BRITAIN
Britain: Anti-war MP faces suspension
Pat Denny
20 July 2007
On July 17 the British House of Commons’ standards and privileges committee recommended the suspension of George Galloway, the former Labour MP who is now an MP for the left-wing Respect coalition, for 18 days. Galloway was expelled from the Labour Party in 2003 because of his opposition to the Iraq war.
Reuters reported on July 17 that the “committee’s report criticised Galloway’s response to the Commissioner for Standards and the Committee on Standards and Privileges. ‘Mr Galloway’s conduct aimed at concealing the true source of Iraqi funding of the Mariam Appeal,’ it said. ‘His conduct towards Mr David Blair and others involved in this inquiry, his unwillingness to cooperate fully with the commissioner, and his calling into question of the commissioner’s and our own integrity have in our view damaged the reputation of the House.”
The Mariam Appeal was a charity established by Galloway to aid victims of brutal US/UN economic sanctions imposed on Iraq in the wake of the 1990-91 Gulf War. In a statement responding to the committee, Galloway explained: “Once more and yet again I have been cleared of taking a single penny or in any way personally benefiting from the former Iraqi regime through the Oil for Food programme or any other means.
“The Commissioner’s report states that unequivocally no less than six times. The Commissioner further states that it would be a ‘travesty’ to describe me as a ‘paid mouth-piece’ and that my actions on Iraq stemmed from ‘deep conviction’.
“This is therefore an argument about the funding of a political campaign to lift non-military sanctions on Iraq, which killed one million people, and to stop the rush to a war which has cost the lives of hundreds of thousands more.”
