Bradford West’s Unsafe Election: “Gallowayist” Smears Naz Shah

It was announced today that the police are investigating the smear campaign against Naz Shah in Bradford.

Mr. Galloway has continued to smear the personal character of his Labour opponent, Naz Shah, during an election period, for the purposes of influencing an election – directly and on the record.

He stated of her falsely on Twitter:

Indeed, the judges said no such thing, as my previous article explains. They said if her mother’s evidence, which they did not accept, was true, Ms. Shah must have been lying.

Mr. Galloway also falsely smeared Naz Shah’s character in yet more intemperate terms on his party website:

 “A jury in the original trial where her mother was convicted on four counts – fraud, soliciting murder, attempted murder and murder – not only unanimously decided her mother was guilty but concluded Naz Shah’s evidence was a tissue of lies, as did the appeal court,”

Lawyers have confirmed to me that juries do not rule on the credibility of witness evidence during criminal trials, nor did they in 1993, still less do they call it “a tissue of lies”; nor did the appeal court.

But Mr. Galloway does not stop at the merely demonstrably false accusation of fact, he goes all-in on Ms. Shah’s character:

Galloway continued: “I deeply regret that Labour has continued to drag this sordid tale and this disreputable candidate and her story across Bradford West voters. There is much more but I have no wish to delve further into the sewer.”

Yes, that is correct, that is Mr. Galloway calling the life of Ms. Shah “sordid”, calling her “disreputable” and calling her life “a sewer.”

This next piece of evidence comes from Mr. Galloway’s YouTube channel via @Gallowayism, the uploader, of whom more shortly. It is a longer video of the start of the hustings. Galloway’s speech can be found by sliding the cursor to 12:51, if you have a strong stomach. Here is the relevant transcript:

Galloway: You were a big loser then, and the kind of way that you have embarked upon this campaign has already ensured you’re going to be a big loser again. You have only a passing acquaintance with the truth. You claimed, and gullible journalists believed you, that you were subject to a forced marriage at the age of 15. But you were not 15. You were sixteen and a half. I have your Nikkah [cheers] – I have your Nikkah in my pocket [more cheers as Mr. Galloway takes it out and waves it in the air] – in my pocket [cheers, hooting]. You told that story –

Moderator: Mr. Galloway – [she rebukes him then adds] can we now move on to issues please.

Galloway: You allowed – you allowed three personal attacks on me by my New Labour opponent.

Moderator: Mr. Galloway – I was going to come back to that

Galloway: I’m making –

Moderator: – Can I please ask the emotions to just come down for a while, and I think, Mr. Galloway will you continue please.

Galloway: I will continue. No-one will ever stop me from speaking. [cheers, hoots]. The issue is that my opponent is a liar. She lied about me, she lied about her age, she slandered this community for her own selfish ends. She played into every stereotype – every stereotype –

Moderator and Galloway argue about winding it up

Galloway: I have set politics alight in Bradford [continues to praise himself til end of speech].

In my previous article I suggested that Mr. Galloway had called Ms. Shah a racist on Twitter, and then second-hand by re-tweeting the comments of Respect Party Secretary Ron MacKay in Urban Echo: I did not then notice that he had done so directly at the hustings as well, leveling two character charges that not only did she lie about being raped but that she was being a racist for personal gain.

I gather from reports on the ground that the Respect campaigners are, at this point, getting little support on the street. Of course, under the law, since it is Ms. Shah’s personal character that has been falsely smeared in an election period, no result on May 7th is safe unless she is elected*, as any other candidate would have indirectly benefited from the malicious defamation of her character. There is a danger that if Mr. Galloway loses on the night, that the criminal offence committed by every member of Respect who has falsely smeared Ms. Shah during an election period will be forgotten.

It must not be. What is normally mere libel becomes an offence during an election period when done in order to influence an election. Justice for Naz Shah and the electorate in Bradford West has wider consequences for women and womens’ rights in a parliamentary democracy.

The Independent’s report on the police investigation, however, contains this manifestly wrong paragraph: I am amazed that they printed it.

The website being investigated by police is not connected with Mr Galloway or Respect, and a spokesman for Mr Galloway said he was unaware of its contents.

Yes indeed, the smear site is intimately connected with the Respect Party. Respect Party members have tweeted it out on the record, and from accounts that are officially connected to Respect, like his YouTube Channel operator @Gallowayism, as well as from sock puppets that are well known to Mr. Galloway and Respect.

Part Two: The Connections Between George Galloway and the Smear Campaign

My prior article examined how many sock puppet twitter accounts that were RTing the smear blog were also being RTed and followed by Mr. Galloway. This is interesting as many with whom he interacts on Twitter find themselves blocked for even minor criticism. But Mr. Galloway was willing to follow accounts whom he could see were smearing Ms. Shah.

The most recent of these, still live as of this writing, is @Gallowayism. As you can see, his follow list includes smear accounts @Nshahbrad and @bradfordrising as well as smear account @kiranknite who is actually the smearing real person @JassiSinger, the creator of @kiranknite, along with anti-semites @GiladAtzmon and @TippleJack. At the very bottom of his follow list is Galloway, meaning this was his first follow, and the list includes Ron McKay, the Respect Party, and Galloway’s election agent @MrAshUK.

In this tweet @Gallowayism thanks @MrAshUK for supplying him with the raw video of the hustings.In this he aims to get the smear site better tweeted out. On April 13, he RTs the smear account @nshahbrad with a live link to the smear site. Here I include only a screenshot, as I do not include live links to that site in any of my articles. He directly tweets out the smear site himself four times.

The seemingly innocuous tweet to Ali Arshad, @MrAshUK, is important, as it is a record that he is working with the man behind this account –  who is openly smearing Ms. Shah. I am told that Mr. Arshad is Mr. Galloway’s legal election agent but I cannot verify this as yet. It is however clear that he is official Respect.

I checked with the @Gallowayism account as to who he was, but made a typo, addressing my query to another account suspended for smearing Ms. Shah, @Gallowayist – the @Gallowayism / @Gallowayist account nonetheless replied to me. At first he tried a deflection but then admitted he was @Gallowayist.

The question then is – why are all of Respect’s senior officers, including the candidate and his agent, following and interacting with a misogynist who endlessly RTs the smear site against Ms. Shah?

Here, @Muqadaam, who runs the @TeamGeorgeG, takes a tweet of mine about Galloway himself and calls for help from @Gallowayism clearly stating – Louise Mensch is harassing US (wherein he includes @Gallowayism). It should be clear enough then that @Gallowayism is part of Mr. Galloway’s and Respect’s team, and as he regularly tweets out the smear site, it is false on its face to say that Respect has nothing to do with the smear site.

Senior members of Respect are tweeting the smear site out on a regular basis, including today.

In my prior blog I connected the dots between the smear accounts that had been tweeting out the attack on Ms. Shah. I was able to show that one account was renamed again and again, and used, variously, @ClarenceBeaks_, @bolitics2000, @newsdesk01, @evilsockpuppet1, @strawnmankiller, and @bfdwest2015.

Sources inside Respect (I have several at this point) suggested to me that I investigate whether this user was a business partner of Mr. Galloway’s (and I mean partner as in works closely with), Jay Stewart.

The @strawmankiller account was RTed, with a link to the smear blog, by a now-deleted account @Knowledgeboy75, which was previously @KnowledgeboyJay.

Mr. Stewart posted under his own name as @JayStewart75 (now deleted), with profile quote “In your face, fuller!“. He has locked, but not yet deleted, his movie account @newpoltergeist.

Meanwhile, @Gallowayist/ism helpfully links us to his YouTube channel, in which he helpfully gives his past YouTube names as MegaChairmanMao and GeorgeGallowayForPM. The latter has amongst its channels Red Molucca, (which as an aside gives hilarious extra evidence of Mr. Stewart’s sock puppet obsession, as I said to the Respect lawyer @ericcartmanfat, he has more socks than Dobby the House-Elf. Among its “liked” videos is “George Galloway and Anti-Semitism” uploaded by the convincing “John Smith”).

Red Molucca was mostly careful about who they were but not, alas, careful enough. At the bottom of the videos is a “podcast playlist”. Here is the unintentionally hilarious first episode – do slide the  to 40 seconds in and enjoy to 56 seconds in as Mr. Galloway lights his cigar and stares soulfully at the camera in black and white. Mr. Galloway attacks the “lamestream media” [sic] and states very clearly “This channel, this Red Molucca – is the only official George Galloway channel.” In addition to the funky black and white TV stylings, the podcast credits (at 54:33) give us the name “Produced by Jay Stewart, Edited by Jay Stewart.” It also thanks Dead House Productions. Dead House Productions is hoping to make “The Enfield Poltergeist”, hence Mr. Stewart’s surviving @NewPoltergeist twitter account.

There is no doubt whatsoever that Respect are officially working with the Twitter user @Gallowayism formerly @Gallowayist and that it tweets out the smear site and related smear accounts now, while they follow and watch. There is no doubt that Respect and Mr. Galloway himself have knowingly RTed sock puppet accounts from the same user, well-known to them – and no doubt in my mind that this person is at the very least, closely connected to Mr. Jay Stewart. I have more evidence even than I am posting in this blog and which I can only supply to the police. It is time however to look at the officially used and assisted @Gallowayism account and You Tube Channel and stop denying the smear website had “nothing to do with Respect.” Journalists might wish to ask Mr. Galloway, as I did before publishing this story, if he knew all along the identity of the @bfdwest2015 et al sock puppet, and if that person is connected to Jay Stewart, and knowingly RTed him even as he followed his account and saw him tweeting out the illegal smears against Naz Shah.

As Mr. Stewart himself so poignantly says at the end of his thrilling cigar-smoking podcast with Mr. Galloway –

Yeah.

In your face, corperate media!!!

 

 

 

 

 

* I report the above as a journalist. As a citizen, I note that of course everybody in Bradford West should vote, as despite violations of electoral law that can be seen from space, nothing in life is certain. Vote George Grant for Bradford West!