Clive Conway Celebrity Productions – George Galloway MP – Politician

Name: George Galloway MP
Field: Politician
Productions:
An Audience With George Galloway MP

Biography:

George Galloway is the Respect Member of Parliament for the London constituency of Bethnal Green and Bow. He was first elected to Parliament for the City of Glasgow in Scotland in 1987.  He has been elected five times to the House of Commons and is now one of the more senior members.  For fourteen of the last fifteen years he has been the elected Senior Vice Chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party’s Foreign Affairs Committee.  The exception was the year 1991 during the Gulf War when he was narrowly defeated.

George Galloway was born in the Scottish city Dundee. He left school at sixteen to become a factory worker with Michelin Tyres, where he joined the Transport and General Workers Union and remains a member to this day.

He was the youngest ever elected chairman of the Labour party in Scotland at the age of twenty–six, having become a full-time party organiser three years earlier.

In 1983, he moved to London as the General Secretary of War on Want, the international development agency, leaving the post upon his election to parliament in 1987.

He first became involved in the Palestinian cause in the early 1970’s, regularly visiting Lebanon and becoming an activist in support of the PLO.

In 1980, he arranged the twinning of his city, Dundee with the Palestinian town Nablus. Thus, Dundee’s city hall became the first public building in any western country to fly the Palestinian flag.

Also, in 1980 he formed the British Trades Union Friends of Palestine and became its first General Secretary.

In 1982, he founded the Emergency Committee against the invasion of Lebanon.

In 1990, he was one of the leading opponents of the war in the Gulf although he had never visited Iraq [the only Arab country he had never visited] and would not have been welcomed there as he was a known opponent of the Iraqi government, not least over the Iran -Iraq War.

In 1991 he formed the Emergency Committee on Iraq and remains its chairman.  The Committee renamed itself the Emergency Committee on Iraq and Palestine [ECIP] in the year 2000.

In 1990, he was awarded Pakistan’s highest civil award, the Hilal-i-Quaid-i- Azam, for services to the restoration of Democracy in Pakistan.

In 1996, he was awarded Pakistan’s second highest civil award, the Hilal-i-Pakistan, for services to the cause of the Kashmiri people.

In 1998, he founded the Mariam Appeal named after the Iraqi child Mariam Hamza, who was brought to Britain amidst great controversy for cancer treatment. The Appeal campaigned around the issue of cancers caused by allied use of Depleted Uranium weapons in the Gulf.

In the year 2000, he founded and is the chairman of the Great Britain – Iraq Society.

He is a former Secretary of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Iran.

He is also a founder member of the Cairo Conference bringing together Islamist, Nationalist and Socialist trends from around the world to work against globalization, occupation and war.

He is a founder of the Stop the War Coalition UK and is currently its Vice-President. The Stop The War Coalition mobilized two million people to protest against the war on Iraq (the largest demonstration of people in British history).

In 2003, George Galloway was expelled by Tony Blair from the Labour Party for his opposition to the illegal war on Iraq.

In 2004 George Galloway founded RESPECT–The Unity Coalition, the anti-war party. Within weeks RESPECT had won the elections of June 10th in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets.

George currently has a show on “Talk Sport” every Saturday and Sunday.

George Galloway is the author of “Downfall: The Ceausescus and the Romanian Revolution” 1990, “I’m Not the Only One” 2004. And he is the author of a forthcoming biography of Fidel Castro.

He is a frequent broadcaster, author, and public speaker.  He was awarded “Parliamentary Debater” of the year in 2003, by the Parliamentary Press Corps.