George Galloway

George Galloway had originally been a far-left British M.P. who was expelled from the Labor Party over incendiary comments made at time of the 2003 Iraq War. He subsequently formed the Respect Coalition which prior to a 2007 split included the Socialist Workers Party and members of the Muslim Association of Britain and Muslim Council of Britain, essentially the Muslim Brotherhood in Britain. The Respect coalition was the sponsor of the February 2003 anti-Iraq war demonstration in London, reported by police to have been the largest demonstration ever held in the U.K. A previous post discussed the 2007 falling out between Galloway and the Socialist Workers Party and the speculation that the difficulties stemmed from Galloway’s desire to focus more on developing a Muslim constituency. At that time, Galloway launched a new movement called Respect Renewal which helped to elect Mr Galloway as a Respect MP. As discussed in a post from May 2007, Mr. Galloway lost his seat in the House of Commons, the only seat held by the Respect Party. However, he was re-elected in 2012 and UK. Daily Telegraph writer Andrew Gilligan had posted an article which analyzed Galloway’s victory at that time and his appeals to Islam during the campaign. Galloway was defeated and lost his seat again in 2014.