More more more (& the SWP)

The Observer is more serious:

Blonde-haired, white mannequins in technicolour saris pose in the window. A few doors along, squeezed between two leather goods shops, is an outlet for electronic gadgets. Guptee Wholesale Grocers boasts mangos, okra, stacks of tin thermoses, bags of yellow curry powder, sacks of Bombay Mix. Next door another leather goods retailer has gone out of business, and its windows are boarded up, marked with Bengali graffiti. There are few banks, building societies, no chain stores such as Boots or M&S: the only sign of permanence in Whitechapel is the enormous east London mosque, whose dome soars above the dingy shops and council flats. This is the poorest part of London's poorest borough, Tower Hamlets.

(oh here we go again)

But it was this bit that caught my eye:

Outside the mosque, Abdul Ahad sits with two colleagues. They run a Muslim job centre, and as we talk they are approached by a Somali couple who have recently settled in Tower Hamlets and are trying to find a 'suitable job' (ie, in an all-female workplace) for the wife. 'The election is important because we have a chance to change what is happening now,' Abdul tells me. Like his colleagues he is bearded, and wears a hat, but is in Western clothes. 'We have sex education that promotes sex because young children should not be exposed to these things; kids below 11 years are dressing up like adults, young boys and girls are doing obscene things. This never happened before sex education. Look at abortion - Britain has the highest abortion rates in Europe. Look at gay and lesbian rights ... this is not natural. And then you have television and movies and computer games promoting violence. Galloway shares the same moral values as us, he sees that religion is a stepping-stone to a moral society.'

And then there's this:

At the school gates of Raine's Foundation School, a few minutes' walk from the Labour headquarters on Cambridge Heath Road, two mothers stand waiting. They are white, middle-aged and, from their accents, East Enders. They claim to be totally unaware of the battle being waged for their votes, and when I ask who they will vote for they shrug and say they're not going to vote. Back at King's campaign office, her supporters agree that no one can rely on the white working-class vote.

There's even another article in the same paper that makes some interesting points:

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.