Iraq looms over UK election battle
LONDON, England -- Iraq is featuring as a major issue in the UK election battle with several candidates from a new anti-war party standing against prominent MPs in Prime Minister Tony Blair's ruling Labour party.
On Monday former Labour MP George Galloway launched the left-wing Respect party's manifesto, which calls for the withdrawal of coalition troops from Iraq, renationalization of public services and higher taxes on big business and the wealthy.
Evoking the spirit of John Lennon, Galloway said: "You may say we are dreamers. But we are not the only ones who are dreaming of a better country and a better world."
Respect is putting up 25 candidates on May 5 but its best hope of getting a seat is Galloway himself, who is standing against Labour's Oona King in the east London seat of Bethnal Green and Bow.
Galloway is particularly hoping to capitalize on anti-government feeling among Muslims in Britain.
King, along with most other Labour MPs, voted to send British troops to the U.S.-led Iraq war two years ago. The leadership of the opposition Conservative Party backed the war at the time while the Liberal Democrats opposed it.
Galloway, a veteran lawmaker, was expelled from Labour in October 2003 after calling the government "donkeys" and urging British soldiers not to fight in Iraq.
"Of course the war is only one issue," said Galloway, a robust, deeply tanned Scot who is pictured on his election leaflets in boxing gloves. "And Everest is only one mountain."
He is also famed for telling former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein during a 1994 visit to Iraq: "Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability."
Galloway, 50, later said he had been referring to the Iraqi people, not their leader. Last year he won £750,000 ($1.4 million) from a newspaper that alleged he had received payments from Saddam's regime.
The East End constituency of Bethnal Green and Bow is one of the poorest areas in Britain, and one of the most diverse.
A heartland of traditional Cockney culture, the area also has been home over the centuries to waves of immigrants -- French, Irish, Jewish, Bangladeshi. About half of voters are now Muslims, most with backgrounds in Bangladesh.
King, 37, the London-raised daughter of a Jewish British mother and an African-American father, won more than 50 percent of the vote in the 2001 election, beating her nearest rival by 10,000 votes.
But that was before the war, which was opposed by a majority of Britons -- and by most of the country's Muslim community.
That is why Galloway, who represented a Glasgow seat in the House of Commons from 1987 until Parliament was dissolved for the election, chose the area, and why he says he has a real chance of victory.
"People are extremely bitter about Labour," Galloway told The Associated Press. "The number of people who've been disillusioned, abandoned, betrayed by Labour is legion."
Meanwhile Monday, a senior Labour activist in Blair's Sedgefield constituency in northern England resigned to campaign for an independent candidate in protest against the Iraq war. Derek Cattell, a leading Sedgefield Labour member for more than a decade, will now support anti-war candidate Reg Keys, whose son was killed in Iraq.
Copyright 2005 CNN. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Associated Press contributed to this report.
