Papers: Weekly Worker: Gloves come off

Unless and until this claim is proven, the responsibility of the left is clear. Galloway deserves the benefit of the doubt. Even in bourgeois law the principle is nominally accepted that a man is innocent until proven guilty, and in the case of a labour movement leader being attacked by one of the most reactionary journals of capitalism, this stance is doubly important.

The photographs selected to accompany the story are particularly telling. Half the cover is taken up with Galloway narrowing his eyes, his collar up, smoking a cigar, and looking for all the world like the Arthur Daley of the left. On page three, four times the size of a family snapshot, the child Mariam Hazma is shown wide-eyed and vulnerable. Who could use a poor child like that for political or financial ends? Who, except of course the Telegraph. On page four, Galloway sits with Hussein, sharing a joke. The endless succession of arms traders and US, UK and French diplomats and politicians who courted him for political and economic gain, up to and including Donald Rumsfeld, do not appear in this album. Finally, and most bizarrely, Galloway's young and beautiful Palestinian wife, lying on a sofa and smiling into the camera, is shown in bright colour on page five.

Are any of these images relevant to a story of corruption, or the examination of Galloway's politics on the war? Of course not. But the accompanying text gently paints the man as, somehow, rather seedy. Various sobriquets are mentioned: "the member for Baghdad Central" and the wildly improbable "gorgeous George" - this latter being a reference to his "dapper dressing". His divorce is mentioned, and the fact that the woman he separated from had a daughter with him. We learn he had extra-marital sex. No reference need be made to the youth and beauty of his new wife: the picture says it all. Her nationality, though, is mentioned: she is a Palestinian, and so another Arab in his life. He apparently has a house in London and a holiday home in Portugal.

Allegations of misconduct while general secretary of War on Want are revived - though, as the paper concedes, an independent auditor later found no evidence of wrongdoing. So why mention them? Because, all in all, it is clear that George Galloway is a cad: slippery, self-regarding, suave and sartorially obsessed, a user of women, and a political and financial wheeler-dealer. This hatchet job is designed to make the possibility that he is also a traitor and a thief that much more likely.

But it is not about George, gorgeous or otherwise. The purpose of the coverage is quite clear: it is an attack on the entire anti-war movement, which dares to continue to highlight the crime of occupying Iraq in the teeth of every effort to rally the population around the flag. The gloves are now off. The soft tones of patronising 'understanding' to which the millions of demonstrators of February 15 were treated have hardened, as the number of protestors has fallen and the ruling class has recovered its confidence. We are no longer 'misguided': we are 'treacherous' - and now perhaps we were funded by Saddam all along.

The editorial accompanying the stories is quite clear on this last point: "For months, anti-war campaigners have been imputing the basest of motives to their adversaries. The whole campaign, they argued, was really about money and oil. Yet what if it turns out that they, rather than their opponents, had hidden pecuniary motives? What if it was actually the supporters of the campaign who were acting on behalf of Iraqi civilians, while anti-war activists - or at least their leaders - were acting for profit?"

This appalling libel is so poorly argued that it does not withstand the slightest scrutiny. Firstly, even if Galloway is guilty of taking bribes, an allegation for which The Daily Telegraph has established no independent confirmation, it does not invalidate his arguments against the war. This is pure ad hominem, which any first-year logic or philosophy student learns means 'to the man', and describes an attempt to undermine an argument not by debate, but by abusing the man presenting it. The Telegraph will, I am sure, know of this fallacy.

But, more importantly, no case has been made that any other leader of the anti-war movement was involved in this alleged crime: not even by the Telegraph itself. The sly plural in the editorial's reference to the possible complicity of the "leaders" is pure abuse, and the idea that such motives infect the entire movement goes beyond this and into virulent and contemptible fantasy.

If ever there were a warning that any attempt to avoid offending the bourgeois press or 'moderate' opinion was a waste of time on the part of the Stop the War Coalition, this is it. US and UK imperialism are once again at war with the world, and the stakes are very high. While The Daily Telegraph has used falsity and innuendo to malign the anti-war movement, in a sense it is adopting a more honest - or at least more naked - position, and communists, anti-capitalists and anti-war protestors can expect to see much more of the same.

Our only defence is the truth. Restricting ourselves to a soft, pacifist or pro-UN line will not buy off such opposition, but it will blunt our message. The rape of Iraq was carried out for profit and power, and the rich and powerful whose interests it served are ready to do it again to another innocent people. A clear anti-imperialist fight must be fought if our movement is not merely to survive, but to achieve any of the aims for which it exists.

Manny Neira