George Galloway’s Workers Party of Britain has once again demonstrated its willingness to climb into bed with far-right extremists. Along with David Clews’s neo-nazi-aligned Unity News Network (UNN), it is promoting a rally outside the Ukrainian Embassy in London this Friday.
The event is presented as a commemoration of the 2014 Odessa fire at a trade union headquarters, but is in practice another piece of Kremlin-aligned agitprop.
Fatal fire
The rally is also being supported by No2NATO, the No Conscription League and the International Ukraine Anti-Fascist Solidarity. The date is the anniversary of the Trade Union House fire in Odessa in which 48 people died during the street clashes of 2014.
The fire resulted from a chaotic exchange of Molotov cocktails between pro-Ukrainian and pro-Russian demonstrators. Some of the latter had taken refuge in the building.
The European Court of Human Rights ruled in March 2025 that Ukraine bore responsibility for failing to prevent those deaths, but also confirmed Russia’s role in deliberately destabilising the region.
The details will not trouble Friday’s speakers.
Putin-supporting
Three speakers are named on the publicity material: Chris Williamson, deputy leader of the Workers Party; Hoz Shafiei, a National Members Council figure; and Jesse Winney, listed as UK coordinator of the World Youth Festival — the Putin-backed propaganda event inaugurated personally by the Russian president during his ongoing invasion of Ukraine, and already announced for a return in 2026.
As we have reported before, Clews’s Unity News Network unashamedly promotes Nazi groups.
He was a guest speaker at Patriotic Alternative conferences in 2022 and 2023, and his Telegram channel has been repeatedly swamped with open antisemitism and expressions of support for Hitler, forcing him to periodically wipe the chat history to conceal the evidence.
This is not the first time that Galloway’s Workers Party has demonstrated its willingness to stand beside Clews and UNN.
Two years ago the two organisations were advertised as sharing a platform at a Rally for Peace and Freedom in Glasgow.
Then, in August 2024, Clews’s name appeared on publicity for an anti-NATO rally in Glasgow where he was billed alongside a Workers Party representative.
The party’s own website documents Clews sharing a platform with Galloway and Williamson at a No2NATO event in May 2023, and Workers Party members appeared on UNN during the Rochdale by-election campaign in early 2024.
Race realist
And let’s be clear: David Clews is not any old eccentric right winger.
He describes himself as “a race realist,” endorses the white genocide conspiracy theory, and in an interview with the pan-European far-right group Europa Terra Nostra described the Western world as “totally conquered and riddled with this Bolshevik/Cultural Marxist cancer,” adding that supporters needed to prepare and “strike when the right time comes.”
Incited riots
He was one of those who helped incite the anti-Muslim riots after the 2024 Southport murders by spreading false information about the alleged killer.
On his UNN platform he published the false Arabic-sounding name of the alleged killer and then invited viewers to “Play guess the religion anyone?”
When we pointed out that this was very similar to what others had already been arrested and charged for, he took fright and fled to Poland.
Since then, Billy Howarth, a WP local election candidate in Rochdale, addressed a UKIP/’Patriots of Britain’ rally in Manchester, Galloway himself has been endorsed by the far-right Heritage Party and, last March, the party’s candidate in the Runcorn by-election was a man who regularly sits down at meetings with Holocaust deniers in London.
Earlier this year, Galloway announced that ‘political policing’ in the UK had forced him to relocate to Malaysia. He is still, nevertheles, leader of the party.
When challenged on his relationship with the Workers Party in a February 2024 interview, Clews was disarmingly candid. “I’ve also got a lot of time for George [Galloway],” he said. “I have done a few broadcasts with him — though my politics are different from him and Chris Williamson. I’m not going to lie about that.”
‘Dodgy liberals’
Wen we first started pointing out connections between the WP and the far right in 2024, Galloway denounced us as “dodgy liberals”.
The Workers Party has justified its platform-sharing with the likes of Clews on the grounds that it allows the party to reach new audiences with its “anti-imperialist, pro-working-class message.”
Clews’s audience comprises largely racists, anti-semites, nazis and Holocaust deniers.
Galloway and the Workers Party know exactly who Clews is, and they are clearly quite happy to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with him. And his audience.
Full stop.
