Mrs Galloway's problems with the Queen of Spades

FRANK JOHNSON

America's numbering of the Saddam regime's leading members, and issuing this order of precedence in the form of a deck of playing cards to aid American troops searching for them, has surely caused much unnecessary rivalry, jockeying for position and unpleasantness to one another on the part of the war criminals and torturers thus enumerated. This is so wherever any sizable number of them are in hiding together, whether underground in Baghdad, Tikrit, Syria — or Mr George Galloway's Glasgow constituency of Kelvin.

None of the colleagues disputes Saddam's right to being first on the list, and the Ace of Spades in that deck. It is accepted that he has worked for the position, and earned it; likewise his sons Qusay and Uday. respectively Ace of Clubs and Ace of Hearts. Some may regard the boys' status as an example of nepotism, but think it imprudent to say so.

But Mr Tariq Aziz is also prominent. He, it may be remembered, was the regime's John Prescott at the time of its fall — deputy prime minister. But he came to prominence in the invasion of Kuwait, and subsequent first Gulf war, as the Mr Douglas (now Lord) Hurd or Lord Carrington — the safe pair of hands at the Foreign Office. This always made him suspect in the eyes of the Baath government's `Thatcherites' — ideologues distrustful of the Baghdad FO. They suspect that he was rather snobbish and rude about Saddam in the polite society in which he was most at home. And when did he ever shoot anyone personally? He talked a good firing squad; but he always found some reason why he could not be present, and had another engagement, when it went to work. This was in contrast to Saddam, Qusay and Uday, who entered into the spirit of things.

As I write, a brigade of soldiers affiliated to the American-favoured Iraqi National Congress, working with American special forces, have just caught a former prime minister, Mr Mohammed Hamza alZubaidi. He was the Queen of Spades, and ranked 18th. Many of the others regarded this as much too high. He, not unnaturally, thought it unduly modest.

This dispute must have played havoc with Mrs Galloway's placements at dinner in the bunker at Kelvin, not all that far from the ground of Partick Thistle, which I am nformed is the Kelvin constituency's team. Mr Aziz would always have a word with her, out of earshot of the others, before they all sat down: 'I insist on sitting on George's right. Because Saddam and the two boys are away in disguise at Thistle's local derby with Rangers, that is the only placement consistent with my status.'

Mrs Galloway: 'Now, now, Tariq, you must know it's Mohammed's turn to be next to George.'

Mr Aziz: 'Which Mohammed? There's a lot of 'em about.'

Mrs Galloway: 'Mohammed Hamza alZubaidi, of course, the Queen of Spades.'

Mr Aziz: 'He's only number 18. And they didn't make him Queen of Spades, for nothing y'know, the mincing creep!'

Mr al-Zubaidi (arriving a table at just that moment): 'I heard that, you dog! I always knew you were born of a camel's armpit. I'll beat your moustache with my shoe.'

(Cultural note: it will be remembered that at the Arab summit just before the coalition invaded Iraq the Iraqi representative threatened to set fire to the Kuwaiti's moustache. Experts on the Arab world explained that to threaten a man's moustache was, among Arabs, a grave insult, impugning one's manhood. Moreover, when the crowd toppled Saddam's statue in the middle of Baghdad, they proceeded to beat its head with their shoes. The experts explained that, among Arabs, to threaten someone with one's shoe was a grave insult, suggesting that one's adversary was as low as the ground one walked on. That is the seriousness of Mr al-Zubaidi's joining, in one insult, moustache with shoe.) Mrs Galloway, with her usual tact, would have set about negotiating a compromise placement acceptable to all sides in the conflict. But by the time she had secured an agreement, and before the meal got under way, Mr Galloway, Saddam and the two boys would have returned from the football — perhaps convivial after a few drams on the way home. The situation having been explained. Mr Galloway would have striven, as he has throughout his career, for peace in the Middle East: 'Now, now Mohammed, m' ole Sunni. Tariq meant no offence. It's just his way. He's nay a homophobe.'

Mr al-Zubaidi: 'You stay out of this, you kilt-lifter! May your left buttock be deselected by Kelvin constituency Labour party — followed by the rest of you.'

(Experts explain that to raise the prospect of deselection is one of the gravest insults in the Labour world.)

One of the definitions of greatness is that all sides of opinion claim the great person's beliefs as their own. The outstanding example is that of God. There is also George Orwell; whom left, right and centre all appropriate. It does not seem to matter what the great person really said, did or thought. Hardly anyone looks that up. It is often enough to clinch an argument by praying for the great one's support.

The other day Lord Bragg was chairman of a radio discussion about Franco. The conversation turned to why the democracies did not do more to stop his winning the civil war, given that Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy helped him to do so. Mr Paul Preston, author of the most recent big Franco biography in English, said that Churchill had called for an Anglo-French intervention against him.

In The Gathering Storm, written a decade after the Spanish civil war ended, Churchill wrote, 'In this quarrel I was neutral. . . . I was sure . . . that with all the rest they had on their hands the British government was right to keep out of Spain.'

A rather under-used source for what Churchill actually advocated in the 1930s — his Evening Standard column — shows his view of the republican Spanish government, when the civil war broke out in 1936, as similar to Franco's. The republic was 'falling into the grip of dark, violent forces coming ever more plainly into the open, and operating by murder, pillage and industrial disturbance. . . . No one can now pretend that the issue bears the slightest resemblance to a struggle between a constitutional parliamentary government and a militarist-Fascist revolt. What a lesson these events should be to advanced Radicals or moderate Socialists who in alliance with extreme forces form constitutional governments.'