REPORTER: Bronwyn Adcock
It has been three years since the invasion of Iraq and in London, hundreds of thousands of anti-war protesters have taken to the streets. The man of the moment is anti-war MP George Galloway.
MAN ON THE STREET: Well done, George! Keep going, George! Well done, George! You are my favourite.
Galloway has become a hero to the anti-war movement around the world. His relentless attacks on what he calls "Tony Blair's lie machine" have earned him a generation of worshippers.
MAN ON THE STREET: This man should be a PM, and kick the liars out! Kick the liars out! You should be the King, Your Royal Highness. You should be the King!
Galloway also has many enemies. A Senate Committee in Washington has accused him of receiving money for oil from the regime of Saddam Hussein.
MR COLEMAN, SENATE: Mr Galloway, I'm pleased to have you before the Committee today. Senior Iraqi officials have confirmed that you in fact received oil allocations and that the documents that identify you as an allocation recipient are valid.
GEORGE GALLOWAY: Senator, I am not now, nor have I ever been, an oil trader. I have never seen a barrel of oil, owned one, bought one, sold one and neither has anyone on my behalf.
I have always had very powerful enemies but now I have the most powerful enemies of all. I have the United States Republican neo-con leadership after me, I have Tony Blair after me. If John Howard had ever heard of me he'd be after me too. The Iraqi puppet regime are after me, the State of Israel has long regarded me as an enemy. I have very powerful enemies with many resources.
SPEAKER: Now, our next speaker has had a controversial year, even by his own standards, but we need to be clear ourselves, as a united movement, why he has had a controversial year and why he is attacked. He is attacked because this movement is strong, he is attacked because this movement has been right. That is why I'm proud to call him a comrade and proud to ask you, once again, to welcome George Galloway.
GEORGE GALLOWAY: Comrades and friends, salaam aleikum. Peace be with you.
Millions of dollars have been poured into investigations, inquiries, and, in some cases, forged documents to try and bring down Galloway. So, who is this man who's inspired such attacks, and are any of the allegations against him true?
Away from the international stage George Galloway is a local MP in London's East End, in the predominantly working class and migrant constituency of Bethnal Green and Bow.
GEORGE GALLOWAY: This was once, really, a hub of the local community. There's nothing else.
REPORTER: So how long has Safeway been closed?
GEORGE GALLOWAY: Three months, something like that.
REPORTER: So where are the locals shopping now?
GEORGE GALLOWAY: Well, with real difficulty, especially the older people.
He's the only parliamentary representative of a newly formed left-wing party called Respect, and today he's on the campaign trail for local council elections.
GEORGE GALLOWAY: If we can get a foothold here, I promise you things will never be the same again.
His main focus of attack is the Labour Party, Prime Minister Tony Blair, and Treasurer and aspiring leader Gordon Brown.
GEORGE GALLOWAY: The public realm in which we live is shabby and broken and tattered and filled with holes and gaps through which human beings fall through. We had - because Brown said it - all the money in the world to pay for the war. He said, "Whatever it takes I'll write the cheque." He was, at that time, trying to show how much like Mr Blair he was. It may be that, in the next few months, he'll spend a lot of time trying to show us how different from Mr Blair he really is.
For me, if you'll forgive me putting it bluntly, they are just two cheeks of the same arse. Gordon Brown wrote the cheque and he was very clear about it - "Whatever it takes I'll write the cheque." So we have money to go around the world setting fire to other people's countries, but we don't have money to keep our old age pensioners warm in winter.
Until 2003, Galloway was a Labour Member of Parliament. His vocal opposition to the war, including encouraging British soldiers to "disobey illegal orders", saw him expelled from the Labour Party after 36 years membership.
SEAMUS MILNE, OPINION EDITOR, THE GUARDIAN: I think it clearly came from Tony Blair personally. Blair signalled it immediately after the fall of Baghdad that he would be moving against Galloway, and they were just not prepared to have that level of attack from one of their own backbenchers, in a war they knew was unpopular with the majority of the British people. It was an unprecedented thing in Labour Party history for someone to be expelled solely for an expression of opinion, which is effectively what it was.
Galloway took his revenge, winning a seat from the Labour Party in the general election.
GEORGE GALLOWAY: Mr Blair, this is for Iraq.
I said on the day that I was expelled that Mr Blair would rue the day that he expelled me, and he's already rued it. We are the only credible challenge from the left to Labour that has existed in this country for 60 years. Indeed I am the only Member of Parliament to be elected to the left of Labour in 60 years.
To really understand George Galloway, though, you need to understand his 30-year love affair with the Middle East. I've travelled with him to Cairo, where he's come to address a conference. Last time he flew to Egypt he was arrested and locked up for 24 hours, possibly because of critical comments he made about the regime here. In a change of heart he's now been welcomed back.
GEORGE GALLOWAY: By the grace of God, quite a few people like me in Egypt. I'm frequently on Arab satellite television. Most people in Egypt like what I say so I am quite well-known around this country, and I think that the regime decided that it was not wise to alienate so many people by behaving in such a way to me.
Galloway describes himself as a friend of the Arab world. Beginning in 1975 when, as a young man, he travelled from Scotland to the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon.
GEORGE GALLOWAY: I really fell head over heels with the revolution that was there - the Palestinian camps, the plurality of Palestinian politics - every building had a different party in it, every party had a magazine and a newspaper and there was music in the cafes at night and revolution in the air, as Bob Dylan put it in another context, and I liked revolution.
Not afraid of backing an unpopular cause even then, Galloway soon had the Palestinian flag flying over the City Chambers in back Dundee.
GEORGE GALLOWAY: It was in the mid-'70s, after the Munich Olympic Games operation and aircraft hijackings and so on. It was, in a way, in public relations terms, it was the equivalent of saying you were with Bin Laden today. This is my favourite city, I would say.
REPORTER: Favourite city anywhere?
GEORGE GALLOWAY: Yeah. It's the beating heart of the Arab world.
Today Galloway is on his way to attend the Cairo Conference, billed as an international campaign against US and Zionist occupation.
GEORGE GALLOWAY: You can tell by the troop levels that we're getting closer to the conference. It's a good job creation scheme, dictatorship.
REPORTER: Why's that?
GEORGE GALLOWAY: It keeps hundreds of thousands of police and soldiers at work. This is us here.
MAN: Welcome to Egypt.
30 years spent working for the Arab cause has made Galloway a well-known and much loved figure here, a modern-day Lawrence of Arabia.
MAN: We consider you that you are Arabic, more than all Not all. the Arabian rulers. All the rulers, yes.
GEORGE GALLOWAY: This is definitely true.
With many here believing that the West is against them, Galloway is seen as an inspiration.
STUDENT: We are students from Al-Azhar and Cairo Universities, what do you say to Muslim Brotherhood students, and other students.
GEORGE GALLOWAY, (Translation): Struggle until victory.
SPEAKER, (Translation): He is an MP who represents the conscience of humanity, an MP who loves the Arab people and who is loved by them in return. He was the first to take a stand against George Bush and his follower Blair. MP George Galloway.
Before a crowd that includes high-profile members of Hamas and other Islamist groups, Galloway delivers a message that would make George Bush and Tony Blair flinch.
GEORGE GALLOWAY: We now know, and the whole world now knows, America is defeated in Iraq - it is defeated in Iraq. The Americans do not control one street in one town or one city in a country they invaded and conquered three years ago. When their soldiers leave their base, they drive as quickly as they can back to the base. They know that this can be their last journey on Earth, and so I say, from the bottom of my heart, we salute the resisting people of Iraq, which has inflicted this defeat upon the superpower, the United States of America, in Fallujah, in Ramadi, in Sumaria, in Najaf, in Kabullah, in Basra. All over Iraq, the Iraqi people have risen and spoken and fought and defeated this superpower which invaded them.
REPORTER: Should I take that to mean that you support Iraqi insurgents who launch attacks and kill American, British and potentially Australian soldiers?
GEORGE GALLOWAY: Well, first of all I should say that it does not imply that I support every action taken in the name of the Iraqi resistance, especially as we now know that some of the actions undertaken in their name ostensibly were actually undertaken by other people entirely with a different agenda, completely, so whilst I support the legal - internationally enshrined legal right of any occupied people to resist their violent occupiers, that does not mean that every operation conducted by the Iraqi resistance is one that I would support.
REPORTER: What about an operation, for example, where Iraqi insurgents blow up a US Humvee?
GEORGE GALLOWAY: Well, there's no question that that's an entirely legitimate act of resistance that's enshrined in the Geneva Convention and in international law. The violent occupiers have invaded the country, illegally, on the basis of on a pack of lies and the Iraqi people are resisting them, and the kind of operation you mentioned, whilst a tragedy for the soldiers inside the Humvee, is an entirely legitimate act of resistance.
Galloway first became heavily involved in Iraq in the 1990s, campaigning against the sanctions imposed by the United Nations after the Gulf War. Like many, he believed sanctions were crippling the country and denying health services to sick children.
GEORGE GALLOWAY: Why not send a message to this child behind me by sending an army of cancer experts, laden with suitcases of cancer drugs, to come and help the Iraqi health service, these heroes who are working in these conditions.
After meeting 4-year-old Mariam, who was sick with leukaemia, he set up the Mariam Appeal, raising money to pay for her treatment and for his campaign.
He met Saddam Hussein twice and deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz numerous times, but these contacts with the leadership of a brutal regime saw him widely condemned as an apologist and the friend of a dictator.
GEORGE GALLOWAY: From more than 15 years ago, in parliament, on the record, I made clear my detestation of the Iraqi dictatorship. I just don't believe in murdering people's children because you don't like their dictator.
Galloway's critics, who said he was too close to the regime, would soon appear to have their suspicions confirmed.
When coalition forces took over Baghdad at the start of the war, government buildings and their contents were laid open. On April 22, 2003, Britain's 'Daily Telegraph' claimed its reporter had come across incriminating documents inside a building. They purportedly showed Galloway received money from the Iraqi regime by getting allocations through the Oil-for-Food program.
Just a few days later, the US 'Christian Science Monitor' came up with a separate set of documents with similar claims. But these later documents proved to be forgeries.
HASSAN MNEIMNEH, RESEARCH AND DOCUMENTATION PROJECT: Iraq Research and Documentation Project In the case of the documents that were shown to me by the 'Christian Science Monitor' there were some blatant aspects to them that made it rather easy for me to say that, in all likelihood, for any degree of certainty, they are forgeries.
The advice of expert Hassan Mneimneh, plus that of others, saw the 'Christian Science Monitor' retract their story, and pay a financial settlement to Galloway. He says that in 2003 Baghdad was awash with forged documents.
HASSAN MNEIMNEH: What was clearly the case, it was as a result - it's a supply-and-demand issue, as a result of a demand on the part of the media, in particular, but also on the part of government agencies. You had entrepreneurs, I guess, we can call them, who basically tried to use whatever material is available, whatever knowledge that they had in order to create forgeries and sell them, and actually there was quite a market for documents in that period.
But who was behind the Galloway forgeries? George Galloway alleges it was payback by the same people behind the invasion that he opposed, namely, the pro-war Iraqi exiles in league with the United States and the United Kingdom.
GEORGE GALLOWAY: Well, the speed with which it was done, the fact that it was clearly done by Iraqis - not only was it written in Iraqi dialect of Arabic but they had all the headed notepaper - I mean, it was a very serious forgery. They had the headed notepaper of all sorts of different Iraqi ministries, the headed notepaper of Saddam Hussein's sons, all the wherewithal to construct an elaborate conspiracy all within a few days of Baghdad falling. So there was a very limited number of people who could have done it, and they certainly had the motive to do it, the animus to drive them to do it.
Hassan Mneimneh also examined the documents used by the 'Daily Telegraph' and found they were consistent with authentic documents, but says for absolute certainty more testing would need to be done. He says documents can't be taken at face value.
HASSAN MNEIMNEH: There is always a need to corroborate whatever evidence that the documents provide with evidence external to the documents in order to get the full story clearly.
In court, George Galloway won his defamation case against the 'Daily Telegraph.' The judge said of the newspaper: "It was no part of the defendant's case to suggest that any of these allegations were true, or even that there were reasonable grounds to suspect they were true."
GEORGE GALLOWAY: I never solicited support from anything in Iraq - any institution or any person. I've testified to that under oath, in front of the US Senate, in the High Court action in London against 'Daily Telegraph', I am saying it to you again now - it's completely false, completely untrue, there is no evidence to support it and people should really stop saying it, if you don't mind me saying so.
While Galloway says he's never taken any money from Saddam Hussein, he's certainly taken plenty from media outlets who've made that allegation. This uneasy relationship has him trying to control the media wherever he can. He's just been given a talkback radio show on a commercial station more used to right-wing shock jocks.
GEORGE GALLOWAY: This is George Galloway on the mother of all talk shows, on Talksport radio - 1089 and 1053 AM. I'm going to be talking about the helluva week that Tony Blair's had and asking the question, is it time the Prime Minister stepped down? Is it time for the removal vans in Downing Street? Michael, welcome to Talksport. What's your point of view? Hi, there.
Every weekend now, Galloway broadcasts his views to around 5 million people.
GEORGE GALLOWAY: Here, it's unvarnished, unfiltered, unedited, live, I chose the subjects, I chose the callers, and I say what I want and everyone can hear it without having to pass through this filter of distortions.
Some of Galloway's choices of media outlets, though, are unusual, to say the least. When he appeared on 'Celebrity Big Brother' recently, he was ridiculed across the country. But Galloway is unrepentant.
GEORGE GALLOWAY: Well, the audiences at my meetings have doubled, my book sales have tripled, my media appearances have quadrupled, I now have a twice weekly national radio program speaking to millions of people every Saturday and Sunday night - all as result of 'Big Brother'
And, as a sting in the tail, Galloway donated his fee to a Palestinian charity. But while 'Big Brother' possibly caused a bigger stir at home, the most serious attacks on Galloway have come from Washington. Last year a Republican-dominated Senate Committee produced a report alleging that the Iraqi regime granted oil allocations to Galloway.
Galloway, who'd not been interviewed or contacted for the report, voluntarily came to Washington for a showdown with the Senators.
GEORGE GALLOWAY: Now, I know that standards have slipped over the last few years in Washington, but for a lawyer you are remarkably cavalier with any idea of justice.
Like the newspaper reports, the US Senate relied on documents from the former regime, in particular ones from the Oil Ministry, that apparently showed Galloway's name on oil allocation lists. Copies of these documents are not available in the reports for scrutiny.
GEORGE GALLOWAY: We've just been talking about a whole sea of documents with my name on them. We've just been talking about a whole sea of documents with my name on them, even what purported to be my signature on them - a receipt, "Received £1 million, thanks very much, signed George Galloway."
The fact that someone's name is on a document means nothing more than that their name was on a document. Who put it on a document, when they out it on the document, and whether it should have been on the document is, of course, an entirely separate matter. I'm telling you, I have never seen a barrel of oil, I have never bought one, I have never sold one, neither has anyone on my behalf.
And in all these inquires, which have cost millions by the way, no-one's come up with a single piece of proof that I ever traded in oil or ever sought to trade in oil.
The report claimed that these oil allocations allegedly granted to Galloway were traded on his behalf by a businessman named Fawaz Zureikat. It tracked payments from Zureikat into the account for Galloway's Mariam Appeal.
MR COLEMAN: Mr Zureikat was a significant contributor to Mariam's Appeals, is that correct?
GEORGE GALLOWAY: He was the second biggest contributor. The main contributor was Sheik Zayed, the ruler of the United Arab Emirates, which you've glossed over in your report because it's slightly embarrassing to you, and the third major contributor was the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, which you've equally glossed over because it's embarrassing to you. And both of those individuals are your friends.
MR COLEMAN: How much did Mr Zureikat contribute to Mariam's Appeals?
GEORGE GALLOWAY: Roughly £375,000.
MR COLEMAN: He was chair of Mariam's Appeals in 2000. I take it you knew him well. Did he ever talk to you about his dealings with oil in Iraq?
GEORGE GALLOWAY: I was aware that he was doing extensive business with Iraq. I did not know the details of it. It was not my business. But this is your problem in the whole affair. There is nobody arguing that Mr Zureikat's company did not do oil transactions and many other - much bigger, frankly - business contracts with Iraq. There is nobody contesting that Mr Zureikat made substantial donations to our campaign against sanctions and war. My point is you have accused me, personally, of enriching myself, of taking money from Iraq, and that is false and unjust.
Fawaz Zureikat, who was a legitimate oil trader, has denied that he was trading on behalf of Galloway. In a separate investigation, Britain's Charity Commission found Galloway did not personally benefit from the Mariam Appeal.
REPORTER: You've said publicly many times that you never received a penny from any oil deal, but do you accept that the Mariam Appeal did?
GEORGE GALLOWAY: Well, I don't know if it did or didn't. All I know is that Mr Zureikat donated a substantial amount of money to it, and what's wrong with that? My business was merely that they were prepared to donate money to a campaign that was trying to save the lives of Iraqi children who were dying in vast numbers. That's all that I cared about.
Last year, the UN's Volcker Committee - the same body that investigated the Australian Wheat Board - issued a report with similar allegations against Galloway. Despite two hefty reports, 'Guardian' journalist Seamus Milne, who's known Galloway for 20 years, believes the case is not proven.
SEAMUS MILNE: Actually, if you read their reports rigorously, you see the evidence is contradictory, paper-thin, not based on solid material and really doesn't stand up, and would not stand up in a court of law.
Both reports support their case by using testimony from former regime officials. These officials apparently told investigators that Galloway was personally requesting oil allocations to help fund his anti-sanctions activities.
UNITED STATES SENATE REPORT: Among the senior regime officials that provided evidence against Galloway were Taha Yassin Ramadan, the vice-president of Iraq under Saddam Hussein.
After being hunted down as one of America's most wanted, Ramadan is currently in a US-run prison in Iraq.
GEORGE GALLOWAY: And he is on trial - the last time I looked at the television set, which was this morning - for crimes against humanity, at the end of which he will presumably be executed. So either he is a crazed war criminal guilty of crimes against humanity or he is a credible witness against me. He can't actually be both.
Another official gaoled by the Americans who supposedly gave evidence against Galloway is Ali Hasan al-Majid - also known as Chemical Ali.
SEAMUS MILNE: And I must say I wouldn't take any evidence gleaned from any of these people seriously, and I think in any genuine court of law it would be ruled out of order, because these people are clearly subject to intense pressures - incentives and disincentives - to say or do various things.
In fact according to the UN report, former deputy prime minister Tarqi Aziz - also a prisoner of the occupying forces - gave evidence against Galloway. But a footnote reveals he later recanted.
UNITED STATES SENATE REPORT: When interviewed a second time, Mr Aziz changed his previous assertion that Mr Galloway had received allocations.
But the Committee decided
UNITED STATES SENATE REPORT: "The committee does not find the denial credible under the circumstances."
and went on to use his evidence. Seamus Milne believes the US and UN reports are intrinsically partisan.
SEAMUS MILNE: There documents that have been produced by politically interested parties who want to discredit opponents of the Iraq war and opponents of the sanctions regime in America.
In the United Kingdom, attempts to get Galloway continue. A Labour-controlled parliamentary committee is currently doing its own investigation into the claims against him. Last week, Tarqi Aziz's lawyer in Baghdad claimed British diplomats had offered to try and win him immunity from prosecution if he gave evidence against Galloway.
SEAMUS MILNE: And they have tried everything to destroy him - they've expelled him, they've trashed him in parliament, they've tried to suggest in whispering campaigns that he is corrupt, they have encouraged investigations into him through public agencies, and I have no doubt that they were enthusiastic about that attempts by particular newspapers in Britain to destroy him and try and prove him to be corrupt, and, of course, those attempts failed.
With none of the charges sticking, life as a local MP goes on for Galloway. Today he's taking up the cause of a local organ-maker who's having regulation problems.
GEORGE GALLOWAY: It's a fact that there was a conspiracy against me. Who did it, why they did it - why they it is easier to understand. I'm still alive and kicking and I'm kicking them.
REPORTER: It's a far cry from Cairo, George.
GEORGE GALLOWAY: It's a long way from Cairo, the dusty streets of Cairo to St Peter's Square and a church organ issue but it's a day in the life, isn't it? When you're busy making plans for world revolution, along comes a small challenge to a small employer in your constituency and you have to go to battle for them with the same gusto that you would the liberation of Palestine. That's the paradox, I suppose, of democratic politics. I must say, if there's ever a revolution, that would be a good headquarters.
GEORGE NEGUS: The unapologetic George Galloway with Bronwyn Adcock. And it's actually worth remembering that the US senator behind the hearings into Galloway's alleged misbehaviour in Iraq was the same senator who first raised the kickback allegations against the AWB.
It has been three years since the invasion of Iraq and in London, hundreds of thousands of anti-war protesters have taken to the streets. The man of the moment is anti-war MP George Galloway.
MAN ON THE STREET: Well done, George! Keep going, George! Well done, George! You are my favourite.
Galloway has become a hero to the anti-war movement around the world. His relentless attacks on what he calls "Tony Blair's lie machine" have earned him a generation of worshippers.
MAN ON THE STREET: This man should be a PM, and kick the liars out! Kick the liars out! You should be the King, Your Royal Highness. You should be the King!
Galloway also has many enemies. A Senate Committee in Washington has accused him of receiving money for oil from the regime of Saddam Hussein.
MR COLEMAN, SENATE: Mr Galloway, I'm pleased to have you before the Committee today. Senior Iraqi officials have confirmed that you in fact received oil allocations and that the documents that identify you as an allocation recipient are valid.
GEORGE GALLOWAY: Senator, I am not now, nor have I ever been, an oil trader. I have never seen a barrel of oil, owned one, bought one, sold one and neither has anyone on my behalf.
I have always had very powerful enemies but now I have the most powerful enemies of all. I have the United States Republican neo-con leadership after me, I have Tony Blair after me. If John Howard had ever heard of me he'd be after me too. The Iraqi puppet regime are after me, the State of Israel has long regarded me as an enemy. I have very powerful enemies with many resources.
SPEAKER: Now, our next speaker has had a controversial year, even by his own standards, but we need to be clear ourselves, as a united movement, why he has had a controversial year and why he is attacked. He is attacked because this movement is strong, he is attacked because this movement has been right. That is why I'm proud to call him a comrade and proud to ask you, once again, to welcome George Galloway.
GEORGE GALLOWAY: Comrades and friends, salaam aleikum. Peace be with you.
Millions of dollars have been poured into investigations, inquiries, and, in some cases, forged documents to try and bring down Galloway. So, who is this man who's inspired such attacks, and are any of the allegations against him true?
Away from the international stage George Galloway is a local MP in London's East End, in the predominantly working class and migrant constituency of Bethnal Green and Bow.
GEORGE GALLOWAY: This was once, really, a hub of the local community. There's nothing else.
REPORTER: So how long has Safeway been closed?
GEORGE GALLOWAY: Three months, something like that.
REPORTER: So where are the locals shopping now?
GEORGE GALLOWAY: Well, with real difficulty, especially the older people.
He's the only parliamentary representative of a newly formed left-wing party called Respect, and today he's on the campaign trail for local council elections.
GEORGE GALLOWAY: If we can get a foothold here, I promise you things will never be the same again.
His main focus of attack is the Labour Party, Prime Minister Tony Blair, and Treasurer and aspiring leader Gordon Brown.
GEORGE GALLOWAY: The public realm in which we live is shabby and broken and tattered and filled with holes and gaps through which human beings fall through. We had - because Brown said it - all the money in the world to pay for the war. He said, "Whatever it takes I'll write the cheque." He was, at that time, trying to show how much like Mr Blair he was. It may be that, in the next few months, he'll spend a lot of time trying to show us how different from Mr Blair he really is.
For me, if you'll forgive me putting it bluntly, they are just two cheeks of the same arse. Gordon Brown wrote the cheque and he was very clear about it - "Whatever it takes I'll write the cheque." So we have money to go around the world setting fire to other people's countries, but we don't have money to keep our old age pensioners warm in winter.
Until 2003, Galloway was a Labour Member of Parliament. His vocal opposition to the war, including encouraging British soldiers to "disobey illegal orders", saw him expelled from the Labour Party after 36 years membership.
SEAMUS MILNE, OPINION EDITOR, THE GUARDIAN: I think it clearly came from Tony Blair personally. Blair signalled it immediately after the fall of Baghdad that he would be moving against Galloway, and they were just not prepared to have that level of attack from one of their own backbenchers, in a war they knew was unpopular with the majority of the British people. It was an unprecedented thing in Labour Party history for someone to be expelled solely for an expression of opinion, which is effectively what it was.
Galloway took his revenge, winning a seat from the Labour Party in the general election.
GEORGE GALLOWAY: Mr Blair, this is for Iraq.
I said on the day that I was expelled that Mr Blair would rue the day that he expelled me, and he's already rued it. We are the only credible challenge from the left to Labour that has existed in this country for 60 years. Indeed I am the only Member of Parliament to be elected to the left of Labour in 60 years.
To really understand George Galloway, though, you need to understand his 30-year love affair with the Middle East. I've travelled with him to Cairo, where he's come to address a conference. Last time he flew to Egypt he was arrested and locked up for 24 hours, possibly because of critical comments he made about the regime here. In a change of heart he's now been welcomed back.
GEORGE GALLOWAY: By the grace of God, quite a few people like me in Egypt. I'm frequently on Arab satellite television. Most people in Egypt like what I say so I am quite well-known around this country, and I think that the regime decided that it was not wise to alienate so many people by behaving in such a way to me.
Galloway describes himself as a friend of the Arab world. Beginning in 1975 when, as a young man, he travelled from Scotland to the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon.
GEORGE GALLOWAY: I really fell head over heels with the revolution that was there - the Palestinian camps, the plurality of Palestinian politics - every building had a different party in it, every party had a magazine and a newspaper and there was music in the cafes at night and revolution in the air, as Bob Dylan put it in another context, and I liked revolution.
Not afraid of backing an unpopular cause even then, Galloway soon had the Palestinian flag flying over the City Chambers in back Dundee.
GEORGE GALLOWAY: It was in the mid-'70s, after the Munich Olympic Games operation and aircraft hijackings and so on. It was, in a way, in public relations terms, it was the equivalent of saying you were with Bin Laden today. This is my favourite city, I would say.
REPORTER: Favourite city anywhere?
GEORGE GALLOWAY: Yeah. It's the beating heart of the Arab world.
Today Galloway is on his way to attend the Cairo Conference, billed as an international campaign against US and Zionist occupation.
GEORGE GALLOWAY: You can tell by the troop levels that we're getting closer to the conference. It's a good job creation scheme, dictatorship.
REPORTER: Why's that?
GEORGE GALLOWAY: It keeps hundreds of thousands of police and soldiers at work. This is us here.
MAN: Welcome to Egypt.
30 years spent working for the Arab cause has made Galloway a well-known and much loved figure here, a modern-day Lawrence of Arabia.
MAN: We consider you that you are Arabic, more than all Not all. the Arabian rulers. All the rulers, yes.
GEORGE GALLOWAY: This is definitely true.
With many here believing that the West is against them, Galloway is seen as an inspiration.
STUDENT: We are students from Al-Azhar and Cairo Universities, what do you say to Muslim Brotherhood students, and other students.
GEORGE GALLOWAY, (Translation): Struggle until victory.
SPEAKER, (Translation): He is an MP who represents the conscience of humanity, an MP who loves the Arab people and who is loved by them in return. He was the first to take a stand against George Bush and his follower Blair. MP George Galloway.
Before a crowd that includes high-profile members of Hamas and other Islamist groups, Galloway delivers a message that would make George Bush and Tony Blair flinch.
GEORGE GALLOWAY: We now know, and the whole world now knows, America is defeated in Iraq - it is defeated in Iraq. The Americans do not control one street in one town or one city in a country they invaded and conquered three years ago. When their soldiers leave their base, they drive as quickly as they can back to the base. They know that this can be their last journey on Earth, and so I say, from the bottom of my heart, we salute the resisting people of Iraq, which has inflicted this defeat upon the superpower, the United States of America, in Fallujah, in Ramadi, in Sumaria, in Najaf, in Kabullah, in Basra. All over Iraq, the Iraqi people have risen and spoken and fought and defeated this superpower which invaded them.
REPORTER: Should I take that to mean that you support Iraqi insurgents who launch attacks and kill American, British and potentially Australian soldiers?
GEORGE GALLOWAY: Well, first of all I should say that it does not imply that I support every action taken in the name of the Iraqi resistance, especially as we now know that some of the actions undertaken in their name ostensibly were actually undertaken by other people entirely with a different agenda, completely, so whilst I support the legal - internationally enshrined legal right of any occupied people to resist their violent occupiers, that does not mean that every operation conducted by the Iraqi resistance is one that I would support.
REPORTER: What about an operation, for example, where Iraqi insurgents blow up a US Humvee?
GEORGE GALLOWAY: Well, there's no question that that's an entirely legitimate act of resistance that's enshrined in the Geneva Convention and in international law. The violent occupiers have invaded the country, illegally, on the basis of on a pack of lies and the Iraqi people are resisting them, and the kind of operation you mentioned, whilst a tragedy for the soldiers inside the Humvee, is an entirely legitimate act of resistance.
Galloway first became heavily involved in Iraq in the 1990s, campaigning against the sanctions imposed by the United Nations after the Gulf War. Like many, he believed sanctions were crippling the country and denying health services to sick children.
GEORGE GALLOWAY: Why not send a message to this child behind me by sending an army of cancer experts, laden with suitcases of cancer drugs, to come and help the Iraqi health service, these heroes who are working in these conditions.
After meeting 4-year-old Mariam, who was sick with leukaemia, he set up the Mariam Appeal, raising money to pay for her treatment and for his campaign.
He met Saddam Hussein twice and deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz numerous times, but these contacts with the leadership of a brutal regime saw him widely condemned as an apologist and the friend of a dictator.
GEORGE GALLOWAY: From more than 15 years ago, in parliament, on the record, I made clear my detestation of the Iraqi dictatorship. I just don't believe in murdering people's children because you don't like their dictator.
Galloway's critics, who said he was too close to the regime, would soon appear to have their suspicions confirmed.
When coalition forces took over Baghdad at the start of the war, government buildings and their contents were laid open. On April 22, 2003, Britain's 'Daily Telegraph' claimed its reporter had come across incriminating documents inside a building. They purportedly showed Galloway received money from the Iraqi regime by getting allocations through the Oil-for-Food program.
Just a few days later, the US 'Christian Science Monitor' came up with a separate set of documents with similar claims. But these later documents proved to be forgeries.
HASSAN MNEIMNEH, RESEARCH AND DOCUMENTATION PROJECT: Iraq Research and Documentation Project In the case of the documents that were shown to me by the 'Christian Science Monitor' there were some blatant aspects to them that made it rather easy for me to say that, in all likelihood, for any degree of certainty, they are forgeries.
The advice of expert Hassan Mneimneh, plus that of others, saw the 'Christian Science Monitor' retract their story, and pay a financial settlement to Galloway. He says that in 2003 Baghdad was awash with forged documents.
HASSAN MNEIMNEH: What was clearly the case, it was as a result - it's a supply-and-demand issue, as a result of a demand on the part of the media, in particular, but also on the part of government agencies. You had entrepreneurs, I guess, we can call them, who basically tried to use whatever material is available, whatever knowledge that they had in order to create forgeries and sell them, and actually there was quite a market for documents in that period.
But who was behind the Galloway forgeries? George Galloway alleges it was payback by the same people behind the invasion that he opposed, namely, the pro-war Iraqi exiles in league with the United States and the United Kingdom.
GEORGE GALLOWAY: Well, the speed with which it was done, the fact that it was clearly done by Iraqis - not only was it written in Iraqi dialect of Arabic but they had all the headed notepaper - I mean, it was a very serious forgery. They had the headed notepaper of all sorts of different Iraqi ministries, the headed notepaper of Saddam Hussein's sons, all the wherewithal to construct an elaborate conspiracy all within a few days of Baghdad falling. So there was a very limited number of people who could have done it, and they certainly had the motive to do it, the animus to drive them to do it.
Hassan Mneimneh also examined the documents used by the 'Daily Telegraph' and found they were consistent with authentic documents, but says for absolute certainty more testing would need to be done. He says documents can't be taken at face value.
HASSAN MNEIMNEH: There is always a need to corroborate whatever evidence that the documents provide with evidence external to the documents in order to get the full story clearly.
In court, George Galloway won his defamation case against the 'Daily Telegraph.' The judge said of the newspaper: "It was no part of the defendant's case to suggest that any of these allegations were true, or even that there were reasonable grounds to suspect they were true."
GEORGE GALLOWAY: I never solicited support from anything in Iraq - any institution or any person. I've testified to that under oath, in front of the US Senate, in the High Court action in London against 'Daily Telegraph', I am saying it to you again now - it's completely false, completely untrue, there is no evidence to support it and people should really stop saying it, if you don't mind me saying so.
While Galloway says he's never taken any money from Saddam Hussein, he's certainly taken plenty from media outlets who've made that allegation. This uneasy relationship has him trying to control the media wherever he can. He's just been given a talkback radio show on a commercial station more used to right-wing shock jocks.
GEORGE GALLOWAY: This is George Galloway on the mother of all talk shows, on Talksport radio - 1089 and 1053 AM. I'm going to be talking about the helluva week that Tony Blair's had and asking the question, is it time the Prime Minister stepped down? Is it time for the removal vans in Downing Street? Michael, welcome to Talksport. What's your point of view? Hi, there.
Every weekend now, Galloway broadcasts his views to around 5 million people.
GEORGE GALLOWAY: Here, it's unvarnished, unfiltered, unedited, live, I chose the subjects, I chose the callers, and I say what I want and everyone can hear it without having to pass through this filter of distortions.
Some of Galloway's choices of media outlets, though, are unusual, to say the least. When he appeared on 'Celebrity Big Brother' recently, he was ridiculed across the country. But Galloway is unrepentant.
GEORGE GALLOWAY: Well, the audiences at my meetings have doubled, my book sales have tripled, my media appearances have quadrupled, I now have a twice weekly national radio program speaking to millions of people every Saturday and Sunday night - all as result of 'Big Brother'
And, as a sting in the tail, Galloway donated his fee to a Palestinian charity. But while 'Big Brother' possibly caused a bigger stir at home, the most serious attacks on Galloway have come from Washington. Last year a Republican-dominated Senate Committee produced a report alleging that the Iraqi regime granted oil allocations to Galloway.
Galloway, who'd not been interviewed or contacted for the report, voluntarily came to Washington for a showdown with the Senators.
GEORGE GALLOWAY: Now, I know that standards have slipped over the last few years in Washington, but for a lawyer you are remarkably cavalier with any idea of justice.
Like the newspaper reports, the US Senate relied on documents from the former regime, in particular ones from the Oil Ministry, that apparently showed Galloway's name on oil allocation lists. Copies of these documents are not available in the reports for scrutiny.
GEORGE GALLOWAY: We've just been talking about a whole sea of documents with my name on them. We've just been talking about a whole sea of documents with my name on them, even what purported to be my signature on them - a receipt, "Received £1 million, thanks very much, signed George Galloway."
The fact that someone's name is on a document means nothing more than that their name was on a document. Who put it on a document, when they out it on the document, and whether it should have been on the document is, of course, an entirely separate matter. I'm telling you, I have never seen a barrel of oil, I have never bought one, I have never sold one, neither has anyone on my behalf.
And in all these inquires, which have cost millions by the way, no-one's come up with a single piece of proof that I ever traded in oil or ever sought to trade in oil.
The report claimed that these oil allocations allegedly granted to Galloway were traded on his behalf by a businessman named Fawaz Zureikat. It tracked payments from Zureikat into the account for Galloway's Mariam Appeal.
MR COLEMAN: Mr Zureikat was a significant contributor to Mariam's Appeals, is that correct?
GEORGE GALLOWAY: He was the second biggest contributor. The main contributor was Sheik Zayed, the ruler of the United Arab Emirates, which you've glossed over in your report because it's slightly embarrassing to you, and the third major contributor was the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, which you've equally glossed over because it's embarrassing to you. And both of those individuals are your friends.
MR COLEMAN: How much did Mr Zureikat contribute to Mariam's Appeals?
GEORGE GALLOWAY: Roughly £375,000.
MR COLEMAN: He was chair of Mariam's Appeals in 2000. I take it you knew him well. Did he ever talk to you about his dealings with oil in Iraq?
GEORGE GALLOWAY: I was aware that he was doing extensive business with Iraq. I did not know the details of it. It was not my business. But this is your problem in the whole affair. There is nobody arguing that Mr Zureikat's company did not do oil transactions and many other - much bigger, frankly - business contracts with Iraq. There is nobody contesting that Mr Zureikat made substantial donations to our campaign against sanctions and war. My point is you have accused me, personally, of enriching myself, of taking money from Iraq, and that is false and unjust.
Fawaz Zureikat, who was a legitimate oil trader, has denied that he was trading on behalf of Galloway. In a separate investigation, Britain's Charity Commission found Galloway did not personally benefit from the Mariam Appeal.
REPORTER: You've said publicly many times that you never received a penny from any oil deal, but do you accept that the Mariam Appeal did?
GEORGE GALLOWAY: Well, I don't know if it did or didn't. All I know is that Mr Zureikat donated a substantial amount of money to it, and what's wrong with that? My business was merely that they were prepared to donate money to a campaign that was trying to save the lives of Iraqi children who were dying in vast numbers. That's all that I cared about.
Last year, the UN's Volcker Committee - the same body that investigated the Australian Wheat Board - issued a report with similar allegations against Galloway. Despite two hefty reports, 'Guardian' journalist Seamus Milne, who's known Galloway for 20 years, believes the case is not proven.
SEAMUS MILNE: Actually, if you read their reports rigorously, you see the evidence is contradictory, paper-thin, not based on solid material and really doesn't stand up, and would not stand up in a court of law.
Both reports support their case by using testimony from former regime officials. These officials apparently told investigators that Galloway was personally requesting oil allocations to help fund his anti-sanctions activities.
UNITED STATES SENATE REPORT: Among the senior regime officials that provided evidence against Galloway were Taha Yassin Ramadan, the vice-president of Iraq under Saddam Hussein.
After being hunted down as one of America's most wanted, Ramadan is currently in a US-run prison in Iraq.
GEORGE GALLOWAY: And he is on trial - the last time I looked at the television set, which was this morning - for crimes against humanity, at the end of which he will presumably be executed. So either he is a crazed war criminal guilty of crimes against humanity or he is a credible witness against me. He can't actually be both.
Another official gaoled by the Americans who supposedly gave evidence against Galloway is Ali Hasan al-Majid - also known as Chemical Ali.
SEAMUS MILNE: And I must say I wouldn't take any evidence gleaned from any of these people seriously, and I think in any genuine court of law it would be ruled out of order, because these people are clearly subject to intense pressures - incentives and disincentives - to say or do various things.
In fact according to the UN report, former deputy prime minister Tarqi Aziz - also a prisoner of the occupying forces - gave evidence against Galloway. But a footnote reveals he later recanted.
UNITED STATES SENATE REPORT: When interviewed a second time, Mr Aziz changed his previous assertion that Mr Galloway had received allocations.
But the Committee decided
UNITED STATES SENATE REPORT: "The committee does not find the denial credible under the circumstances."
and went on to use his evidence. Seamus Milne believes the US and UN reports are intrinsically partisan.
SEAMUS MILNE: There documents that have been produced by politically interested parties who want to discredit opponents of the Iraq war and opponents of the sanctions regime in America.
In the United Kingdom, attempts to get Galloway continue. A Labour-controlled parliamentary committee is currently doing its own investigation into the claims against him. Last week, Tarqi Aziz's lawyer in Baghdad claimed British diplomats had offered to try and win him immunity from prosecution if he gave evidence against Galloway.
SEAMUS MILNE: And they have tried everything to destroy him - they've expelled him, they've trashed him in parliament, they've tried to suggest in whispering campaigns that he is corrupt, they have encouraged investigations into him through public agencies, and I have no doubt that they were enthusiastic about that attempts by particular newspapers in Britain to destroy him and try and prove him to be corrupt, and, of course, those attempts failed.
With none of the charges sticking, life as a local MP goes on for Galloway. Today he's taking up the cause of a local organ-maker who's having regulation problems.
GEORGE GALLOWAY: It's a fact that there was a conspiracy against me. Who did it, why they did it - why they it is easier to understand. I'm still alive and kicking and I'm kicking them.
REPORTER: It's a far cry from Cairo, George.
GEORGE GALLOWAY: It's a long way from Cairo, the dusty streets of Cairo to St Peter's Square and a church organ issue but it's a day in the life, isn't it? When you're busy making plans for world revolution, along comes a small challenge to a small employer in your constituency and you have to go to battle for them with the same gusto that you would the liberation of Palestine. That's the paradox, I suppose, of democratic politics. I must say, if there's ever a revolution, that would be a good headquarters.
GEORGE NEGUS: The unapologetic George Galloway with Bronwyn Adcock. And it's actually worth remembering that the US senator behind the hearings into Galloway's alleged misbehaviour in Iraq was the same senator who first raised the kickback allegations against the AWB.