Further to George Galloway’s vile comments, the police are to investigate.
Calls by George Galloway for Bradford to be “declared an Israel-free zone” are being investigated by West Yorkshire Police.
Officers said two complaints had been made about a speech he made urging the city to reject all Israeli goods, services, academics and even tourists.
No, no, no! I despise utterly Galloway and I deplore his comments, for they were indeed, execrable in the extreme. But they should not be illegal. This latest development sums up precisely what is so wrong with this country – one where the police are wasting their time investigating what people say, rather than getting on with the job of solving crimes.
A free society is one that allows vile speech. Condemns it, yes, but does not criminalise the speaker, for that way a police state lies. So, while I vehemently disagree with George Galloway’s anti-Israel rant; much as it pains me, I have no option but to defend to the death his right to say it. And if we lived in a free society, he would have the right to say it.
Because that is what freedom of speech means – unpleasant people are free to say unpleasant things.
The real argument is do you uphold the law or change it. I’m all in favour of free speech and would change it but the fact remains that it is illegal and if the police weren’t investigating then someone would be asking why not given the guy’s profile.
What I really don’t understand is how this guy maintains such a high profile. He’s a joke as far as I can see – but a dangerous self-publicising joke. Why does anyone give a monkeys what he thinks? It beats me…
The Scottish Sunday Mail were paying him £60K a year for a Sunday column…. George has had a raft of publishing interests mostly funded by the usual suspects (£millions£).a contract with Iranian Government TV etc… and so on.
Don’t hold your breath for Yorkshire plod to do anything – they were handed prima facie evidence of some of George’s Islamist chums trotting around UK mosques giving “kill whitey” speeches and recruiting dopey disaffected locals for jihadist camp training (better ways to kill whitey) – and did nothing – in 1997 by Channel 4’s Dispatches team…
George is sly and deploys considerable cunning when speaking in the UK and toes the line between criminal actions and free speech very, very carefully. If I were to go after George – I think his utterances to “the faithful” when “on tour” would provide a treasure trove of stuff that crosses the boundary between polemic and actually entreating his audience to violence against other folk – at those rallies though it might be unhealthy to be caught with a tape reorder…..
I want the law changed, for it is incompatible with a liberal society. When the law is wrong, civil disobedience is perfectly reasonable as a response. The rule of law only applies when the law is just. This one isn’t.
It’s not that the police investigated that is the issue here, it is that there are illiberal arseholes out there that call them in the first place instead of growing a thicker skin and accepting that in a free society even vile creatures such as Galloway get to say vile things because his freedom of speech is our freedom of speech.
I think there is more, a lot more – to Mr. Galloway. He is a manipulator who always seems to come away from these exercises with a bulging wallet. That he flits from one camp to the camp of first camp’s sworn enemies and gets them to pony up for his services shows some considerable talent in dissembling
I’m not sure what he actually believes and history suggests that his adversaries repeatedly underestimate him – indeed he lives a rather charmed existence….
What he says and where he says it are carefully choreographed. Not that he’s foolish enough to do it (no way) – , if he were to make a speech to a gee’d up crowd of Amjen Chowdurey’s acolytes telling them to go to Golders Green and cut the throat of every person that resembled “a jew” – that’d be free speech?
Galloway is a calculating tin pot demagogue – and a careful one – he knows he only got the Conrad Black libel win on a technicality. Whatever George says in public inside UK jurisdiction – it has been fully “legalled” …
There is a lesson in there for the major parties – that somebody like Galloway can essentially come from zero to win a parliamentary seat – because he addresses the actual concerns of the voters – instead of spouting PR puff, PC speak shallow sloganeering…..
It’s illegal because it’s clearly a threat to drive one race out of an area, which is an abuse of their right to live a family life. It’s not hard really.
Clearly it is hard, because you haven’t grasped it. Freedom of speech means that ugly ideas are exposed so that they can be challenged, not suppressed and forced underground. It isn’t hard really.
LR – you’re right – using our own fucked up laws to prosecute people whom we dislike hurts us more than them.
I would be more than comfortable with Gallotwat parading around in an SS officer’s uniform if he chooses (although given that piece of shit’s ancestry, he would have been unfit to clean latrines) if he wants. In retuen, I may wear my ‘I think Galloway’s mother sucks Arab Deity’s knob’ in complete peace.
It goes beyond controlling writing, or saying what you think. It is controlling what you may think in the first place.
Every Derek and Clive fan remembers the moment when he heard the My Mum song, and thought – ‘Jesus – did they just say that?’ All it takes is for some MP with a mouth like a cat’s arse to make it all go away.
“…using our own fucked up laws to prosecute people whom we dislike hurts us more than them.”
Maybe so, but it’s still rather pleasurable to see ’em hoist on their own petards. And until the law changes so I can say what I want, they should be equally subject to it.
We need to be consistent, because we are better than they are. The short term schadenfreude is overshadowed by the long term harm these laws cause. So, we need to stand by our principles and defend the right of our mortal enemies to speak as they please.
A political opinion is what he uttered. He doesn’t like Israelis. There’s no law says he has to. If he isn’t allowed to articulate his thoughts then there is no freedom of speech; listening to occasional bollocks is less objectionable than having to watch what you say.
One can’t help suspecting that the endorsements the gent has given to the Iranian regime and Hamas would not have been returned so enthusiastically if Georgie – boy had confined himself to mere political opinion…… Until George makes that uncharacteristic mis-step he ‘ll continue to nip in and make a nuisance of hiself.