our economic and
political crisis here in this country
the second would be our propensity to go
invading other people's
countries and creating multiplying
pre-existing no doubt problems in the
world and if we have any leading role
that we have played over this last
decade or more it would be in our
struggle against the
wars respect and me and other leaders of
respect were the leaders of the anti-war
movement and everything that we said
turned out to be true and everything
that our adversaries said turned out to
be false where they were not actually ad
deliberate falsehood I always make the
point now when I'm interviewed on
television which happens less and less
often uh I always make the point when
they describe me as controversial I
always say what's controversial about
having been against the Iraq
War in fact the only controversial view
on that now would be to continue to say
that the Iraq War Invasion occupation
had been the right thing to do are there
any sentient being left in the land who
think that invading and occupying Iraq
was the right thing to do Tony Blair uh
Tony Blair I absorve because I think
he's frankly gone mad and I'll come to
him again later we
said I said personally to Tony
Blair if you invade
Iraq the fall of Baghdad will not be the
beginning of the end merely the end of
the
beginning if you invade Iraq there is no
al-Qaeda in Iraq but if you invade there
will be hundreds of thousands of
al-Qaeda in Iraq if you invade Iraq
extremism will Cascade across the entire
world including in our own country there
will be drive by shootings there will be
bombs there will be people committing
suicide
in order to kill as many of us as they
can I told them all
this outside the gentleman's labry in
the library Corridor of the House of
Commons to be absolutely precise I told
him all of
this but he didn't listen either to me
or to the millions of British people
that were marching on the streets even
before they knew what they know now
think about that Millions marched
against the wall War even when we must
have
believed Tony Blair's claimed that Iraq
had weapons of mass
destruction and now that we know that
that was all just a pack of
Lies what Insanity the Iraq war must
seem now all of these things that I
warned Blair have come to
pass sure Saddam fell sure Baghdad fell
was that the end was that mission
accomplished is Iraq better
now how could anyone claim
that a Million Dead
Iraqis 3 million Iraqis living as Exiles
across the world the lucky ones here The
Unlucky ones begging on the streets of
Jordan and
Syria
Isis the head chopping heart eating
throat cutting
Maniacs are governing
onethird of
Iraq and a good part of
Syria and people like them as far away
as
Nigeria are declaring themselves a part
of this so-called Islamic
caliphate so far did extremism Cascade
as a result of the bushan Blair War
that four or five Mad Men blew
themselves up on the London Underground
and on a London bus killing 55 of our
fellow citizens maming hundreds
more and just in the last few days just
across there in France we saw yet
another
twist to where this fanaticism and
extremism has spread and all of it
coming out of a swamp of hatred against
us because of bush and Blair and people
like them and their attitude too and the
actions that they take against Muslims
against Muslim
countries so we're Against Racism we're
against
war and we're against an economic system
that punishes the poor and punishes the
worker
for the crimes and
misdemeanors of those who scarcely know
what a real day's work is really like
who think that pushing numbers around on
a computer screen constitutes work
constitutes wealth we think it
constitutes
neither one last thing before I turn to
the
local one of the crisis that we suffer
is a complete collapse in credibility of
our political
leaders we're in a big mess in this
country we've been in a big mess
before in 1940 41 we couldn't have been
in a bigger
mess we stood entirely alone Hitler was
at the channel ports ready to invade and
occupy
us all of Europe had been
subjugated neither the Soviet Union nor
the United States were in the war
that's what you call a mess that's what
you call a problem the difference
between then and now is we had a
leadership then that knew what to
do and that was ready and able to do it
do we have that now I don't see it I
look across the green benches in the
House of Commons I sometimes see a
shiver running along looking for a spine
to run up
I look at
the the
mannequins these
dummies with their speak your weight
machine
dialogue pretending to hate each
other scrapping out on the floor of
prime minister's questions but you
couldn't slip six pence between
them as I
trademarked their two cheeks of the same
ARS
and if a cheek if if an AR could have
three
cheeks it would be the three leaders the
three front benches they all stand for
one or other variant of the same
thing and they're all playing
games with the race question for fear of
farage and ukip all accepting his agenda
all moving in his
Direction and that's very
dangerous because if the prevailing
Orthodoxy is as homogenic as they are
standing for the same things and those
same
things not only will not solve our
problems but are in fact the reason for
our problems you risk the complete
collapse of faith and trust in politics
at all and that's I think where we are
if you look at the ratings of David
Cameron Nick C which are almost off the
radar and Ed millerand you'll see that
hardly anybody in the country has a good
word to say about any of them and the
reason that faraj is doing so well is
because he's not them because he doesn't
look like them sound like them
although in fact he's even worse than
them that's the Dilemma that we're in so
enter
us we are the ghost of Labor's past we
stand for the things that labor used to
stand
for we stand for the people that labor
used to represent but has now neglected
or at worst abandoned
and we're standing here in this
constituency at the general election in
may we think that this place and others
need
respect they need the kind of politics
that we stand for and we're going to
offer it and if you want to join in you
should make sure that we know how to
contact you at the end of this meeting
tonight you can join respect very very
cheaply Richard what what does it
cost £12 a year a pound a month you can
join it very very cheaply but you don't
even have to join it if you don't want
to join it don't join it just join the
campaign here where we have an
outstanding local candidate now as I
don't know if she's still in the room
but the labor candidate for this
constituent say was here earlier I think
she's a little anxious that we are
standing
well we've always been ready to
negotiate Ed mban knows where to find me
if he would like to negotiate an
electoral
pact we'll talk about
that but you
can't ask us not to
stand when you have
betrayed the ideas that we stand for why
should we support you
why shouldn't we argue for the ideas
that we believe in if you don't want to
negotiate with us I say to the labor
candidate start negotiating with the
people who might vote for us
negotiate by moving in the direction
that we point and if you don't don't
blame them if they don't vote for you
and choose to vote for us
instead now David lofts
is a local man with a phenomenal record
of work in the community in the fields
of mental health I don't know if you're
aware that the mental health statistics
for Hastings are double the national
average imagine there are twice as many
people 100% more people with mental
health issues in Hastings than in the
country as a whole he'll tell you why
when he comes to the
microphone David specializes in that
field Works in that field and demands
proper service proper treatment proper
care for people with mental health
problems he's a wizard on the computers
he builds websites runs them he's
campaigning for the living wage never
mind a national minimum wage a national
living wage cuz nobody can live on
what they call the national minimum wage
he's involved in all kinds of community
activities as well as being a musician
uh and involved for a long time uh in
the music business and he is steeped in
the
traditions and the life here of the
people in Hastings I think he's a very
credible and and an important addition
to our list of candidates and he's going
to be coming up uh after you've had the
chance to ask me uh any questions thanks
very much indeed for coming thanks for
listening thank
you well the bar is now absolutely full
I'm very glad to see uh let me take some
questions yes Madam how can we put
Palestine on the political
agenda how can we put Palestine on the
political agenda well it's well and
truly on the political agenda uh when I
began uh my own contribution uh to the
Palestinian cause in
1975 you could have fitted all the
supporters of the PLO into this bar and
had room for a couple of elephants at
the
back now we are millions I mean there
are there are millions and millions of
people in this country
that would identify in any survey their
sympathies with the Palestinian people
and there are many more Millions indeed
the overwhelming majority all except a
tiny Fringe handful of
Nutters who uh are certain that the
Palestinian crisis is the heart of the
matter it's the heart of our problem in
the world and that if there is no
resolution with Justice for the
Palestinians there will be no peace
there will be no justice there will be
no peace in the Middle East and
therefore in The Wider World almost
everybody agrees with that now trust me
it wasn't like that in
1975 so almost everybody now knows that
a solution has to be found to the
Palestinian people that provides at
least sufficient
Justice that this conflict can be
brought to a close and the vote in the
House of Commons in recognition of a
Palestinian state was overwhelming I
think only 18 supporters of Israel
turned up to vote against it in the
Irish Parliament nobody voted against it
can you imagine in the Irish Parliament
it was a unanimous decision in the
French Parliament the Swedish Parliament
indeed the Swedish government has
already uh recognized an independent
Palestinian State this is an idea whose
time has come it's anide idea which is
hegemonic in the world dominant in the
world so when people say to you as some
might I don't know if any of them came
but they were threatening to come the
so-called Sussex friends of so-called
Israel uh when they come when they shout
or Heckle remember that they are the
ones who are a tiny minority they are
the people who've lost profoundly lost
the argument and are uh dogs barking as
the Caravan moves on the truth is all of
the momentum is with us who have
supported the Palestinian cause as I see
you're wearing the CIA which has become
a universal symbol of the struggle for
Liberty uh for Freedom uh in the world
uh there are there's nobody walking
around waving Israeli Flags except a
tiny
Fringe group of
Nutters next
question
got
Ecom environmental we got
imigra well it's a good question um I
think we're in real trouble I think
there's real trouble in the country and
there's real
trouble in the continent and there's
real trouble in the world the
dominant
capitalist narrative has broken down
it's quite clear that the political and
economic system that everybody in here
has lived under all of their lives is no
longer if ever was but no longer
certainly able to solve the problems of
the people and the economy is supposed
to work for the people not the other way
around we're supposed to devise
political and economic systems that
serve us not the other way around and
clearly the prevailing
Orthodoxy of what they call democracy
which is really a
shamra where two cheeks of the same ARS
if you'll forgive the metaphor clap
against each other as if it was was
meaningful when it is not and who stand
for essentially the same things and a
capitalist economy where the capitalists
can only exist if the public bails them
out imagine what we have is private
profit
underwritten by public taxpayers money
these
Banks if they really were capitalist
Enterprises would have gone to the wall
would have gone burst because of their
recklessness their dishonesty but
instead you were forced to build them
out thousands of pounds per head I don't
know if you're all aware of that all of
you have paid thousands of pounds each
to
rescue private
Banks there's nothing actually
capitalist about that Adam Smith would
turn in his grave so we we have a
private enterprise system that depends
on public
subsidy and depends on the public
considering them too big to fail too big
to
jail and that cannot persist we're
headed for a crunch and the problem the
danger is when the crunch comes will
people blame the right culprits or will
they blame the wrong
ones this is where my argu arguments
about farage and about
nationalism and racism and so on come in
because there will be plenty of Sun
headlines plenty of headlines in the
Daily Express if that's still coming out
uh seeking to point the finger at the
wrong culprits uh in order to deflect
attention from the right culprit so we
don't have unlimited time
I don't have unlimited time not none of
us have unlimited time but our
children and I have many by the grace of
God are facing a future the first time
in
centuries where my children your
children are likely to be less well off
than I was than you
were in all succeeding generation
preceding Generations rather one's
children had a better life than the
parents they lived longer they had
better houses better jobs better wages
better standard of living this is the
first generation whose children face a
future poorer
shorter and less satisfying in every way
than the generation of their parents and
that's a dangerous set of circumstances
I give you just one
example I never went went to University
I left school at uh 15 I went to work in
a factory Mitchell and tires I've worked
my entire life I've never been idle for
a single day I've paid tax how many
hundreds of thousands of pounds of tax
have I paid and I paid it so that people
like Tony Blair could go to Oxford
University entirely free of
charge and get a grant to enjoy it with
I was slogging on the assembly line
making ZX radials paying tax to send
Blair to
Oxford and the first thing that he did
when he got into power was kick away the
ladder so the our children can't go to
Oxford or to any University for that
matter without running up a debt of tens
of thousands scores of thousands of
pounds there's one concrete example
where to today children are worse off
than the children of the people still in
power in politics today and there are
many many other examples I could
give anyone over here yes the lady
there I applaud everything you've said
so far uh I'm very interested to know
what you have to say about the Blind Eye
that the other Pol that the other
parties have have made or just Li
service to
um global warming and other
environmental problems which of course
will hit the poorest people most and
hardest indeed it's not that they uh uh
won't admit it some of them actively
consciously deny it including our
Minister for the
environment the person in charge of
Britain's environment doesn't believe in
man-made uh global warming doesn't
believe in in the environmental
depredation uh of the economic system
that we have look it's kind of
obvious capitalism is
about the employer or the
owner taking decisions in the interests
of themselves and their
shareholders that's in fact they have a
legal responsibility to do that they
have no real legal responsibility to
take your interests into account their
primary fiduciary legal requirement on
them is that they so conduct the
business as to maximize the profit for
their own shareholders you can't blame
them for it that's the rules of the
game
but if someone's taking private economic
decisions in their own
interest there is absolutely no
guarantee that the decisions that that
they're making are in the Public's
interest and indeed for the most part
they're not I always give the metaphor
forgive me if you read it from me
before the man who decides to move his
large yacht by
Road taking up two lanes of the motorway
has made an entirely rational decision
in his own economic
interest but the 50 mile traffic jam
behind him
because the motorway has been reduced to
one lane they have a different set of
consequences the public the environment
the the economy the uh interests of all
those other motorists and families in
the car stuck behind them they have an
entirely different take on this
different
perspective so any rational state would
say to the owner of the large yacht I'm
sorry you can't move that on the road
you'll have to find another way of
transporting it down to Hastings or
wherever it is you're going with it
because you will do do more damage to
the public interest than can be
justified by your own private gain your
own private interest and if you expand
the idea I've just given you to the
National economy as a
whole why would a private company
private owners private shareholders care
about despoiling the
environment they're only in for the
short term and the
buck they don't care what your children
or their children will have to suffer in
the future from the degraded
environment that contemporary capitalism
has produced indeed they're not allowed
to care about it
it's their duty to make as much money as
possible no so that's why I say that the
prevailing economic system that we have
is not fit for purpose if its purpose is
to serve the needs of the 65 million
people who live on this small island and
we need profound radical change and
we're not going to get it from any of
the mainstream
parties yes sir
first of all let let me commend you for
your support for the Palestinian people
which I think is a wonderful
thingk secondly the question that in my
mind regard to
n he
has forward a question with regard to
centralization of power in in Europe and
it concerns
Europe seems to be getting
power we can't
check there seems to be no Democratic
way of checking their power and this is
a
worry because I don't want
to on the other I'm worried about I'm
worried taking away
Bas
indivual well thank you uh for the kind
uh remarks that you made uh on
Palestine uh and it makes it harder for
me to profoundly disagree with what I
think is your perspective on Europe
although of course there's much to
criticize about
Europe
Europe is the best place in the world to
live it has the best standard of living
the highest
levels of
care and the greatest levels of social
peace anywhere in the
world I alluded earlier to 1940 and 41
by
1945 more than 90 million Europeans lay
dead they tore each other to pieces in
two world wars in just a few decades uh
apart
the European Union has provided not only
an absence of War on the European
continent since its foundation war
between European countries is now
absolutely
inconceivable and that's a pretty big
advance and it's one that younger people
might not grasp quite so easily as those
of us born quite so close to the second
world War's end or in some cases I don't
can't really see the audience maybe
there are people here who lived uh in
the second world war so anything which
seeks to destroy as farage
does the idea of a United Europe is my
enemy because I know I think I know what
the consequence would be of a Europe
catapulted backwards into National
antagonism
that may very well resolve themselves
with war in the way that they did twice
in the 20th century I'm with you
entirely on the question of democratic
accountability and control but I think
if I may say so that you're viewing the
levels of democratic accountability and
control that we have here in Britain
through rose-colored
spectacles we have no more control over
over our lives through
Westminster than the European Union
citizenry including ourselves does
through the European
institutions I don't boast about that
because the the level of real Democratic
accountability that we have in either
case is almost
zero and it's a false another of these
false dichotomies to set up one against
the other the lack of democracy in the
European Union compared to uh a
perceived level of democracy in Britain
we have almost no democracy in Britain
we don't take the major financial and
economic decisions ourselves and the
few completely dominate the political
system to the disbenefit of the many
that's true on the British level and
it's true on the European level so
whatever problems exist in Europe will
not only not be solved by Britain
leaving Europe but would be made much
worse if Britain were to leave Europe
here's what we really need let me be
bold and honest with you no point in
pretending that I think otherwise we
need a United States of
Europe just like there's a United States
of America like there should be a United
States of the Arab countries like there
should be a United States of the African
countries like Chavez struggled for in
South America a United States of Latin
America that's the direction of travel
that we should be going on why because
only big powerful populous collections
of Public Power popular power can
possibly challenge the power of
multinational capitalism and the
domination of the globe by the United
States model uh that uh we have suffered
from now that doesn't mean Britain
ceases to be British whatever that means
every one of us here uh I think is
British uh except my M she's not and
refuses to be uh but uh most of us here
are British but we're all different from
each other and moreover we're really not
that much different from the people is
France over there by the way have I got
the the geography right that
way the people over there
not much different at
all we are men and women boys and girls
young and old gay and straight black and
white
workers who have nothing to sell except
our labor if we don't get paid for it or
we're out of work we've got no money
we're all the
same these National
differences are fake and moreover
they're really modern
Germany didn't even
exist until
1870 Italy didn't exist so that means I
was explaining it to one of my kids the
other day my
grandmother knew
people who lived before Germany existed
think about
it before Italy existed States come and
go but they're entirely fake they don't
actually mean anything thing I argued
this so often in the Scottish case Brian
Sutter the homophobic Bible belting
bigot who runs Stage Coach the bus
company a union busting uh uh um Stage
Coach a union busting private
Corporation who gave Millions to the
Scottish nationalist party for their
referendum gave Millions to a campaign
to Wich hunt gay people
so he's Scottish so
what I despise him even if he was born
in the next street to me he has nothing
to do with me it's a fake idea that you
have some identity with somebody because
they were born on the same piece of rock
as you which was in any case a matter
merely of
chance our identity is something deeper
than that and is profoundly affected by
our relationship to wealth and power if
we're a bus driver in France or a bus
driver in England or a bus driver in
Scotland we're probably all working for
Brian Sutter and Stage Coach and the
interests of the bus drivers are far
more in common with each
other than any of them could be with
Brian Sutter because he has the same
color of passport as them so I appeal to
you to think big on this
what we need is not a weaker European
Union but a stronger European Union
democratically accountable you're right
about that we've got a European
Parliament which is filled with
Stooges could anybody name them anybody
name me five three can you name me three
members of the European Parliament I
could not and I'm a
professional I could not nobody ever
hears of them hears from them holds them
to account in any
way and the reason for that is that the
European Parliament has no real power it
cannot control the actions of the
European commission still less the
actions of the European Central Bank or
the big multinational corporations that
dominate the uh European
economy Europe is a great place with a
really heavy cultural and historical
weight it's a huge Market with a huge
population it's of real
importance and it should have the
political weight in the world that its
economic and cultural weight uh would
suggest instead it's a mere rubber stamp
for the United States of America
George Bush Barack
Obama they tell the European Union what
to do classic example is what's
happening over Russia now over the
Ukraine where we are imposing sanctions
on Russia which are damaging our own
economy especially the German the German
economy is being ruined has just moved
into negative
territory because of its sanctions that
it's imposing against Russia which it
doesn't want to impose but which the
United States is forcing them to impose
if we had a powerful Europe we would
tell the United States to sling their
hook and look after their own problems
instead of
interfering here in Europe and forcing
us to take actions which we don't want
to and which are damaging uh to
ourselves anybody down here thank you
okay welcome thank you gentleman over
the glasses we're in the union bar and
quite a few people would be very happy
this became a trade Union Center for for
Hastings so we'd like to know uh what
about the relationships between respect
party and Trade union movement well we
come out of the Trade union movement I
joined the transport and general Workers
Union on Christmas Eve of
1973 when I went to work in Mitchel and
tires uh the weren't many Union Officers
open on Christmas Eve uh but mine was
and I remain a member in good standing I
have been an honorary member of the
national Union of Mine Workers uh since
1982 uh and it's one of my proudest
possessions uh we come from the labor
Movement we believe that the cause of
Labor small L is the hope of the world
we believe what Rosa Luxembourg said
more than a century ago
that Socialism or barbarism is the
choice facing the world and we believe
that that's even more starkly the case
now than it was when she uh said it
having said which unions are not the
same as they were I was giving a talk a
day or two ago in East London and one of
the women in the audience told me later
pardon me told me later that her father
was Bernie steer one of the Pentonville
5 uh
transport uh Union activists from the
docks the London docks that were jailed
by the heath government which caused the
upsurge in Trade union and political uh
upheaval in the country which
contributed massively to the heath
government being overthrown uh in
1974 Bernie is still alive by the way
though he must be in his uh '90s uh by
now in those days there were 12 or 13
million Trade union members the TU had
one of the highest levels of Affiliated
memberships of any of the working
classes of the developed world now it's
half of that and the unions uh with some
rare exceptions are not LED as they were
LED in those days by people who were
ready willing and able to confront the
power of capital and the governments
that capital employed against them uh
but these things will change as they
have changed so they will change uh in
the future I just say this I'm
interviewing uh Arthur scargle on my uh
the program that my wife and I do on RT
on Saturdays called Sputnik I'm
interviewing scargle uh soon
um scargle was right the miners were
right and if the workforce in Britain
had St Stood Beside the miners and
achieved victory over Thatcher's uh
attempted destruction which of course
succeeded of not just the minor Union
but mining communities and more
importantly even than that the
destruction of Trade union power in this
country if when the miners made a stand
if the other unions had made a stand
with them thata would have been defeated
and Britain would have been a very
different place today
what's
withc well it's not my it's none of uh
my business whether you pay the license
fee or not all I can do is tell you that
I don't pay the license fee I refuse to
pay the license fee and and I'm ready to
I'm ready to I have a TV and I watch BBC
and I refuse to pay the license so come
and get
me although they're showing a remarked
reluctance to come and get me uh because
they know that when I get into court
I'll have plenty to say about the
reasons why I refuse to pay my license
fee the BBC is a National Disgrace it is
a state Lackey which does the bidding of
the political class that provide the
very very handsome salaries and other
emoluments that they enjoy and don't
even get me started on the kind of
people that they employ I had lunch
yesterday with Andrew Neil of uh of BBC
Politics on a personal level I I I have
a good relationship with him but I left
him in no doubt as I'm leaving you in no
doubt that I will not pay the license
fee even if they take me to prison uh as
a result because they're lying
distorting ignoring all of the important
things that are people need to know and
it's bad enough when that's done by Sky
News because at least ruper Muk is a
private individual it's up to me whether
I uh pay for his package or
not but it's not up to me whether I pay
for the BBC or not I'm committing a
criminal offense if I don't pay for the
BBC and yet I have no say whatsoever in
what goes on in the BBC I can't even get
on it I'm on question time on the 5th of
February uh so look out for that
fireworks but that's because question
time is not made by the BBC it's only
shown on the BBC it's made by David
dimbleby and he likes me uh but in the
course of this last week for
example as the world or Europe at least
was turned upside down with the events
in France and the backlash against them
you'd have thought wouldn't you that
maybe one single local BBC Radio
would have called me up for a
comment you would have thought maybe
that very late at night or very early in
the morning the BBC TV might have been
interested in what I had to say about
the subject but call came there
none and the reason is there as much of
a state broadcaster as any of the other
state broadcasters that they like to
malign I think everybody who can do so
should watch
RT RT's news is like watching a parallel
universe if you watch the British or
even worse the
American News Fox News try it watch Fox
News for 20 minutes and then cross I
know it's asking too much then cross to
RT for 20 minutes you'll think you've
been visiting two different
planets but I know which planet is more
close to the truth and the reality and
that's RT and I commend
it thank you any U yes gentlemen right
at the very back yes very tall
well well said well said uh I couldn't
put that I couldn't put that better
myself I don't know if this interview
has appeared yet but someone from
BuzzFeed which is a news thing on the
internet uh interviewed me the other day
and they said to me um how come njel
farage is very much more successful than
you I said well it's quite easy to sell
Prejudice bigotry xenophobia chauvinism
racism to the simple-minded or the
undereducated or the
unconscious it's much more difficult to
sell what I'm trying to sell which is a
profound and revolutionary change in the
interest of the mass of the people and
against the domination of Our Lives by
the few that's a much bigger ask but
look at this place tonight and I'm
speaking every day and every night and
my meetings are always like this so
there's a big audience for for and on
social media I've got more or less a
million
followers and if I say something as I
will know uh after this about this
meeting the best part of a million
people will instantly receive it whereas
if I wrote a column in The Independent
Newspaper 40,000 people uh would read it
so we do have some assets and we are
getting somewhere we are on the March
and I think we are going forward one
thing's for sure the others are going uh
backward the reason why they don't say
the things I'm saying is that they're
scared to do so you see what I'm saying
to you I'd be saying if this hole was
almost empty and I'd be saying if if it
was 10 times more fool I don't say one
thing one night and a different thing
another night one thing to one group of
people and a different thing to another
group of people I'm telling the truth as
I see it and I'm advancing the
propositions that I think need to be
taken whether you like or not if I was
the last man
standing for Palestine for example I'd
still be saying it even if nobody agreed
with me and my view is that the public
want that that's actually the reason why
farage is popular because people think
whether you agree with them or not he's
actually saying what he really
believes and they know in their hearts
that
Cameron and Miland and CLE are not
they're not believable they're not
trustworthy nobody would buy a
secondhand car off
them you you really wouldn't would you
some of I
mean Ed mban you wouldn't send them out
to buy a loaf
would you you certainly wouldn't know
what price it was you wouldn't know
which way to hold it which way was up
which way was down these people have
nothing to do with the real lives of
ordinary people and Ordinary People know
it and that's why they're so turned off
by them now in many constituencies
there'll not really be a
choice uh people will have to vote for
one or the other but if I choose the
oldest person in this room I'm not going
to identify them might even be
me the first election general election
after I was
born 98% of the people of Britain voted
either labor or conservative
98% only 2% in
1955 voted for anybody
else now labor and the conservatives
together will be lucky to get 50%
that's how far the mighty have fallen
that's how
incredible the mainstream political
parties now are and I think the liberal
Democrats are going to get completely
wiped out I don't know if the liberal
candidates here as well but if they are
hard luck you've lost your deposit let
me predict let me predict that the
Liberals have lost every deposit in
every election since the last general
election and they're going to lose
dozens scores Maybe of their
parliamentary seats so the center is not
holding if you define that as the center
the three cheeks of the same ARS it's
not holding it's collapsing because
people have seen through it that not
only have they not the solutions they
are the problem rather than the solution
last question I think the big fell at
the back
yeah not at all I I'm calling for
honesty
RT openly and honestly declares that
it's the broadcaster of the Russian
government but the BBC does not the BBC
pretends it's somehow
impartial but you know as a news man
there's nothing called impartial
everyone has a point of view I prefer
the Russian government's point of view
to the British government's point of
view don't you g well the Russian
government's policy on gay rights is not
one that I support I think I made clear
in the course of what I've said this
evening I'm not only a supporter of gay
rights now I was when it was very far
from fashionable to do so that's why one
of my prize awards from Stonewall the
gay rights campaigning organization sits
on my mantle piece you still call it
mantle pieces you call it that down here
sits on my mtle piece but in the round
in the round I prefer Putin to Cameron
don't
you I prefer the Russian government to
the British government the Russian
government's not flying around the world
bombing everyone invading everyone
occupying everyone the Russian
government is not pursuing the same
policies of mass impoverishment of the
working people that the British uh
government is so in the round I prefer
RT uh to the BBC I think they're telling
the truth whilst the BBC are lying
there's nothing contradictory about that
sorry I don't think so no I I I think
the RT if you just give it a chance
watch it for an evening you'll be amazed
at how much you agree with how much
you concur with their view of the world
try it I only I only invite you to do
that
R the truth well you you can you you can
do that if you like indeed I think the
one who suggested doing that uh but the
the well
here's here's
my here's my here's my uh here's my
overarching point that the days when the
Tories and the labor totally dominated
British politics are over the days when
the BBC and ITV totally dominated the
news Market in Britain are over now
all of us can find Our Truth and I agree
it's a subjective matter all of us can
find Our Truth if we go looking for it
we can try RT we can try Fox News we can
follow me on Facebook and Twitter you
can read um the uh leftwing Progressive
Publications from around the world you
can find news as it happens just by
searching for it in other words we're no
longer
dominated by or need to be dominated by
any broadcaster either RT or BBC but I'm
clear and honest with you I prefer to
get most of my news from RT their view
of the world concour with
mine yeah
yeah
no it was being censored by the
advertising authorities and by ofcom uh
which governs uh RT uh but it it's
fearless and employs to answer some of
the critics here it employs quite a
pluralistic group of people it employs
me but it also employs Larry King he's
no leftist but he does ask interesting
questions he is a good
broadcaster and he's been at the top in
international broadcasting for a very
long time and now he works for RT Max
Kaiser is not a leftist he's not a
socialist he just hates corrupt Bankers
capitalism
and he's on three times a
week he's not gay no as far as I know
but what would that
matter oh I see oh I see a biger pardon
a bigger pardon no there's a lot of gays
at RT but Max is not one of them we know
very well in this town from the time of
John
aeration of mostly American companies
and that's why he declared war and they
wouldn't or help with his indeed then
they denied
thatan they they denied that he invented
it but not least because he's a Scotsman
I insist that he did and you as Hastings
people no doubt do the same because he
lived here yes sir
yeah you're Iraqi for society
first of all just thank you very much
for your
St just to ask
question uh the gentleman is from the
Iraqi Community here and asks what's the
realistic possibility of indicting Tony
Blair our film The the killing of Tony
Blair will be out very soon looks like
it's going to be out before the chilot
report
uh which took its last piece of evidence
more than four years ago and still has
not reported one of the biggest scandals
uh in contemporary British history uh
and our film has three goals
one is to achieve the sacking of Tony
Blair as the Middle East peace peace
andoy and I'm confident that we will
achieve that I'm confident that Blair
will not be the Middle East p and of
much longer the second is to make him so
toxic that no self-respecting government
or Corporation would continue to employ
him at multi-million pound fees because
his name will be so darkened and the
third goal of our film is to have Blair
indicted for war crimes for crimes
against humanity for misleading the
British Parliament the queen and most
importantly the British people including
the and
uh if chilcott does
not and I suspect it may not but who
knows what's in the report if chot does
not recommend criminal action uh in the
courts against Tony Blair then I if I'm
in the next House of Commons
uh will be a part of a group cross party
group who will seek to impeach Blair at
the bar of the house that's not a bar
like this one it's a different kind of
bar uh and that impeachment would give
us the power to send him to prison
ourselves what I can promise you is this
as long as God gives me breath Tony
Blair will never have a day's peace from
me never
okay now um it's not all about me we've
got a local candidate of real quality
and caliber he's not a bad musical
performer too I give you the respect
candidate for Hastings and Ry David
lofts