09.08.2006

Struggle must begin afresh

Nick Rogers, a member of the SSP Workers Unity platform, gives his view on the crisis

Tommy Sheridan's victory in his libel action is a remarkable achievement against very stiff odds.

His decision to sack his legal team and represent himself is the key to understanding why seven jurors found in his favour. Sheridan is an accomplished speaker who is superb at engaging with his audience. And with the support of Rosemary Byrne and a number of EC members, including the Socialist Workers Party's Mike Gonzalez and Highlands and Islands regional organiser Steve Arnott, he cast sufficient doubt and gave enough leeway for those in the jury room who wanted to give News International a drubbing.

However, Sheridan won in the Edinburgh court of session at the expense of the Scottish Socialist Party. He fabricated an internal SSP conspiracy, dismissed the minutes of the November 9 2004 executive meeting, saying they were "as bent as a ten-bob note", and called 11 EC members and MSPs liars. Now the party is in turmoil.

The United Left hit back the moment the verdict was announced with a statement reiterating the facts around the emergency EC meeting that led to Sheridan's sacking. MSPs Carolyn Leckie, Frances Curran and Rosie Kane issued their own statement.

The weekend Scottish media was full of coverage of the case. The Daily Record bought Tommy and Gail's story and filled Saturday's paper with their side of the dispute. Its edition of Monday August 7 carried another 'exclusive' under the front-page headline, "I'll destroy the scabs who tried to ruin me". Inside Sheridan's whole family is pictured - in-laws included. Tommy Sheridan, the media personality, is back with a vengeance.

Also on August 7, an SSP All-Members' Bulletin was issued, carrying a long article entitled "The fight for the truth", penned by Alan McCombes, and giving more details of the rationale behind the November 9 decision and the subsequent political twists and turns than have ever before appeared in print. And, what is more, the minutes of that meeting were finally released to the party membership. At the same time Barbara Scott, the EC minutes secretary, was approaching Lothians police with her hand-written draft of the disputed minutes - supposedly to clear her name in advance of a promised police investigation into possible perjury charges.

The EC behaved absolutely correctly 18 months ago in refusing to back Sheridan's libel action when they knew that some of the accusations made against their convenor were true. They also acted in a principled manner in insisting that Sheridan could not remain convenor of the party if he continued to defy their advice.

Membership meetings were organised throughout the rest of 2004 to explain why the party's charismatic leader had been removed from his post. But the decision not to release the minutes of the crucial EC meeting and not to inform the wider working class even that Tommy Sheridan had been sacked (rather than resigning to spend more time with his family) proved to be the fatal weakness in the executive's strategy. What this whole sorry affair demonstrates with cruel clarity is that honesty, integrity and openness must be the watchwords of socialist and working class organisations at all times - even when most inconvenient and potentially embarrassing.

The SSP should have been completely open from the beginning. That would no doubt have brought an immediate showdown with Tommy Sheridan. But then most of the public would not have had to wait for the cross-examination in court of the SSP executive members to learn what had transpired on that Tuesday evening when decades-long friendships and political alliances were severed. And Tommy Sheridan would not have had months to prepare his outrageous assault on his own party. And executive members would not have found themselves resorting to bourgeois newspapers and the state itself in a desperate (and highly dubious) scramble to recoup lost political ground in the SSP's civil war.

Sheridan may well have put together a majority political alliance within the SSP. The Socialist Worker platform and Committee for a Workers' International opportunistically swung behind Tommy Sheridan soon after November 2004, sensing that they might be able to end their relative marginalisation within the party. Together with the support of the regional organisers from the Highlands and Islands, the North-East, Fife, and the South of Scotland, Sheridan was able to secure a majority at the May national council meeting for a motion promising 100% support for his legal case.

Gordon Morgan and other members of the International Socialist Group in Scotland have also swung behind Sheridan, although the ISG in London has put out a statement supporting the platform of the United Left. Alan Thornett and Greg Tucker have apparently visited Glasgow to try and mend the cracks in their own organisation.

What Sheridan has lost irrevocably is his long-established base of activist support in Glasgow and the West of Scotland. The ex-International Socialist Movement has been split primarily along geographical line, with the bulk of ISMers in Glasgow and the central belt signing up for the United Left. That includes virtually all Sheridan's old friends and allies in his Pollok stomping ground.

Sheridan has announced that he will fight again for the SSP convenorship. He also gives a pretty broad hint that only a clean sweep of executive positions for his supporters at the national conference in October will persuade him to stick with the SSP. He obviously anticipates being able to pursue a successful political project based primarily on his newly-enhanced media profile.

This should set alarm bells ringing among all Sheridan's putative foot-soldiers. Sheridan's biggest solo initiative during his 18 months away from the leadership was to advocate - very publicly - mandatory jail sentences for all carriers of knives. Where will this kind of populist politics drag the SWP? I suppose we have the example of George Galloway and Respect as a strong pointer.

It is difficult to see how a split in the SSP can be avoided. None of the fragments that will remain will be able to lay claim to the mantle of a genuinely united socialist force. The United Left has the advantage over the SSP Majority on the grounds of honesty and integrity, but, as currently constituted, its name is an oxymoron - the UL is in fact a faction of the old ISM.

And the current (if precarious) EC majority has yet to account for its previous 'get rich quick' strategy which depended heavily on the popularity of Tommy Sheridan. Even in May 2003 voting slips carried Tommy Sheridan's name as convenor alongside that of the party. All of the current MSPs were elected to the Scottish parliament partly in the slipstream of Tommy Sheridan's meteoric rise - surely a party crisis looking for an excuse to erupt. Alan McCombes was the strategist and theoretician. He has yet to deliver a mea culpa for that abandonment of principle.

The almost inevitable collapse of the SSP as a project of left unity is a tragedy for left politics across Britain. The SSP went a long way towards creating a political space in which it was possible to debate a range of socialist politics - to breaking with the mentality of the sect. Its chasing of the chimera of left nationalism meant that the forces of socialism in Britain were divided in the face of a common British state. However, we can see clearly that no principled formation in England (or across Britain) exists to fill the vacuum. It is the left populism of Respect-like politics (and possibly Respect itself) that is likely to extend its sterile grip into Scotland.

Socialists in the SSP should fight the reprisals promised by Sheridan and his supporters. They should challenge a campaign that is based on lies and distortion. But, whatever the immediate outcome, the struggle for a unity of socialists that can challenge for working class power must begin afresh.