ALL AT SEA | Day 173 | Lincoln limps home | Oman, oh man! Trump bomb threat | Ukraine power battle

**George Galloway** (0:00)
Welcome to the Mother of All Talk shows, coming to you live from the Li of the Great Wall of China. 21,000 kilometers of it, stretching, if it were to be stretched, half the circumference of the world, from London to Sydney, from the East Coast to the West Coast of the United States, five times over. China's always been great, you know. But unfortunately, the barbarians that the wall was designed to keep out have merely changed their tunics. They're still out to get China. But nowadays, it's the People's Liberation Army, Navy and Air Force that keep them at bay.
It was 73 years ago, this very day, when in the name of liberty and democracy, Great Britain and the United States overthrew the elected Democratic government of Iran.
Whatever happened next, we'll be deep diving and exploring all of these issues, because this is the Mother of All Talk Show. So stay tuned.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:16)
You are listening to the Mother of All Talk Show's podcast with George Galloway.

**George Galloway** (1:24)
It is a remarkable piece of work, The Great Wall of China. I haven't walked it all yet, but I'll probably finish walking it before this Iran War is finally over. But more of that in just a minute. China was always rich. China was always its own world, its own civilization, needing precious little from anybody else. People were always envious, jealous of China's civilizational force. People were always trying to tear it down, break it up and, well, get some of that wealth for themselves. If you think about it, some things change, but most things remain exactly the same. And these are exactly the imperatives that drive Western policy makers and policemen at Gatwick Airport when they're arresting 72-year-old pensioners like me. It is the unwillingness to accept that China, China, not us, not the West, not the Europeans who for 500 years ruled the roost in the world, invading anyone, anywhere at will, stealing their things, killing their people, destroying their civilizations. For 500, 600 years, we did that. And it was unacceptable for the elites of the European powers later, Europe and North America, that they should be able, within their own territory, helpfully enclosed in a wall, to exactly as they pleased. Ban opium if they liked. Refuse British Empire opium if they chose. China would not kowtow to the invading barbarians and, well, there was a century and a bit of humiliation in which China was forced not just to kowtow, but dismember itself, allow itself to be taken by foreigners, but those days are well and truly past. And just in case anyone thinks that that's because they've got a communist government, let me tell you this is a sovereign decision of the people of China. The people of China, I see them, I see them in numbers unimaginable to those of you who haven't yet been to China. I see them queuing up at the national monuments. I see them queuing up at the foundational stones of the Communist Party of China. If you are dreaming, any of you, in the Western Chancery that the Chinese Communist Party is going to fall from power, you better wise up. There's 105 million members, members of the Communist Party of China and they ain't going anywhere. So it's better, I've always thought, to accept, as Canoe actually did, gets a bad rep, you know, that the waves will come in, whatever you say, whatever headline in the Financial Times or the Economist you contrive, the waves will come in. The sun will rise in the morning, in the east, and it's better to come to terms with it, see if you can't, you know, cut a deal about it. Speaking of deals, it just occurred to me, not half an hour ago, that this is the actual anniversary to the day, 73 years ago, so almost in my lifetime, I was probably in my mother's tummy when it happened.
The British and the Americans overthrew the elected Prime Minister of Iran and his democratic and socialist government, secular as you like. Imagine, it was a democratic and socialist government that was overthrown by your government and mine because it had the goal to seek sovereignty, to say unless we can control the major source of wealth in our country, which happens to be oil, black, gold, then we are not a sovereign independent country at all. And if we are going to control it, we will have to own it. Because if BP, as it then was not, but later became, owns the oil under our soil, it's their oil and not ours. And so, Dr. Mossadegh, as part of his election program, on which he won power, decided to take into public control for the Iranian people as a whole, the petroleum reserves beneath their feet. I know, sounds terribly radical, revolutionary, how dare they? Well for the same reason that the Chinese built the wall. They wanted to be secure, to enjoy what God had given them. But they didn't last long. And on this very day, my ancestors, if you're an American, your ancestors, your governments, your states created a coup d'etat to overthrow Mossadeq. I never met him, of course. Never knew him. He lived out his life under house arrest thereafter. But I did know the widow of his foreign minister, Mr. Fatemi. And she told me a story that I found so difficult to believe, I had to go and check it. Her husband, and she was telling me this sitting in Harrods in London, her husband was executed by the British, the foreign minister of Iran was executed by the British state. And there she was telling me the story sitting in London with me, a member of the British Parliament at that time.