In 1935, in London's East End, Sir Oswald Mosley, a former Labour MP and moustachioed loudmouth, addressed members of the British Union of Fascists, the cult he had founded to worship his personality. 'The yelling mob of socialists and communists are paid by the Jews,' he yelled at his mob. 'The big Jew finances and controls the old parties, both Conservative and socialists; the little Jew sweats you in the sweatshop.'
Writers on British fascism vary from the soft-hearted Lord Skidelsky to tough-minded researchers from the East End. On one point, they agree: Mosley's decision to play the race card was entirely cynical. He may have bent the knee to Hitler and Mussolini, but he wasn't more or less racist than any other member of the aristocracy. He embraced anti-semitism as it was the best way to appeal to the East End voters he thought would propel him back to power.
'Unlike the people around him, Mosley was never a convinced racist,' said Francis Beckett, the best of the tough-minded historians. 'Needless to add, that doesn't mean that he was better than them.'
Ranged against Mosley was what we used to call 'the left' back in the 20th century. The Labour movement and the communists declared that religion, race and skin colour didn't matter. What mattered was that immigrants and natives alike were members of the working class or brotherhood of man. Their common interests were more important than their superficial differences. It was a wildly romantic view. George Lansbury, the saintly leader of the Labour party, who was as adored by activists in the 1930s as Michael Foot was in the 1980s, couldn't bring himself to admit that there was racism in his beloved East End.
This was a fantasy, but a useful fantasy, and from the 1930s through to the 1970s, immigrants were helped by a left which announced that what they had in common was more important than what set them apart. They were as British as the next man; as much a part of the struggle against the boss class as any other worker.
In 2005, in London's East End, George Galloway, a former Labour MP and moustachioed loudmouth, is urging supporters of Respect to propel him back to power. Just as Mosley bent the knee to the fascist leaders of his day, so Galloway bent the knee to Saddam Hussein when he flew to Baghdad and burbled: 'Sir, I salute your courage, strength and indefatigability.'
There's no doubt that Saddam was from classic fascist tradition, but it's difficult to make the argument, not only because in his purges of his Baath party colleagues Saddam followed Stalin rather than Hitler, but because the common assumption is that fascism died in the 1940s. A fascist today is a father who tells you to take the stud out of your nose or George W Bush when you're losing the plot in a pub argument.
But fascism, that is, an extreme nationalism which wages genocidal campaigns against 'impure' ethnic minorities and restless wars of aggression against its neighbours, flourished in Iraq. The Baath party's ideologues were as inspired by Nazi Germany as Sir Oswald. Their language was all but identical. When Hitler planned the extermination of European Jews, he let out a contemptuous: 'Who remembers the Armenians?' (the victims of the Turks in the first, and first to be forgotten, genocide of the 20th century). When Saddam's cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid - 'Chemical Ali', began the extermination of the Kurds, he let out a contemptuous: 'Who will say anything? The international community? Fuck them!'
Galloway's kissing of the ring of a tyrant with the blood of 1.5 million people on his hands was hardly a one-off. Iraqi left wingers I know loathe him because he denounced Iraqi trade unionists as 'quislings'. The fact that their comrades are still being tortured and murdered by a Baathist and Islamist 'resistance' which retains all of the far-right's hatred of unions hasn't helped cool their tempers.
Last week, he was continuing to act on behalf of the regime when he said Tariq Aziz, Saddam's foreign minister, was a 'political prisoner' who should be released. Aziz was Saddam's loyal henchman and up to his neck in his crimes.
Doubtless, at his trial, Aziz will say he was just obeying orders and it may work. But for Galloway to say that he shouldn't stand trial is to top Mosley. I can find no reference to Sir Oswald calling for the Nuremberg defendants to be released without charge.
To add to the foul atmosphere, there's a whiff of old hatreds in the air. Oona King, the Labour candidate, is getting fed up with Respect supporters bringing up her Jewish mother, although she says it makes a change from the British National Party bringing up her black father. Last week, King and a group of mainly Jewish pensioners gathered for a 60th anniversary memorial service for the 132 people who died in the last V2 rocket attack on London in 1945. Muslim youths spat and threw eggs at the mourners and shouted: 'You fucking Jews.'
In a letter to the Guardian, members of Respect said there was 'no evidence that this egg-throwing was anti-semitic'. Although it didn't condone them, 'such episodes do occur', and Galloway, John Major, Tony Blair and John Prescott had all had eggs thrown at them.
What can you say to that? Either it's slyly trying to avoid alienating potential supporters or Respect is so morally shrivelled it can't tell the difference between disrupting a political speech and attacking a service for the victims of fascism.
Oona King is a strong woman who can look after herself. The worst work Respect is doing is to its Bengali and Somali supporters, not its opponents. I was tempted to write that the party was as much a cult of the personality for Galloway as the British Union of Fascists was for Mosley, but that's not true. The media never tell you but Respect isn't a new organisation but is dominated by the old Socialist Workers Party, which ran the anti-war movement. After the great demonstrations against the war, it hoped for electoral gains. In the May 2003 council elections, it flopped. The only seat it won was in Preston, where local priests ordered Muslims to vote for their candidate.
The SWP has learned the lesson and made its own entirely cynical switch. It hopes to ride the religious tiger by persuading devout Muslims to follow the lead of godless communists. Boring old causes have been dropped to facilitate the marriage. 'I'm in favour of defending gay rights,' declared Lindsey German, the SWP leader. 'But I am not prepared to have it as a shibboleth, [created by] people who won't defend George Galloway and regard the state of Israel as somehow a viable presence.'
As the line changed, the party's paper tried to reconcile anti-capitalism and religious fundamentalism by calling on the comrades to protest against Spearmint Rhino lap-dancing clubs.
Galloway's propaganda follows the same pattern. It features a picture of Oona King with a cheesy smile and a low-cut dress. The headline doesn't say 'Decadent Western Bitch', but then it doesn't need to.
The sight of Trots in burkas would be hilarious if it wasn't a symbol of the shambles on the left. From the 1970s, the number of people who believed in working-class solidarity fell by the year, to the immense detriment of immigrants. Instead of being met by a left which emphasised what they had in common with the native population, they were met by relativists who emphasised the separateness of their race and religion. Notoriously, the process had the unintended consequence of keeping immigrants poor and isolated from the mainstream.
Respect is the dead end of this failed idea. It's as if the left of the 1930s had decided to fight Mosley by creating a party which emphasised Jewish separateness and then wondered why anti-semitism persisted.
Many of my colleagues think that Galloway could beat King. He's a ruthless operator and she voted for the war against Iraq and that's that. I'm not so sure. I went to speak at a King rally on the strange histories of the far left and far right. I expected it to be like most meetings I address: all but empty. Instead, it was packed and the audience was up for a fight.
The Labour movement, Iraqi refugees and people with no great history of political activism are uniting behind King. The East End left may just manage to win one last battle.