George Galloway

Workers Party of Britain

George Galloway is leader of the Workers Party of Britain (WPB) and a longstanding leftwing politician. His parliamentary career spans several decades, parties and parliamentary constituencies.

Galloway last served as the Workers’ Party of Britain MP for Rochdale from February to May 2024. Previously he served as a Labour MP from 1987 to 2005 and a Respect Party MP from 2005 to 2010 and 2012 to 2015.

Galloway was expelled from the Labour Party in 2003 following comments opposing the Iraq War.

Galloway founded the Workers Party of Britain in 2019 and remains its leader. He contested the Rochdale seat for the Workers Party in the 2024 general election but was defeated by the Labour and Co-operative candidate, Paul Waugh, who won with a majority of 1,440 votes. Galloway received 11,587 votes (29%).

George Galloway: from Labour to Respect (1987-2016)

Galloway’s long political career began when he was first elected as the Labour MP for Glasgow Hillhead in 1987, holding the seat until 2005. He was expelled from the Labour Party in October 2003 over his outspoken opposition to the Iraq War and comments made about the actions of the UK government.

After war was declared, Galloway urged British troops not to obey “illegal orders” and asked: “Why don’t Arabs do something for the Iraqis? Where are the Arab armies? We wonder when the Arab leaders wake up? When are they going to stand by the Iraqi people?”

Upon his suspension, Galloway became a leading figure in the newly formed Respect Party. In a Guardian article, published 30 October 2003, Galloway said he wanted to “unify the red, green, anti-war, Muslim and other social constituencies radicalised by the war, in a referendum on Tony Blair”.

In April 2004, following the establishment of the party, Galloway said: “Respect. It’s a young word. It’s a black word. It’s the first postmodern name for an electoral political movement; most are one or other arrangement of the words ‘the’, ‘something’, and ‘party’. With Respect, we’re different.”

At the 2005 general election, Galloway won the Bethnal Green and Bow seat, securing an 823-vote majority over Labour incumbent Oona King.

In his victory speech, Galloway told the Bethnal Green and Bow count: “Mr Blair, this defeat is for Iraq and the other defeats that New Labour has received this evening are for Iraq.

“All the people you have killed and all the loss of life have come back to haunt you and the best thing that the Labour Party can do is sack you tomorrow morning.”

The 2005 election was the first time that a party to the left of Labour had won a seat in the House of Commons since 1951.

In 2007, Respect suffered a formal schism. Members of the Socialist Workers Party claimed that there was a “witch hunt” against socialists in the party. Galloway and senior party figure Salma Yaqoob led the rival faction, referring to themselves as Respect Renewal.

Respect was defeated in Bethnal Green and Bow at the 2010 election. Galloway stood in Poplar and Limehouse, finishing third on 8,160 votes (17.5%).

On 29 March 2012, Galloway and Respect won a spectacular by-election victory in Bradford West, overturning a large Labour majority. Galloway secured 18,341 votes (56%); the Labour candidate, Imran Hussein, finished second with 8,201 votes (25%). Labour’s vote share fell by 20 points.

In his victory speech, Galloway hailed the result as “the most sensational victory in British by-election history” and the “Bradford Spring”.

Galloway was unseated in Bradford West at the 2015 general election. The Labour candidate, Naz Shah, won 19,977 votes (49.6%). Galloway placed second with 8,557 votes (21.2%).

Galloway stood as the Respect candidate in the 2016 London mayoral election, finishing seventh with 37,007 votes (1.4%).

Plagued by intra-party fighting and splits, Respect was formally deregistered on 18 August 2016.

George Galloway: Workers Party (2016- )

Galloway founded the Workers Party of Britain in December 2019 in response to the Labour Party’s 2019 general election defeat and the subsequent resignation of Jeremy Corbyn as leader. Its formation was supported by the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist), and a vice-chair of that party, Joti Brar, was elected as a WPB deputy leader at its founding congress.

Ahead of the 2021 Scottish Parliament elections, Galloway set up the new All for Unity (A4U) Party. According to its website at the time, the party was seeking “to form a government of ‘national unity’ in favour of the Union”.

However, in the 2021 Scottish Parliament elections, Galloway’s ‘All for Unity’ did not find favour with voters, polling poorly across Scotland. Galloway himself, standing as a lead candidate on the South Scotland regional list, received 5,521 votes, an insufficient total.

The A4U party was subsequently wound down as Galloway focused on the WPB.

The WPB’s first notable electoral contest was the 2021 Batley and Spen by-election, where Galloway came in third place with 8,264 votes (21.9%) of the vote. Kim Leadbeater, the Labour candidate, placed first with 13,296 votes (35.3%).

On 29 February 2024, Galloway secured a dramatic return to parliament, winning the Rochdale by-election by a landslide. The WPB victory came after the Labour Party’s campaign imploded. The contest was triggered by the death of the sitting Labour MP, Sir Tony Lloyd, who had won the Rochdale constituency with a 9,668-vote majority at the 2019 general election.

The campaign descended into chaos after audio recordings emerged of the Labour candidate, Azhar Ali, suggesting that Israel had deliberately “allowed” the 7 October massacre to go ahead. After initially defending him, the Labour leadership was ultimately forced to withdraw all support. This decision came after the Daily Mail newspaper published a fuller recording, allegedly of Ali, which blamed “people in the media from certain Jewish quarters” for the suspension of left-wing MP Andy McDonald from the Labour Party.

McDonald, a former frontbencher, was suspended after declaring at a pro-Palestinian rally: “We will not rest until we have justice. Until all people, Israelis and Palestinians, between the river and the sea, can live in peaceful liberty.”

However, as the deadline to replace Ali had passed, he remained on the ballot as the official Labour candidate.

This unprecedented situation allowed Galloway, a long-standing and vocal pro-Palestinian advocate, to dominate the campaign. He directly targeted Rochdale’s large Muslim population, framing the vote as a referendum on Keir Starmer’s leadership and Labour’s stance on Gaza. As Galloway had done in successful campaigns in the past, he focused on a “differential turnout” strategy – ensuring that Asian voters made up a disproportionate number of those who voted at the by-election.

Galloway won with 12,335 votes, representing 39.7% of the vote share and a majority of 5,697. In his victory speech, he directly addressed the Labour leader, declaring: “Keir Starmer, this is for Gaza.”

Galloway added: “You [Starmer] will pay a high price for the role that you have played in enabling, encouraging and covering for the catastrophe presently going on in occupied Gaza, in the Gaza Strip.”

Rochdale became the fourth parliamentary constituency Galloway had represented in a long and storied political career.

The result was a profound embarrassment for the Labour Party, exposing fissures within its traditional electoral coalition over foreign policy.

Galloway went on to lose his seat to Labour’s Paul Waugh at the 2024 general election. Waugh, a former lobby journalist, had featured on the initial shortlist of potential Labour candidates drawn up by the party ahead of the Rochdale by-election.

Waugh ultimately won 13,027 votes (32.8%). Galloway placed second with 11,587 votes (29.2%).

Galloway, after all, was only the MP for Rochdale for 92 days.

Political Views

Galloway describes himself as a socialist. In the early 1980s, he was associated with the Bennite left wing of the Labour Party.

Galloway made his name with his strong opposition to the 2003 Iraq War. He voted for the 2003 rebel amendment which argued that the case for war against Iraq had not been established. A total of 139 Labour, 53 Liberal Democrat and 15 Conservative MPs backed the amendment. The government’s unamended motion authorising military action against Iraq passed by 412 votes to 149.

Galloway later described George Bush and Tony Blair as acting like wolves, comments which contributed to his 2003 expulsion from the Labour Party.

In 2005, Galloway since claimed that Tony Blair and George Bush had “far more blood on their hands” than the terrorists who carried out the 2005 London tube bombings.

Galloway voted against the government’s motion on the principle of military intervention in Syria in August 2013. The government motion was defeated by 285 votes to 272, a move which effectively ruled out UK participation in any US-led military strikes.

In September 2014, Galloway spoke on BBC News to Jacqui Smith, a former New Labour cabinet minister, and declared: “You killed a million people in Iraq […] it’s incredible that you have the brass.

Galloway has been a long-standing supporter of the Palestinian cause and critic of Israeli policy and Zionism. He has attributed this support to a visit he made to Beirut in 1977, during the Lebanese civil war.

Reflecting on the trip, he said: “Although it was a difficult decision for me to make the journey back to Scotland, barely a week after my return, I made a pledge in the Tavern Bar in Dundee’s Hawkhill District, to devote the rest of my life to the Palestinian and Arab cause, whatever the consequences for my own political future.”

During a 1994 meeting with Saddam Hussein, Galloway was widely quoted as telling the Iraqi leader, “Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability”. Galloway maintains that these words were taken out of context and intended for the Iraqi people.

Galloway supported leaving the European Union in the 2016 referendum and later endorsed the Brexit Party in the 2019 European Parliament election.

Galloway is an opponent of Scottish independence. In 2021, he pledged to “tackle the scourge of separatism” in Scotland. In June 2025, however, he appeared to renege on his belief about the independence referendum, saying on X that “we support the right of the Scots to self-determination”.

In February 2013, Galloway voted in favour of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill at its second reading. The landmark piece of legislation, which received its second reading by 400 votes to 175, legalised marriage for same-sex couples in England and Wales.

Before politics

Galloway was born in 1954 in Dundee. He would later say of his upbringing “I was born in an attic… in a slum tenement… in the Irish quarter of Dundee which is known as Tipperary”.

At 13, Galloway joined the Dundee Labour Party and he was still in his teens when he was made its secretary. By 22, Galloway was Dundee’s youngest Councillor (1977 to 1983), and by 26 he had become chairman of the Scottish Labour Party (1981 to 1982).

By the 1980s, Galloway was well-known as a charismatic campaigner and radical.

In 1981, Labour deputy leader Denis Healey tried to have Galloway removed from Labour’s candidates list for writing for a pro-communist magazine. It was also in 1981 that Galloway became general secretary of the major global charity War on Want, a post he held until 1987, though his tenure ended amid some controversy regarding expenses and management style.

George Galloway: broadcasting and media

While still MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, Galloway took part in series four of Celebrity Big Brother in 2006, doing so under the illusion that he could spread his message. The show cut his political remarks and instead he is primarily remembered for an incident where he pretended to be a cat licking imaginary milk from the hands of actress Rula Lenska.

For several years, Galloway presented Sputnik: Orbiting the world with George Galloway for RT (formerly Russia Today), a news channel owned by the Russian state. The channel was taken off air in the UK and EU following sanctions after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

A Galloway-fronted talk show, renamed The Mother of All Talk Shows (MOATS), continues to be broadcast independently online.

In 2010, Galloway interviewed Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for Iranian state TV.

In 2022, Galloway initiated legal proceedings against Twitter (now X) in Dublin after the platform labelled his account as “Russian state-affiliated media”.