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Full Free Episode - The Interview: George Galloway (Ep. 125)
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Introduction
00:00:01
Speaker
Welcome to the Italian football podcast with John Solano, Carlo Garganese and Nima Tuvali.
00:00:24
Speaker
Hello, everybody, and welcome to another interview episode of the Italian Football Podcast. I'm Carlo Garganese. I hope you're all doing great. We are really excited about today's guest. He has been a politician in the UK for over four decades, and he has fought tirelessly against poverty, imperialism, war, and many other injustices. His most famous hour was his humiliation of the US Senate back in 2005.
00:00:53
Speaker
one of the great moments in political history. He's a wonderful broadcaster, orator. He has a fantastic talk show, including the mother of all talk shows on RT.
George Galloway's Football Beginnings
00:01:06
Speaker
And also he's a massive football fan in particular of Celtic and Manchester United. So George Galloway, thank you so much for joining us. It's a pleasure to have you on. How are you doing?
00:01:17
Speaker
It's a pleasure for me. I must be perfectly honest. I do a lot of interviews like this, but I don't always look forward to them with quite the relish that I look forward to this one. Thanks for having me.
00:01:31
Speaker
Well, hi, George. This is Neiman. Thank you again for joining us. Before we get into the football and politics discussion, I just wanted to ask you to begin where your love of football itself started. And if I'm not mistaken, you're a huge Celtic and Manchester United fan. And how did you begin supporting them?
00:01:52
Speaker
Well I was thinking about this on the way to the studio today because I was sure that you would ask me that. I was truly born into it. My father, God rest his soul, was not just a football fan but I'd say an aficionado and so from him
00:02:15
Speaker
As a small child, I was able to witness all kinds of teams that were not his team or my team. So, for example, in 1962-63, so I'd be eight.
Celtic and Manchester United Fandom
00:02:32
Speaker
and nine, I followed the Dundee Football Club on their remarkable journey, their one and only Scottish League Championship, and then their first, last, but most incredible European Cup journey. They got to the semi-final of the European Cup and were defeated by AC Milan, their symmetry for you.
00:02:59
Speaker
in very controversial circumstances, I should say. And so my first European Cup game was not watching a team that I supported, but a team that played Cologne of Germany, the champions of Germany, and Dundee, the champions of Scotland, beat them 8-1 in their very first ever European Cup tie.
00:03:25
Speaker
I also attended the Rangers versus St. Marin Scottish Cup Final. So my father took me and exposed me to all kinds of teams. But because I was born into what you might call the Irish Catholic diaspora, Celtic was my home, if you like.
00:03:48
Speaker
In the early years, I didn't get to see them all that often. My father didn't travel to Glasgow to watch football, so I would as likely be found another game altogether. But once I was able to travel on my own, the 80 miles or so to Glasgow, I was a resident in what we called then
00:04:11
Speaker
the jungle, which was the legendary terracing behind the goal, which is long gone but never forgotten.
00:04:24
Speaker
Asta Manchester United, which I'd have to say is the team I see most now. I go to a lot of the games. Two of my sons are kind of attached to the club. I was told by my father in 1963, so when I was nine years old, when Dennis Law signed from Turin,
00:04:49
Speaker
you may recall and he was my father's favorite player so he announced that we were Manchester United supporters in England and I have been ever since so that is an enormous amount of time that I've been following Manchester United and I've seen them in many many different
00:05:14
Speaker
periods, of course, including the very great days of my compatriot Sir Alex Ferguson. And I watched them last night, a typically schizophrenic display
00:05:27
Speaker
which included one of the goals of any season from Edinson Cavani, but also included losing two points, dropping two points to an already relegated Fulham side. I'm afraid that it's, as Alec Ferguson put it, football bloody hell. Speaking of that, football bloody hell. There is one Celtic game in particular I wanted to ask you about.
00:05:55
Speaker
And next week it will be the 44th anniversary of that game and it's the famous game and probably the most famous game in Celtic's history.
Celtic's 1967 European Cup Victory
00:06:03
Speaker
It's the 1967 European Cup final when Celtic incredibly beat, I mean, it was made up of a team where everyone was born within 30 miles of Glasgow and they beat Inter, the Grande Inter, Helena Herrera's Grande Inter in Lisbon 2-1.
00:06:20
Speaker
I mean, I know, as I said, it's 44 years ago soon. But what do you remember from that famous from that famous night? Well, my main memory is literally running out the front door with my arms aloft and running up the street quite a way up the street, actually, and finding other boys of my age doing exactly the same thing, hearing cheers from inside people's houses.
00:06:49
Speaker
It was a feat like no other. It was the first ever British victory in the European Cup. But it was a victory for football. I know you're the Italian football podcast. I hope you'll forgive me what I'm about to say. Herrera, for me, looking back,
00:07:11
Speaker
represented everything that was bad about football. Defensive, the whole catenaccio thing, cynical, nine, ten men behind the ball.
00:07:26
Speaker
It was a triumph for free flowing, unscripted really attacking football. And I think that's why the victory was so popular around the world. Herrera was then possibly the highest paid football manager in the world. And I was looking up this afternoon
00:07:52
Speaker
what his wages were and he was the highest paid in the world and he was on 30,000 a year and that would be a low wage per week nowadays which shows you how long ago it is but although Milan had
00:08:10
Speaker
wonderful players in their side. We never really got to see that because of the infatuation with marginal victories. The opposite of Celtic style. So what do I remember? I remember going one down to a penalty. It was given away by a man that I became very friendly with, John Clark.
00:08:38
Speaker
It was then equalized by the late Tommy Gemmel, who later played for Dundee and managed Dundee.
00:08:46
Speaker
But of course, most of all, I remember the winning goal by the late Stevie Chalmers and the joy unconfined which followed. Hugh McElvaney, the greatest of all football writers, described at the time how days afterwards
00:09:09
Speaker
the holdouts of Glaswegians were still to be found in pockets, coming out of cafes, coming out of bars, a gaggle of Glasgow accents. It was something truly amazing. One other observation, if I may, the Glasgow select
00:09:30
Speaker
issue is a very important one. No team will ever win Europe's premier trophy again with all of the players from the city of the club.
00:09:45
Speaker
a 30-mile radius. Every one of the team came from there. And secondly, I remember how our players looked so pale. In fact, Jock Steen, the Celtic manager, warned all the Celtic players to stay out of the sun. He said, I don't even want you to go near the window in your hotel room. If a man has as much as one freckle on his arm, he'll be on the plane home.
00:10:11
Speaker
And our players were so pale and spindly and with teeth missing and so on, compared to the glamour of Milan with their beautiful suntans and their shiny legs with, I think it would be, liniment in those days. Milan looked like film stars and we didn't, but we triumphed.
00:10:40
Speaker
Another player, Jimmy Johnston, was the star of that Celtic team and the great Jacinto Faketi, who later became the president of that club, he marked Johnston that night and called him the Scottish George Best. How good was Jimmy Johnston?
00:10:58
Speaker
Well, Jimmy Johnson was the star of almost every Celtic game in which he played. He turned Faketi inside out, gave him twisted blood to borrow another another of Michael Vani's great lines. And Faketi was no mean fullback, as you and your watchers listeners will know. So Jimmy Johnson was dazzling and he in a way personified
00:11:26
Speaker
the point I was making a moment or two ago. If you looked at Jimmy Johnson, you wouldn't have expected him physically to be on that stage, the great shining star that he was. I don't know. I can't remember the state of his dental work then, but he looked like
00:11:51
Speaker
a man of a corner of a street in Glasgow just
Politics and Football
00:11:56
Speaker
placed on this football pitch, this arena in Lisbon. But my goodness, once the football started, Jimmy Johnson showed them the way.
00:12:09
Speaker
Yeah, he sure did. He's one of my favorite players, which I've watched so much of him and he's the dribbling, it's unbelievable. I mean, another great dribbler, I mean, to move on. I've always said that the two greatest individual performances that I've ever seen, one, Diego Maradona's performance against England in the 1986 World Cup.
00:12:36
Speaker
and your performance in front of the US Senate in 2005. So, I mean, which performance you think was better? Give you a chance to talk about Maradona as well. Well, the hand of God was definitely present on both occasions. I said afterwards that God had given me wings that day.
00:13:00
Speaker
And, of course, the hand of God was present in Maradona's famous goal. I tend to agree with you. By the way, I saw Maradona play at Hamden Park when he was, I think, 16 years old.
00:13:14
Speaker
and I saw him play Kipi up at halftime in a way that left no doubt that this was someone we were going to hear much more of and I totally loved the documentary about Maradona that I saw last year and my good friend John Ludden on whose book the documentary was based, I've interviewed him more than once
00:13:44
Speaker
So yeah, I mean, there are moments that just seem to arrive, although in a way, all of your previous life has been preparing you for that moment. And there are people who are apprehensive about me going to the US Senate, thinking I'd end up in an orange jumpsuit in Guantanamo Bay. But for me,
00:14:10
Speaker
it was an opportunity in the court of the Sultan to speak truth to power. So wild horses couldn't have kept me away from it. And when you're there, if you're speaking the truth, you don't have to have a good memory, as they say. So I was brim full
00:14:30
Speaker
of the truth, and there I was, in front of the whole world's cameras, able to deliver it, and God gave me the watch to do that.
00:14:44
Speaker
I've often made the boxing metaphor before. I was a boxer when I was young, and there is a moment in a boxing match when you know from the other fellow's eyes, or he knows from yours, that you no longer want to be there, that you are praying for the bell, if not the towel. And that's the
00:15:08
Speaker
Look, I saw in the eyes of my interrogators, my inquisitors. So that was truly a great occasion. It's the best occasion of my life so far, but I'm hoping for one or two more. As to Maradona, almost without peer, definitely in the top three or
00:15:36
Speaker
maybe five of all-time greatest footballers, sadly diminished as the documentary showed, so graphically didn't do it for as long, just like George Best, as he could have if other things had not waylaid him. But I was privileged to see Maradona in
00:16:04
Speaker
some magnificent occasions, including the one defeating England. I'm Scottish after all. Of course, of course, but definitely enjoy that. Okay, well, let's move on a little bit more to politics. Before we come to Palestine, there's
00:16:20
Speaker
there's always been an age old debate whether sports and politics should mix. I mean, we've seen like over the last year, you know, footballers in England taking the knee in support of the Black Lives Matter. We've seen, you know, various other political gestures as well over the years. Now, a few months ago, the Milan striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic, he caused a bit of a stir in Italy because he said that basically politics and football shouldn't mix. Do you think that football and politics should mix?
00:16:50
Speaker
Well, it's not really a case of wishing that it did mix or not. It does because football is not played on paper and it's not just played on grass. It's played in the society, in the world in which we live.
00:17:09
Speaker
Many of the people who say they don't want politics in football, it depends what the politics are. No one is against, least of all me, footballers wearing poppies and having a minute silence before two-minute silence.
00:17:30
Speaker
on Remembrance Day and so on. I wholly approve of that, but that is politics. Taking the knee is politics. And both of these things happen because it would be, frankly, weird if football pretended that the rest of life, the life led by the people who are its life's blood, the fans, did not exist.
00:18:00
Speaker
Of course, you don't want every game to become a political demonstration, but there have been some truly magnificent gestures, one that you might not be familiar with, Robbie Fowler, the gold machine at Liverpool, whose uncle was a docker and who was on strike in the Liverpool docks in quite an epic struggle.
00:18:27
Speaker
Robbie scored a goal one night, lifted his shirt, and support the Liverpool Dockers was on his vest. Now, that was a genuine, heartfelt, working-class gesture, which gave great happiness to the Dockers and their families and to working-class people all over the country.
00:18:54
Speaker
When I saw Paul Pogba and Amadiello last night with the Palestinian flag at the end of that really quite awful game against Fulham, it was the brightest spot of the night but for Cavani's goal, which belonged on a different planet. And Ditto, when Forfana and Chaudhry
00:19:20
Speaker
produced a Palestinian flag at the FA Cup Final right in front of the FA Cup and right in front of a billion television viewers around the world watching the FA Cup Final. These things greatly heartened me. So I think it depends. You're going to like it if you agree with the politics. You're going to dislike it if you don't. But to wish
00:19:49
Speaker
Sport out of politics, out of sport, is a forlorn hope. When the United States boycotted the Moscow Olympics, you couldn't get a greater
00:20:02
Speaker
infusion of politics into sport than that, but usually that's not what people mean when they say they don't want politics and football. That was actually going to be my next question, because there's been such an outpouring of support at the moment. You mentioned some of the gestures there
00:20:21
Speaker
Pogba and Diallo, you've had, I mean in Italy we've had Astra-Hakimi of Inso, one of the best pullbacks in the world, and I mean even Celtic, your club Celtic, I saw they put some flags, but the club
00:20:35
Speaker
took them down, I saw. I was just about to add that, yes. Yeah, so I mean, yeah, what do you make of all this support? I mean, like you said, it greatly heartens you. But also, footballers today have such superstars that they can send out a message that otherwise can be hidden away, especially with what's going on in Palestine. Well, I've been
00:21:00
Speaker
supporting the Palestinian people for, believe it or not, 50 years. And so I've lived through a great many of these catastrophes, some of them even worse, much worse than this one is yet.
00:21:18
Speaker
but I've never known a time when there were so many of us standing up against it. And that cannot be separated from the celebrity and eminence of some of the people that are now identifying themselves with the Palestinian cause. I mean, the father
00:21:40
Speaker
of two models, Muhammad, he retweeted some of my work, or rather on Instagram. Now he's the father of the two young women, and he's got a million and a half followers on Instagram. The girls have got
00:22:02
Speaker
in one case 40 and in the other case 50 million followers, and they have been expressing their support for the Palestinian people. So with Pogba and Diallo and Hachemi and others, not enough. I wish Zlatan, whom I loved dearly, would do the same. The
00:22:28
Speaker
the spread, if you like, through social media and the vast social media followings that these celebrities have, has meant that—and I was reading someone on the Israeli side of the argument this very morning pointing out that for the first time, possibly,
00:22:49
Speaker
Israel is losing the battle for hearts and minds around the world and I feel sure that that's true and I also feel sure that that is in part due to
00:23:04
Speaker
these footballers and models and popular music stars and film stars and so on.
Views on Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
00:23:16
Speaker
I've never seen
00:23:21
Speaker
I think that a lot of people are, let's say, scared sometimes to voice their support for Palestine. And I think this time, I've seen people who in the past would be like, I don't really want to say anything, because I'm worried, you know, what people are going to say about me, and now feeling like they can actually, you know, voice their solidarity. And it's a human rights issue at the end of the day, more than anything.
00:23:44
Speaker
Yeah, and to build on that, I mean, Roger Waters from the legendary Pink Floyd band, he petitions FIFA and UEFA to ban Israel in a similar way to how South Africa weren't allowed to play
00:23:57
Speaker
will partake in any sports really during apartheid. And I just want to briefly explain to our listeners why we use that term apartheid to contextualize it. And that is because the Israeli human rights group Beit Selim, as well as international human rights group Human Rights Watch, have both recent months come out and described the state of Israel treatment of Palestine and Palestinians to be just that apartheid.
00:24:19
Speaker
And more recently in the last week Amnesty International calling on what Israel has done to Gaza demanding an investigation for war crimes. Now you lived through that period and from what I've done my research you were very active in that period in South Africa to defeat apartheid. Do you think that this is something that should be done also to Israel? And what do you think the footballing world can actually do to help end apartheid?
00:24:49
Speaker
Mandela himself, every time he spoke about the situation of the Palestinian people, described Israel as an apartheid state.
00:25:02
Speaker
We really should take Nelson Mandela's word for that. After all, he was the leader of the anti-apartheid struggle and a political prisoner for 27 years, fighting for liberation from apartheid. So, you know, if something looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck. And apartheid is where some people in a state
00:25:32
Speaker
have as a matter of law, not prejudice, but as a matter of law, fewer rights, vastly fewer rights than other people in that state, not because of anything they have done, but because of what they are in the case of South Africa, because they were Africans. They could not be allowed to vote
00:25:57
Speaker
or have the same kind of rights that white people did in South Africa and Ditto in Palestine. There are at least six million Palestinians living under occupation in Gaza, in the West Bank, and in East Jerusalem. They have been living under that occupation since 1967.
00:26:21
Speaker
the very year that we are talking about in the context of the European Cup, when they are, to all intents and purposes, Israeli citizens, and yet they have none of the rights that Israeli citizens have. And as there is no prospect
00:26:47
Speaker
of that occupation ending, on the contrary, it gets deeper and wider every day, then the demand, as we demanded in South Africa for one man, one woman, one vote with equal rights for every person there, becomes intellectually and morally at least an unanswerable demand.
00:27:14
Speaker
But of course, life is not just about intellectuality and morality. The politics of it make what I'm calling for here extremely unlikely, but no more or less unlikely than any other possible solution. So I think we should take Mandela's word for it. Israel is an apartheid state. Now, what did we do?
00:27:38
Speaker
when we were faced with an apartheid state in South Africa. Well, as you kindly alluded, I myself
00:27:47
Speaker
was underground in apartheid South Africa as an agent of the African National Congress, led by Nelson Mandela. I gave my blood in a police station in Gugoletu Township in Cape Town, only from several blows to the nose. I'm not suggesting I was shot or anything like that, but I did give my blood
00:28:13
Speaker
for that. But what were other people doing around the world? Well, they were boycotting apartheid South Africa. No self-respecting person would have played football or rugby or cricket against apartheid South Africa, and no self-respecting person did.
Opinions on Football Legends
00:28:37
Speaker
There were some mercenaries who did, but they would not be described as self-respecting.
00:28:43
Speaker
no self-respecting person would knowingly buy or invest in or frolic and holiday in apartheid South Africa. So why should we do it in this case? But Israel is in the Eurovision Song Contest. It's in the European Football Championships, even though it's not in Europe or in the Eurovision area. So not only is Israel not ostracized,
00:29:13
Speaker
It is in fact given special dispensation by football, by television, and other things. And that's just morally wrong. And I think we're reaching a critical mass of people who agree with me on that.
00:29:33
Speaker
Sure. Just before we finish off with a quick one, we've got a couple of questions sent in to us from our listeners and patrons. And our mutual friend, John Ludden, who you already mentioned, who you had on your show, he asks, would Diego Maradona have gotten into Celtics 1960-17? Maradona would have gotten any team at any time in history, a truly phenomenal player.
00:30:00
Speaker
Sam Gallagher asks, who's the greatest Scottish footballer of all time and who's your favourite Italian football player ever? Very good point. There are several Scottish contenders, including the aforementioned Dennis Law. But I'm going to name one that you may not have heard of, whose name is Charlie Cook. And I can say that I was able to see him up close and personal.
00:30:28
Speaker
at Dundee, at Aberdeen, and then at Chelsea. He's still alive. He's in the United States. Look him up. Charlie Cook was the best Scottish footballer I personally have seen at his best. As for
00:30:49
Speaker
Italian footballers. I'd go with Gianni Rivera. I saw him in the first leg of the Milan Dundee European Cup semi-final, so I did see him personally, but I saw him on television many, many times in his long and illustrious career, but I kind of liked Viale also when he was at Chelsea. Italy has produced
00:31:15
Speaker
a galaxy of great footballers, Rossi and others, Sarti who was in goal for Milan that night, Masola who was up front for Milan that night, great, great players. I mean, Italy, I take my hat off to the Italian people and to Italian football. I just add this
00:31:37
Speaker
that it was Manchester United players that were pulling up trees in your league this year, Lukaku being only one of them. Love him, absolutely love him, big romp and just to finish off, we always play a quick fire game with our guests where we basically run through two or three options for each question and you just tell me which one you prefer and you don't have to explain if you don't want to.
00:32:03
Speaker
And the first one, I think everyone in the world has been asked this. Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo? Ronaldo. I'm a very big fan of Cristiano Ronaldo, partly because I saw him so often at Old Trafford and even in away games. I remember at Fulham, I was down right next to the pitch and Ronaldo was warming up to come on as a sub.
00:32:29
Speaker
And I looked at him in awe. He was like a Greek god warming up in front of me. His physicality and his genius on the ball has to be Ronaldo. For me, he did it in more countries and for more sides, more clubs, and he carried Portugal to greatness. So for me, it's Ronaldo.
00:32:53
Speaker
I think you've already answered this next one, but I have to ask it anyway just to remove, disperse all doubt. Diego Maradona or Pele?
00:33:03
Speaker
I'm going for Maradona, controversial choice. And again, for partly the same reasons, Maradona did it in more places. Pilly stayed in Brazil with Santos before going to the United States in the twilight. Both, of course, great, great players, but I'd have to go with Maradona. OK, George Best or Jimmy Johnston?
00:33:36
Speaker
Jimmy Johnston, because he did it for longer, but George Best, a work of art. Although, a final quote from Michael Vani, watching what George Best did to his career was like watching a beautiful woman draw an open razor across her face.
Political Critique and Promotion
00:33:56
Speaker
And I'm sorry to say that is true. I even traveled to every game, I think, that George Best played for Hebernian.
00:34:05
Speaker
in Scotland when he was playing for money for for drink on one-off payments for Hibbs and in flashes, boy, could he still turn on. Yeah, he sure could. Okay, who do you dislike more, Tony Blair or George Bush? Tony Blair because George Bush has the alibi of being an imbecile
00:34:32
Speaker
But Tony Blair was expensively educated at Oxford University. On my taxes, I was working in a tire factory, Michelin, making ZX Radials and paying tax to keep Tony Blair in the cloisters at Oxford University. So he has no such alibi. And the most controversial and divisive question we've asked you tonight, pineapple on pizza, food heaven or food hell?
00:35:04
Speaker
Thank you, George. Thank you. That almost made up for all the Inter Milan abuse I've been taking here. George, thank you so much for coming on the show. This has been a great honor for us. Before we let you go, is there anything you'd like to promote to our listeners where they can find you?
00:35:26
Speaker
If I may, yeah. Well, you can follow me on Twitter. Hundreds of thousands of people do, or on Facebook, on Instagram. But most of all, I'd love it if you tuned in to the mother of all talk shows, 7pm London time every Sunday night. You can do that on Twitter, on Facebook, on YouTube, on Instagram, or on the internet at sputniknews.com. It'd be great to see you.
00:35:52
Speaker
Thank you very much. We wish you and your loved ones the best and to stay safe and healthy. And to everyone else, thank you very much for listening. We'll be back next week on Monday for a review show. Until then, ciao ciao.