Radicals attack Galloway meeting
The bitter election battle in Bethnal Green and Bow took a further twist last night when Muslim militants stormed a meeting of George Galloway’s Respect Party.
Mr Galloway – who is standing on an anti-war ticket- was reportedly told the group were “setting up the gallows” for him.
The anti-war campaigner was canvassing at the time on an estate in Bethnal Green and Bow, where he is locked in a bitter election battle with incumbent Labour MP Oona King.
Mr Galloway, a former Labour MP, claimed radicals surrounded his supporters as he was talking to residents of the Osier estate.
They accused him “parading as a false prophet” by trying to win the Muslim vote, and warned that any Muslims who voted for Respect faced a “sentence of death”.
“I tried speaking calmly. They then said I was parading as a false prophet and served a sentence of death on me,” Mr Galloway told London’s Evening Standard.
“They were claiming I was representing myself as a false deity and for this apostasy I would be sentenced to the gallows.
“Thank God my daughter was not with me. She was in the car outside. Otherwise there would have been nobody to call the police. The police saved my life.”
Three men were arrested in the fracas, which came just hours after a meeting of the Muslim council of Britain was disrupted by fundamentalists chanting anti-Western slogans.
A spokesman for Ms King, who voted for the war in the Iraq, today revealed that she had also been targeted by protestors at the weekend.
“They were shouting ‘Bush and Blair murderers’ and ‘get out of our estate’. The car was covered in eggs,” he said, adding that she had also had her tyres slashed.
The demonstrators were reportedly wearing Respect badges, although a spokesman for that party said it was not clear if they were genuine supporters.
