On Marcy 29, Great Britain held a special election to fill a vacant seat in the House of Commons in Bradford, a city in Yorkshire. In a surprise, the Respect Party won the seat with over 50% of the vote. The ballot had 8 parties listed. The special election was needed because the Labour incumbent had resigned for reasons of health.
The Respect Party had only once before won a seat in Parliament, in 2005, but it had not won any seats in the general election of 2010. The party was founded in 2004 and the name is an acronym for these terms: Respect, Equality, Socialism, Peace, Environmentalism, Community, and Trade Unionism. The main impetus for its founding was opposition to British involvement in the 2003 Iraq war. See this story.
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It’s worth mentioning that George Galloway was the winning Respect Party candidate in both the 2005 and the 2012 election. He had not run for reelection in the 2010 general election, preferring to stand aside and let another candidate take the lead in the Bethnal Green and Bow constituency.
Galloway is quite well known and controversial in the UK. His personal history and that of the Respect Party are fascinating.
Galloway’s success indicates some significant problems for the Labour Party and opportunities for Greens, Leftists and others.
Galloway was a Labour MP in the past wasn’t he?
pete- http://www.parliament.uk/business/news/2012/march/george-galloway-new-mp-for-bradford-west/
Richard
Thank You.
George Galloway also has a history with the Minnesota US Senate. In his castigation of Minnesota US Senator and his lies. I am trying to get a hold of him.
Michael Cavlan RN
Candidate US Senate 2012
Minnesota Open Progressives
Will he be sitting in the back bench the longest distance from the Speaker ??? – aka the bleachers in baseball terms.
George Galloway is something of a…’character’ in British politics. Not terribly unlike say, Jesse Ventura. He was very much opposed to the Second Iraq War (even did some public debates/arguments about it) and as British support for the war fell, he and his party gained popularity.
Their was some grumbling initially, about whether or not the RESPECT Party would be a supporter of certain bills (i.e. pro-gay rights), when it was working to win the support of British Muslims. The party did put gay rights in its platform.
I think that one or two of the Socialist parties that were initially part of some sort of RESPECT coalition went their separate ways (not sure if it was over politics or personalities).
Is it a party or a coalition? I kinda thought it was part of some sort of socialist-left electoral coalition or something like that.
Sing it, Aretha!
ETJB – Respect started out as a coalition of various groups. However, it subsequently became a unitary party (not least because the largest of those groups quit in a nasty bust-up).
This Bradford seat has a large Asian Muslim population but Galloway also polled very well in non-Muslim areas. Galloway ran a very old-fashioned campaign of public meetings and street-corner speeches which struck a chord with locals opposed to Government cuts and the local Labour Party’s perceived control by cliques (epitomized by their candidate).
It should also be noted that the turn-out of over 50% was very large for a special election in an inner-city area.
Thanks to Casual Bystander for the link to the election results. Galloway was a Labour MP from Glasgow for many years before he was expelled from the Labour Party in 2003 partly over his opposition to British participation in the U.S. war against Iraq.