Why I back Red Ken
George Galloway - January 2008

There's a witch-hunt going on against London Mayor Ken Livingstone - and it has nothing to do with bendy buses, those ugliest of broomsticks he's introduced, his bizarre backing of Met commissioner Sir Ian Blair, or the privatisation of the East London line.

It used to be said that being attacked in the New Statesman was like being slandered in an empty room. Nowadays, their political editor, Martin Bright, can count on everyone from the pro-war Observer, through the Murdoch empire to the Rothermere stable, to spread his poison against Livingstone.

Thus in the recent Dispatches assault on the re-election of the mayor, widely previewed in the Sunday Times and the Evening Standard, Channel 4 gave over a full hour of prime-time TV to the political assassination of Livingstone. For those of us of a certain age it was a reprise of the 1980s campaign of vilification that led to the abolition of the Livingstone-led GLC. Except this time it was "Arab women's groups" rather than "lesbian wrestlers" whose funding was singled out for ridicule. And Livingstone's support for Muslims, rather than the Irish, which earned him the lash.

But there was another important difference. Whereas with the GLC, the witch-hunt was mounted by self-avowed Thatcherites, this time the attack is being mounted from "within"; by the cell of self-styled critics of "Islamofascism" increasingly led by Bright and the Observer/Evening Standard pro-Iraq occupation columnist Nick Cohen.

A succession of Whittaker Chambers' - former leftists turned renegade - were produced by Bright, and suitably shadowy they were too. Chambers, you'll recall, was the former communist turned apostate who "revealed" that celebrated senior US state department official Alger Hiss was a red under the White House bed. In this affair former black radical Marc Wadsworth, "revealed" that in the early-1990s many of Livingstone's top staffers were on the far left (like several of Tony Blair's cabinet). And gay rights hyper-activist Peter Tatchell plunged the knife into the mayor - the country's longest-serving gay-friendly politician - because of Livingstone's support for Muslims.

Some may be surprised at the authorship of this article. After all Livingstone was last seen in my constituency with a phalanx of police officers, wading through the jeers on Brick Lane accompanied by one Oona King. His vain attempt to defeat me in the Bethnal Green and Bow seat in 2005 - despite the fact that King was a cheerleader for the war he had so recently opposed - was not his finest hour. But I'm not the type to harbour grudges.

Not that all is well at City hall; there is an urgent need for change. Just not the change from Livingstone to Boris Johnson. There are problems of accountability in the Livingstone mayoralty. It seems clear that he treats the Greater London Assembly with contempt. But that is surely not helped by the fact that most of the members of the GLA are contemptible. Ask yourself to name a single member of the GLA now in the eighth year of its anonymous existence. Or anything that they have ever done.

What London needs is an assembly worthy of one of the world's greatest capitals. And one strong enough that the mayor would ignore it only at his peril. That's why I'm currently involved in trying to put together a progressive list for the May elections to renew London's democracy. I will be a candidate somewhere on that list myself! If I'm elected you can be sure Livingstone won't be able to ignore me!

Take the 2012 London Olympics for example. The Olympic logo has five rings. There needs to be a sixth, representing London's people and their interests. As things stand, billions of pounds will be blown - £125m of it blasted away on a temporary shooting range in the grounds of the Royal Arsenal that will be dismantled 15 days later. Other Olympic developments risk being white elephants, a standing reproach for decades after the games are gone, like in Montreal.

With New Labour sinking in a morass of party funding scandals, the Northern Wreck fiasco, throwing discs of personal data around the country's wastelands, persisting in the bizarre special relationship with George W Bush and a looming recession, there is now the clear and present danger of Tory buffoon Boris Johnson beating Livingstone in the forthcoming ballot. This would be a disaster for London and the left.

City Hall would then be in the hands of, not former leftists, but unreconstructed Thatcherites. Out would go supporters of Hugo Chávez, in would come apologists for Augusto Pinochet and Livingstone's approach of anti-racism and ethnic and religious harmony, replaced by a man who talks of "piccanninies" with their "watermelon smiles". Livingstone, the opponent of the Iraq war, replaced by Johnson, its firm supporter.

In these new and developing circumstances, it would be self-indulgence, a luxury the left can no longer afford, to stand a candidate of the left against Livingstone for mayor. The danger of his defeat by the right is too great. With opinion polls varying between neck-and-neck and a substantial Tory lead, a left candidate opposing Livingstone really could aid the Tories and risk handing the keys to City Hall to the rancid reactionaries around Johnson.

Any stick will do for the right to beat up Livingstone. Within the same vile Dispatches programme he was portrayed as both a closet communist and an Islamist fundamentalist; while being both soft on sharia law while slugging back tumblers of whisky at the taxpayers' expense. Traduced for supporting Cuba and Venezuela and funding black and ethnic minority organisations by the same white liberals who would once have been advocating exactly the same thing. The left should rally round Ken Livingstone in these new circumstances - but elect a progressive list to a beefed-up London assembly with real powers, to make sure that he doesn't step out of line!