 We're here with Chris Williamson at the Leisure Center in Rochdale, which has become tonight the election center. They're still counting the votes behind us, but it seems pretty clear now that George Gallo has won. He'll be going back to Westminster for the seventh time. An historic victory, we believe, and it's not just a win for George Gallo, we think he's won by a large margin, which is an incredible vindication, I think, of the campaign that we've won. A huge endorsement for George and a real indication, I think, that people are sick to death of the political status quo. You know, our democracy has been stolen from us because democracy and politics should be about giving people a choice. But the truth is that both the Labour Party and the Conservative Party, the two mainstream parties, are offering effectively the same proposition when it comes to the economy. They're both signed up to disastrous neoliberal economics, and they're both in the pockets of the war machine. People have been utterly horrified and disgusted by the appalling scenes that they've seen on their television screens and on their smartphones, where we are seeing, for the first time, actually, a genocide taking place before our very eyes, in real time. You know, genocides have happened in the past. You know, United States was built on a genocide, Australia was built on a genocide, and the horrors being visited on the Palestinian people today, of course, were visited on the Native Americans and on the Aboriginal people in Australia. The difference now, of course, is that we're witnessing it. And what people find it impossible to countenance is the fact that our politicians can't find it within themselves to support an unconditional ceasefire. But look, an unconditional ceasefire is the minimum that we require. What we need is not just a ceasefire, we need to be implementing an arms embargo against visceral, because we're facilitating this genocide by continuing to supply arms to them. We should be implementing a trade blockade. We should be kicking Israel out of all international sporting and international civilized activities. They're going to participate in the Eurovision Song Contest. I mean, Israel isn't even in Europe, and it's going to participate in the Eurovision Song Contest, because if nothing is happening, absolutely despicable. And so people are revolted by that. And what's significant, I think, is that, you know, for the first time in recent violations, people have been given a genuine progressive alternative, and they've voted for it, it seems, in huge numbers. And that will, I think, give huge encouragement to other insurgent candidates and independent movements. And, of course, the Workers' Party itself, you know, to feel more candidates. So we're talking about us feeling potentially, you know, 50 candidates. That was our, but we may do more. But what we also want to do is collaborate with and work with other, you know, insurgent campaigns across the country to offer people a real alternative coming to the general election, which is bound to take place, I think, probably later this year. But the latest it can be is in January next year. But are I predicting that the election will take place in November 2024? And you're the deputy leader of the party. A new party started by George Galloway. This is the first member that you're going to be seating in the parliament. Are you going to run yourself? Well, I've been approached to stand in my home city of Derby. I was the MP in Derby North. I've been approached by a big section of the community in Derby South to put my hat in the ring there. I mean, Derby South actually is a seat where I was a councillor for 20 years, and it's a part of the city where I lived in the earlier part of my life, with my parents when I was a youngster growing up. So I have a real affinity with that part of the city. I've not made a definite decision as to whether I will stand or not, but certainly what we will ensure is, whether it be me or someone else, we will definitely be building a candidate there because we have to punish the Labour Party. Because the Labour Party has lost touch with its base, it's lost touch with its progressive roots. There used to be a large contingent in the Labour Party, a pro-peace contingent in the Labour Party, you know? There was a large cohort that supported an alternative economic strategy, a socialist proposition for the country. I mean, you know, Tony Bennett used to talk about, you know, the Labour Party's not the socialist party, but it's the party that's got socialist within it. Well, the socialist's been kicked out. They've either been kicked out, suspended, or resigned. There are maybe some left, but they're just keeping their heads down. There is no point of being in the political party. You know, if you're not prepared to speak up for what you believe in, what's the point of being there? It's not a social club, it's not a football team. You know, it's a vehicle to try and deliver, or it should be anyway, to deliver change, and Labour Party's not offering any change. It's unusual that consortium moves as a Washington-based publication. We're here in a by-election in the north of England, outside Manchester, because of such importance of this election on so many grounds. Gaza, of course, being the fact that it's an international election in a small, relatively small town. However, what is the message that's being sent tonight to Labour, as you said, before, rather than just the Tories? Should they be worried tonight about this election victory by George Gall? Well, yes, I think they should be worried, because, as I've said, there will be a lot of candidate standing against Labour Party. Look, I've spoken to a lot of people in different constituencies. In constituencies, actually, which are currently held by the Conservative Party, which the Labour Party would probably expect to win, certainly the seats that were won by Labour under the Blair era, and they recognise it would be probably a bridge too far to expect that an insurgent campaign could win. But what they're saying is, we're not actually wanting to field candidates to necessarily win. We want to punish the Labour Party. We want to make sure that the Labour Party lose, and they're prepared to even, you know, tolerate a Tory victory, because, frankly, I think the Labour Party's a lost cause. But if there is any prospect of the Labour Party being redeemed, then they need to pay an electoral price for their support for the genocide in Gaza, for their support for neoliberal economics, which has destroyed the lives of millions of people in this country and our industrial base has been wrecked. Jobs have been offshore to low wage economies. Our public services are in meltdown. We have the most parsimonious social security system anywhere, virtually anywhere in Europe, in what is the sixth biggest economy in the world. We've got, you know, 14, 15 million people living in poverty. Precarious employment is now endemic throughout the land. They're constantly increasing the retirement age. The pensions are nowhere near adequate enough, so you have to be lucky enough to have an occupational pension, but the change in the rules to limit the amount of pension that people can get from their occupational pensions are totally disgraceful. We're a wealthy country, we're a powerful economy, and what we should be doing is making sure that the economy works for the many, not the few. A strut line needs to be used by Jeremy Corbyn, but it's absolutely right, and that's what the Workers' Party stands for. We stand for building an economy that works for the many, not the few, that stands for, you know, an international policy that promotes peace and disarmament rather than war and arms sales, which is what we're doing at the moment. I've just come from West Yorkshire, from Keeflea and Veldon, and towns in the former textile industry devastated. Every Uber driver I had was his uncle, his father, his brother, and even many of them who were officer in nature, worked in these mills. So there's a lot of people out there that are going to listen to this message and George's election victory tonight. Will it give hope to people like that? Yes, I think it will absolutely give hope, because it will demonstrate that the political duopoly can not just be challenged, but can actually be defeated and a message of hope on the international and the domestic front actually can win sufficient support to actually, you know, get people elected. And, you know, we're probably not going to bring back the textile mills, but there are other, you know, industrial opportunities, economic opportunities that could be brought in, as I've said. You know, there should be a massive investment, for example, in our public services, which are in the dire states at the moment. We should be investing massively in our infrastructure. You know, in terms of the green agenda, people are concerned about the increasing, the severe weather patterns that we are experiencing. But one of the things that we could be doing, for example, rather than building bigger and bigger walls downstream, is at least so high you can build these flood defences, why don't we have a policy of re-foresting the uplands? That would generate, you know, thousands of jobs environmentally, you know, beneficial. But in terms of, you know, capturing CO2 and things like that, for those people that are concerned about that, I know there are some skeptics about it, but of course the other thing you do, it would eliminate the flood problem downstream, because that would mean that we would be able to hold the water for longer on the uplands and so on. Things like that, you know, a big house-building program would tackle a huge social need, you know, eradicate homelessness, but also create good quality jobs, you know, unless investing, you know, in our high-tech industries as well. I mean, that's where, you know, we can excel. And these are the sorts of things that, you know, that we should be investing in and giving people hope. Look, John Maynard Keynes, that great economist in 1930 made a speech where he said that his grandchildren, i.e. my generation, and I'm 67 now, would only be working 15 hours a week because of the advance of new technology would enable the working weeks to be reduced by that amount. Indeed, when I was actually growing up in the 1960s and 70s, we're being told to get ready for the lesser generation. Local apologies were being told to the leisure centres, golf courses, tennis courts and things like that to give people, you know, things to do. It never happened, though, when the new technologies come, but the benefits of that have been accreted by a tiny monarchy thanks to neoliberal economics, which was actually heralded into this country, not by Monk Thatcher, but by a Labour government, by Dennis Healy and Jim Callaghan, when God was the step-dive, step-dive. Well, indeed, you know, so, you know, people often credit, if that's the hot word of putting it, I'm way of putting it, but they blame, you know, Monk Thatcher for, you know, the neoliberal era, the monetarist era. But the truth is, it was actually started by the Labour government in 1977. I'm going to get her off the hook. No, no, no, no, she took... They took the ball around with that one. She turbocharged it, that's absolutely true. But look, the Labour Party manifesto in 1974 promised an universal shift in the balance of wealth and power for working people and their families. Now, what we are calling for as a workers' party is a return to that commitment, to bring about the irreversible. It reminds me when Jacques Delors came here and made a speech to the TUC over the previous conference that there would be a social Europe, that the European Union, which was only being discussed back then, would be basically social. That was a confidence trick, I think, and that was a big mistake to, you know, get behind the European Union. The European Union has always been a capitalist club, a neoliberal club. The best thing, probably the only good thing, really, if I'm honest about it, might be a bit uncorrect to Gordon Brown, but the best thing you ever did was to keep Britain out of the eurozone. Having your own currency, gives you enormous flexibility to a progressive government to bring about a good society, because we're never running out of money. Money is literally no object for a government to issue its own currency. The only impediment, the only barrier if you like, everything you need to be mindful of, is ensuring that you don't exceed the ability of the economy to absorb that spend, because then you create an inflationary pressure. But if you match it to real resources available to the economy, then, you know, you can basically, you know, the sky's the limit. And, you know, where you are potentially, we're nowhere near that at the moment, we are potentially, as a result of public spending, potentially creating, you know, a situation of inflationary pressure, you know, overheating in the economy. Well, then you can use the taxes, and that's what taxes are, not to raise money. Taxes don't actually fund that public services. The government just creates the money. But tax can be used where you would be potentially competing with the private sector for those scarce resources. You can actually tax out the ability of the private sector to actually purchase those resources to give space for the public sector to invest in those public priorities. So, you know, we should be investing in public transport, we should be investing in public services, as I've said, in improving our infrastructure, building the homes that people need, creating, you know, the good society, and giving people the ability, you know, to grow as a human being, to grow as a community and as a society. But, you know, neoliberalism and the fact that our era has actually attempted to smash that sense of social solidarity that was so apparent in the post-war consensus. We need to recapture that. It seems like it should be, for a while now, a spent force, whether in the Labour Party or the Conservative Party, this neoliberal economic policy. It's been a failure, except for the wealthy. But they continue to fool enough voters to bring them back. So I don't want to over, I don't want to exaggerate the significance of Galway's victory tonight, but you mentioned before that in the Labour Party there was a peaceful. This is an extreme parallel with the United States. The Democratic Party also had a peace. They didn't have a socialist wing, but they'd had the New Deal wing. And that's been decimated as well because of neoliberalism. Joe Biden running again, and there was just a poll a few days ago that 77% of Democrats, Democratic voters, want to cease fire in Gaza. And this guy and I mean the golden rule for any politician is you'll do anything to be re-elected or to get elected. And yet he seems to be following Israel down to his own demise. And I don't know how to explain that. I don't know if anyone can explain that. But is this, these two spent forces, the Democrats and the Republicans and Labour and Conservative are we looking at something new tonight? That's my hope and that's my expectation. It's small beginnings and let's not get ahead of ourselves, but certainly I think is a huge beneficial step in the right direction. But regrettably on both sides of the Atlantic the political class are running scared of the Israel lobby. The Israel lobby is very very powerful in this country. They weaponized anti-Semitism. They used that to destroy Jeremy Corbyn. You know we see a similar thing in the United States of America. But we need the confidence to stand up to these characters you know what I mean? And I mean a look in the way in which Israel has been conducting itself very, you know, overtly over the last five months. But look, this isn't a new phenomenon. I mean they've been oppressing the Palestinian people for 76 years now, you know, since the 19th century and indeed before that Israel was a country that was built on terrorism and they've implemented a ruthless apartheid system now for 75, 76 years. They've been in breach of international law in relation to the occupied territories now for what is it, 56 years and they have imposed this blockade against the Gaza Strip for 17 years. But unfortunately, you know, for a large period of that time we didn't know the reality. And indeed across the western world we're in the dark about that because the mainstream corporate media drew a veil over that. We didn't know the reality, we didn't know the truth. But now, thanks to platforms like yours and thanks to, you know, scissors and journalists on the ground, you know, posting things on social media, increasingly people are seeing the reality and they're absolutely understandably horrified by that and you know, the more that people learn how to change. And you know, what we need is as well as I've already mentioned, you know, isolation of the Israeli regime. We need a process of desinization just after, as happened after the Second World War where there was a process of denazification to rid Germany of the toxicity of that Nazi ideology. We need to have a similar process of desinization in Israel and indeed across the western world, you know, we need to be closing down organizations. We need to be demanding that the Jewish groups that are associated with these Zionist outfits actually, you know, recant and, you know, you know, come away from that. Because, you know, people will not, you know, look kindly on any groups, you know, which continue to make excuses for genocide, utterly appalling. I mean, this today, was it? We saw starving Palestinians clamoring for food mowed down. What in God's, I mean, how can anybody in God's name actually, you know, make excuses for that? And every day that this happened, and every day there's something like that, it's chipping away amongst the population, not the political leaders who are somehow still bought by this Israel lobby. But every day, more and more people, eyes are opening. And this is a consequence of my view of having impunity for these many decades. After a while, you've lost your mind and lost touch with reality and you continue to commit a tragic death because they're getting away with it, still, and they're portraying themselves as the victims, which is extraordinary. And they have this maximalist strategy where, you know, they won't take yes or an answer, you know, they get a bit and then they want more and more, they want more. And, you know, they've shot themselves, as it were in the photo, if I can, you know, use an unfortunate phrase. But, you know, I don't think that, you know, I believe Israel's days are numbered now. I mean, I just think that the world opinion is so strong in spite of the, you know, huge influence that they have. I think that there's going to be a reckoning for Israel. And, you know, this overt genocide that they've engaged in is going to lead to, you know, a sea change. Let me ask you one more question. You mentioned Jeremy Corbyn before. What's his relationship with the workers party? Excuse me. Well, Jeremy's not a member of the workers party. I mean, obviously, I work very closely with Jeremy. When I was a Labour MP he knows George Galloway of old and has worked very closely with George. And indeed, when George was being expelled from the Labour Party and he went to his kangaroo court hearing before the Labour Party National Executive Committee accompanied actually by Tony Venn and Michael Foote, Jeremy Corbyn, as I understand it, was outside demonstrating his support for George Galloway. I believe that Jeremy was one of the founder members of Labour against the witch hunt all those years ago. This day in age, anybody who had the temerity to support somebody who was suspended or expelled would be themselves thrown out of the party. I mean, it must be dozens of people who have expressed support for me or simply said nice words about me. It's just me. They've been expelled from the Labour Party for that. It's quite astonishing. We've never seen such an authoritarian streak inside the Labour Party. And that's why the Labour Party is riding high in the opinion polls. And chances are notwithstanding our efforts to fight this insurgent campaign across the country. The likelihood is that they will potentially win the election. But not because people are necessarily in love with the Labour Party and support their program because I've really got a program which is different to the Tories, it's just that people are so sick of the Tories party and the Tories party has become so toxic that they see protection in Labour as a lesser and less of two evils is still evil. And our mission really is to alert people to that fact that Labour is going to offer no alternative in reality. They'll tinker at the edges but there'll be no meaningful change. We will obviously work overtime now to try and encourage people to have the confidence, and that's why this victory tonight will be very helpful and beneficial in that regard, to have the confidence that insurgent campaigns, alternative insurgent campaigns and offering a genuine alternative can't succeed. We will work with other groupings we're not saying that everybody has to support the Workers' Party and we will work to have an electoral pact with other progressive independent campaigns and political parties that share our values to ensure that we maximise the impact. How many members of parliament are in that progressive focus? If any really. I find that to my shock when I was a member of the Parliamentary Labour Party and found that what should have been that progressive focus, the socialist campaign group were anything but. The thing that they were most concerned about was their career in the end. None of them were prepared to speak out against the witch hunt and none of them were prepared to speak up for people who had been unfairly introduced. I'm talking about not just ordinary activists which I was doing, speaking up for but also some of the high profile people like Ken Livingston, former mayor of London greater London council. Ken Livingston has done more than anybody in public office to advance the cause of anti-racism in the early 1980s and earned the super-care as a loony lefty partly because of his stance on fighting racism and now he's been labelled as sort of a bigot seen as a pariah in the absolutely outrageous. Ken Livingston should be a federated, older statesman of the Labour movement but that's the level of it the Socialist campaign prepared to speak up on that nor were they prepared as I was trying to persuade them I was the most taxid member of the campaign group to persuade them to push Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonald because he was quite conservative actually as economic prospectors to push them from the left to create space for the leg leadership to go further because I was saying all the pressure is coming from the right we need to give them space to go further because the economic agenda could be considerably more progressive we were talking at that time about for example Jeremy was saying his ambition, one of his ambitions was to eradicate street homelessness by the end of a parliament which is a laudable aim of course but I was saying look we should be going further than that at that point in time I said what we should be saying is we will eradicate poverty in the lifetime of the parliament with political will of course we could do that very easily do that but we need to get them in western Europe we should be massively increasing the social security budget we should be investing in new jobs reducing the working week giving people genuine hope reducing the pension age as well we are going in the opposite direction we are limiting the reducing social security benefits we are limiting the amount of support that people can get when they retire and we are expecting people to work for longer I mean my children at least until the 68 I saw something the other day whether it is increasing the pension age just 71 is an absolute money disgrace that is not where we should be going we should be saying that people if they want to should be able to retire at least at 60 I support the back to 60 campaign I mean there is a lot of women in this country who were they used to be able to retire at 60 and they were promised that they would still be able to retire when it was Labour that increased the pension age equalised other grounds of equality rather than reducing the pension down because it raised everybody women couldn't retire until they were 65 and now it is the same it has gone up still further but a lot of the women who were born in the 1950s were promised that they would be protected they were still bad but they would not suffer the consequences of this change in the pension policy but then when the Tory and Liberal Democrat government came into office they were in age on that commitment so there has been a big campaign about that and justice for all those women that were given that promise but there was another campaign saying they wanted to bring back the back to 60 campaign for all women but I said we should be going further back just before women it should be for men as well if they want to retire people will want to carry on working that's fine but there are certain occupations I used to work in the building trade when you get to a certain age I am absolutely tied out and I feel tied up doing an eight or nine hour shift as a manual worker as bricklayer as I used to be it's quite difficult some people can do it but they should not be given the option occupations like teaching quite a stressful occupation some may have the acumen to be able to continue beyond 60 and so on but they shouldn't be forced to do that and I was involved in a campaign and one of the reasons Ed Miliband sacked me from the front bench in 2013 the firefighters industrial dispute with the government at the time we wanted to increase the pension age for firefighters again they had been given a commitment the Labour Party had increased it but they said it would only apply to new starters in the fire and rescue service because up until then firefighters could retire at 55 and if they got enough years they could retire at 50 but they wanted to increase it to 260 but that was absurd so many firefighters haven't got the physical capability the lung capacity and so on you want people that are fit if your house is burning down or you're caught in a flood you want people that are fit they're just going to be able to rescue you and so they fought this campaign they've been successful actually subsequently in the law course because it turned out that it ended up being discriminatory because through scientific research it was demonstrated that women with lung capacity or quickly that the men do as a consequently women firefighters would be forced out and basically what they were saying was well if you don't meet the physical criteria you're out on your ear with no sort of compensation for that I mean a totally ruthless approach and because I was supporting them and going on the news and actually supporting their industrial dispute I was sacked from the public that was an indication really that far the Labour Party was drifting away from its roots because the Labour Party was found about the trade and we should be supporting workers in struggle that was what was refreshing when Jeremy became the leader because that's what the Labour Party started to do but unfortunately we've gone further back in fact we're at the Labour Party it's in a far worse position than it was before Jeremy ever got elected they should be forced to forfeit that name thank you Chris Williams and good luck to you