The detention of George and Gayatri Galloway on 27th September is an outrage against civil liberties and basic democratic rights, and a very sinister attack on one of the best-known left-wing politicians in Britain, and his family. It is an attack on the democratic rights of all working-class people and the labour and anti-imperialist movement generally by the pro-NATO, anti-Russian militarist and Zionist government of Starmer. IUAFS condemn this act utterly and declare our full solidarity with George and Gayatri against this sinister attack.
After arriving in Gatwick Airport on a flight from Abu Dhabi on 27th September after celebrating their wedding anniversary in Moscow, George and Gayatri were picked up by armed “anti-terrorist” police. They were told “you are not under arrest, but you are not free to leave. You do not have the right to remain silent. If you do not comply and cooperate, and answer any and all of my questions, you will be automatically committing an offence under the Act”. That is, schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000.
This permits detentions and searches at ports, borders and airports, without any consideration of ‘reasonable suspicion’ that the victim has any involvement in any form of terrorism, and denies those questioned the right to silence – indeed this draconian law says that any attempt by a victim to exercise the right to silence as under ordinary criminal law, puts them at risk of conviction for a criminal offence itself. It also gives the cops the right to demand passwords and other access keys to social media and other private electronic repositories, and the right to confiscate and examine electronic equipment such as phones, laptops etc. Accordingly, laptops and phones belonging to the Galloways were confiscated by the cops and when they were finally released, after four hours of questioning for George, and five hours for Gayatri, they were stranded with no means to contact anyone else to inform them of their whereabouts.
They were also lied to by the cops, as George was told that his wife was at liberty and in the process of contacting solicitors etc, when she was also detained and subjected to a longer interrogation than her husband. At a 29th September press conference that the Galloways held in Belfast with their specialist civil liberties lawyer, Kevin Winters, they announced that they were challenging their detention legally under articles 5, 8, 10 and 11 of the European Convention of Human Rights and demanding the return of their electronics.
George Galloway is one of the best known and most elected politicians in the UK. He is also the leader of the Workers Party of Britain, a legal political party. His weekly YouTube show has 5 million views – a bigger audience than much of the bourgeois press. Galloway and his party are hated by much of the ruling class in Britain. They are fiercely on the right side in two major conflicts between imperialism and its victims in shooting wars – siding with the Palestinians against Zionist genocide and siding with the Donbass people against a Western backed NATO proxy war in East Ukraine where outright Nazis are the weapon to eliminate the Russian/Russophone population there. It is obvious that there were no grounds whatsoever for the state to remotely suspect him or his wife of any involvement in terrorism or anything like it. Galloway and the Workers Party have questionable views on migration, climate change and other questions regarding the rights of some minorities such as gays and trans, but we have no hesitation in denouncing this act of political persecution against them.
This detention, like those of several journalists and activist such as Craig Murray, Sarah Wilkinson and Richard Medhurst, had nothing to do with ‘terrorism’ in any shape of form. These all are about intimidation and harassment of political dissidents from the West’s involvement in genocidal wars in Palestine and the Donbass. In many cases, including those of the Galloways, they were about finding a pretext to seize electronics to find others to persecute. The case of Farhad Ansari illustrates this perfectly, as it was clear that the purpose of his recent Section 7 detention was to seize legally privileged material that is covered by client confidentiality rules. He is the eminent civil liberties lawyer who is bringing a case under the appeal provision in Schedule 3 of the same Terrorism Act 2000, to overturn the proscription of the Palestinian political party Hamas by the British government. This proscription was done in pursuit of genocide, as the effect of this mischaracterisation is that obviously civilian functions in Gaza: civil administration, medical people, and anyone else involved in ordinary civil society activities in Gaza can be defined as ‘terrorist’ and murdered with impunity by Israel. The Starmer government is up to its neck in funding and arming Israel for these purposes.
The proscription of Palestine Action is the ultimate expression of this persecution of dissent against Starmer’s support for such genocidal campaigns. That is up for judicial review in November, and the government is desperately trying to stop that case being heard. Then there is the case of the 2024 raid on the home of Electronic Intifada journalist Asa Winstanley, where the cops were found by a judge to have acted unlawfully.
The detention of George and Gayatri Galloway is yet another escalation of attacks on democratic rights ordered by this government. Hands off the Galloways! Down with genocidal fake ‘anti-terrorism’ laws that are really aimed at persecution of opponents of Western terrorism and genocide!
