No Wars For King and Country

28th February 2023

On the 9th of February 1933, the members of the Oxford Union Society , the world’s most prestigious debating society, voted 275 to 153 in favor of the motion ‘This house will under no circumstances fight for its King and Country.’ Sir Winston Churchill called the vote ‘abject, squalid, (and) shameless.’ Ninety years later, to the day, the Oxford Union hosted George Galloway, a British politician, broadcaster, writer, and outspoken critic of King Charles, the British government, and their endless wars.

The speech George Galloway gave is short, only 12 minutes long, but it is powerful, captivating, and courageous, and he rejects the endless war mongering that besets not just Britain, but all of the western nations today.

Read the speech, and then watch the video, I promise you that you will be inspired by it. If we had more men and women in politics today like George Galloway humanity would not be facing the multiple crises this current crop of corrupt puppets have created for us all, which may end up in World War 3.

George Galloway: We SHOULD NOT Fight for King and Country | Oxford Union 9.2.23

“Mr. President, right honorable and honorable gentlemen, gallant officers of the military,….there’s an awful lot of fighters in here, have you noticed they’re all ready to fight.

I would have opposed this motion in 1933, for the reasons adumbrated by my colleagues in their opening speeches. In fact I would have been the first in the queue of the recruiting office had I been alive to fight fascism. Indeed I would have been agitating to fight fascism in Spain three years before the second World War. In 1936 both of my grandfathers fought fascism under Montgomery, all the way from El-Alamein to Monte Casino.

I’m a former boy soldier. Lance bombardier. Royal Artillery, Battery 2, Army Cadet Force. I’m a former cadet in the Royal Marines, at Poole in Dorset. I’m not a pacifist. In fact I’ll go five rounds with Tobias Elwood, after the debate if he’s up for it. And I’m twice his age.

But the people on the other side arguing against this motion, have already dammed most of the wars that I came here to oppose. You, you even opposed the first World War. And the Afghan War. And the Iraq War. Tobias Elwood tells us he opposed the Iraq War. I missed that when I was leading the fight against it. But I’m delighted that nowadays you cannot find anyone who will support these wars that our politicians gave us, in this 21st century. You are quite wrong…..yes”

(At this point Mr. Galloway is interrupted by a member of the audience asking him the question “With successful military interventions, such as Kosovo and Sierra Leonne, do you not agree that it is possible to have successful humanitarian military intervention?”)

“No, I don’t agree with the intervention in either of those cases. A better case could have been made for the Falklands, an intervention I did support. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. Because that was a direct attack on British people, British citizens. And I supported it. But the examples you gave are not good ones. I’m sorry I gave way to you.

I’m not going to dwell on the king. It’s just as well he’s got a divine right to be king, because nobody would have picked him to be king, least of all his own family.

On this day in 1649, on this day the Rump Parliament, a better parliament than we have today passed the following motion:

“The office of a king in this land is unnecessary, burdensome, and dangerous to the life and liberty and public interest of the people of this nation.”  

I wish the parliament would pass that motion today.

I’m not going to dwell on the king, because that would be an absurdity, as has been acknowledged here, that because King Charles tells you you’ve got to go and fight and die in a war, you’re going to do it? Utterly absurd.

So let’s turn to country.

Who is the country? What is the country? Who are you going to fight for? Rishi Sunak? You upbraided the height of my colleague. Have you seen Rishi Sunak? In fact, if you put Zelensky on Sunak’s shoulders, you still wouldn’t even get a Napoleon.

These are small men.

Are you really going to follow, give them a blank cheque? Yes, I’ll fight for you, Rishi Sunak. You only have to roll the name, or his predecessor. What was her name? Liz Truss. Are you telling me that if Liz Truss said you had to go to war and die, you’d do it, because she was the prime minister?

Tony Blair, Tony Blair. Yes, I knew you were an idiot from the sunglasses that you are wearing. Tony Blair anyone? Tony Blair anyone? Who caused the death of a million people, and counting. Who cascaded fanatic Islamist extremism around the world. You called them spores. The murder cult of ISIS, Al-Qaeda, the head chopping, throat cutters. The million dead Iraqis.

And you want to do it all again! By signing a blank cheque to Tobias Ellwood? He told you, did you notice words that he, the caveat that he slipped in for you? There’s no conscription. Yet, he said.

Did you notice it?

He was on television less than 2 weeks ago, calling for martial law to be introduced in this country. In which case I saw your lips move on Sky News. I saw your lips move, on Sky News.

And if we had martial law, we wouldn’t be having this debate.

And it might not be long before you can take off your fur hat, and put on a tin one. And go off and fight, and die, on the question of whether Kupiansk is on one side of a line, when it’s been in 4 different countries in the last hundred years.

You ready to die for that? Because I’m not.

And I’m not ready for sure, to give a blank cheque to politicians to command my loyalty. My loyalty is to god, to my religion.

I believe in St. Thomas Aquinas’s concept of the just war. I’ll fight in a just war. If somebody attacks us, I’ll fight them, getting on in years as I am. I’ll tell my son to go and fight them, all of my sons, all my daughters, for a just cause.

But you’re not fighting for a just cause if you sign up to the concept that you will fight for king and country. Because that’s an unqualified commitment that you are making.

My colleague was mocked for pointing out that there are circumstances in which…(bell sounds)…What does that bell mean by the way? Some people have spoken for 20 minutes. She pointed out that there are circumstances in which we would fight.

Now, I saved this last little bit for little Ben Wallace, who I was told was coming here tonight. And frankly, he’s the only reason I’m here, and he didn’t show up.

You’re going to fight with what? With what?

You said I’d attack Tommy Atkins. I never have.

I attacked the donkeys that exploit the lives and limbs of the lions that they send into these wars.

You will never hear me attack an individual British soldier. Far from it. I’m one of the volunteers of Jim Davidson’s Care After Combat, looking after people that have been abandoned by politicians that gaily sent them into war.

Where is Tommy Atkins? He’s on the street with the homeless people. Where is Tommy Atkins? He’s in the mental health hospital, damaged and abandoned by those who sent him into war. Where is Tommy Atkins? He’s disproportionately in the prison system, and not as a warder. Where is Tommy Atkins? He’s disproportionately hooked on drugs. He’s in Piccadilly Gardens in Manchester. I’ve picked him up myself. Hooked on fentanyl and all these new opioids. That’s what Tommy Atkins ends up doing in Tory Britain.

They send these men off to war filled with their fake patriotism, king and country, straw hats and trumpets. And when they come back they have no use for them. They leave them to rot on the streets, without houses, jobs, futures, hope.

So don’t come here and wave your flags at me. Don’t come here and sound the tinny brass trumpet of your patriotism.

Yes, we will fight for the working people of this country. Yes, we will fight for the good things about our way of life.

By the way, when did you fall out of love with using armed force to take territory. We controlled 25% of the entire world’s surface. And ruled one third of the people of the world under our flag. All of it taken by armed conquest. All of those held in subjugation by the British Empire.

And now they want to parade as if they were boy scouts that oppose the acquisition of other people’s territory by force.

These hypocrites.

Robert Burns, my national poet, put it this way in an ode on the occasion of a national Thanksgiving:

“Ye hypocrites! Are these your pranks? To murder men and give God thanks. Halt, desist, go nay further. God will no accept your thanks for murder.

I move.”