06.01.2011

Scabs and vengeance

Lessons must be learnt from the whole Tommy Sheridan episode, writes Sarah McDonald

The verdict in the Tommy Sheridan case should be seen as a blow to the workers’ movement and a victory for the long-running campaign against a prominent working class leader. On December 23 comrade Sheridan, former Scottish Socialist Party convenor and leader of the Solidarity breakaway, was found guilty of perjury by a majority verdict in Glasgow’s high court. The jury found he had lied in his successful defamation action against News International after the News of the World published allegations about his sexual life. News International has a thoroughly reactionary agenda and the NotW is not merely a rag filled with celebrity scandal exposés. Tommy Sheridan’s sex life provided it with the opportunity to bring him down.

If it had been possible to transport the Scottish left of the late 90s forward to the present day, comrades would doubtlessly find the experience quite unbelievable. For many who were part of the SSP, the last six years have been a time of political screw-ups on a grand scale and very public personal fallouts that have been both vitriolic and petty. No-one comes out of this one clean.

Sheridan’s decision to sue the News of the World for defamation was stupid and irresponsible. Those who, all too eagerly, cooperated with the police and News International to bring Sheridan down should be condemned. But, he should not have labelled those on the SSP leadership “scabs” for telling the truth when they were forced to - after all, why would anyone perjure themselves over someone else’s sex life?

The trial itself was unpleasant to follow: the hatred on public display from erstwhile comrades, the backstabbing and bickering, the bad-tempered courtroom exchanges, the implausible conspiracy theories concocted by Sheridan, the very public humiliation of comrades like Katrine Trolle, the sentimentality in Sheridan’s speeches, using his wife, Gail, and his daughter to win sympathy. While, quite correctly, comrade Sheridan did make use of every opportunity to attack the News of the World, in the end the evidence was overwhelming - and the jury was clearly not sufficiently class-conscious to ignore it, as the one in the original defamation case had been.

According to Scotland on Sunday, comrade Sheridan’s legal team are preparing an appeal.^[1] There are various grounds for this, as discussed by blogger James Doleman,^[2] who has provided by far the most complete reportage of the entire trial. Sheridan could appeal on the grounds that key emails pertinent to the case have been lost; that vital witnesses such as Fiona McGuire (a former activist with whom Sheridan was accused of having an affair) and Glenn Mulclaire (a private investigator who has been convicted of phone-hacking celebrities and who Sheridan believes hacked into his voicemail) were missing; or that the judge did not put enough emphasis in his summation to the jury on the possibility of a ‘not proven’ verdict (a peculiarity of Scottish law that, while not the same as ‘innocent’, usually leads to an acquittal).

In the meantime, the News of the World will seek to overturn the £200,000 damages award which followed the 2006 defamation case. Sheridan is due to be sentenced on January 26, and it could be as long as five years that he goes down for if he does not win his appeal.

The perjury trial was a more difficult case to win than the 2006 defamation case. Comrade Sheridan had sacked his legal team then too, playing the ‘one man against the system’ card, relying on his oratorical skill, the lack of tangible evidence and his wife’s testimony. This time, not so lucky. While a jury might persuade itself that all 16 of the former SSP comrades who testified that he admitted to visiting a swingers club at the infamous executive meeting of November 9 2004 had been lying, it must have been much more difficult to dismiss the evidence of their own ears provided by the so-called McNeilage tape. This, of course, was the video secretly recorded by the self-serving former friend and comrade of Sheridan’s, George McNeilage, which the latter had despicably sold to the News of the World for £200,000 and was instrumental in the instigation of the perjury case in the first place. No, this time it was always going to be harder.

Conspiracy

Comrade Sheridan’s implied allegation that the whole thing was either a joint conspiracy or separate, coincidental conspiracies by his former comrades, the News of the World and the police to bring him down was pretty far-fetched - though undoubtedly sections of the media and the state were out to get him (given how rife perjury is thought to be in the Scottish courts, how many cases of perjury are brought to trial?). And it is certainly true that some SSP executive members showed an obscene willingness - enthusiasm even - to collaborate with the police and see him convicted, although, of course, he did stupidly admit to the Cupids club visit to the entire EC. While his attempts to turn the tables by putting the News of the World in the dock would no doubt have struck a chord with some jurors, this was insufficient to outweigh their certainty that he had indeed lied.

The whole foolish affair is a sad outcome for someone who has played such an important role in the working class movement in Scotland. His dedication to the workers’ cause, his militancy during the anti-poll tax campaign and his oratory won him huge admiration and support - and hatred from the class enemy.

The idea that, as Alan McCombes commented, Sheridan has “done more damage to the Scottish left than the News of the World and Margaret Thatcher combined” is way over the top. He did, however, play a pivotal role in the events that reduced the SSP from a potentially powerful (albeit left nationalist) force with six MSPs, numerous branches across Scotland and a significant layer of dedicated activists to the political joke that the organisation is today.

Of course, as everyone on the Scottish left knows, it did not have to be this way. There were so many mistakes made in relation to Sheridan that it is hard to know where to start. Most would begin in November 2004 with, what Colin Fox called the SSP’s “9/11” meeting (held on November 9). That was when comrade Sheridan admitted, according to the overwhelming majority of those present, that some of the NotW allegations made against him were true, but “they can’t prove it” - and he tried to convince the executive to back him in taking the News of the World to court. On BBC Scotland’s documentary, The rise and lies of Tommy Sheridan,^[3] Rosie Kane states that in the course of the meeting Sheridan had gone from appearing quite remorseful to reverting to his usual rhetorical mode, talking about the political capital the SSP could gain by taking on the NotW. According to comrade Kane, he expected everyone in the meeting to uncritically support what he was saying, as they usually did. Only, she said, this time they didn’t.

This, in and of itself, is telling. Sheridan was used to being the public face of the SSP, and the majority was usually prepared to go along with him. Not this time. Here they were not looking at a matter of political principle, but at a court action over (partly true) allegations about his private life. The advice offered to Sheridan at this point was either to insist that his private life was exactly that - private - and refuse to comment on the allegations or to confess all. It is likely that, had he taken either of those options, then the whole thing would have blown over fairly quickly and with minimal damage to the movement.

The only really principled position, however, would have been to insist that people’s private lives are their own, whatever shape or form that may take, and not buy into the bourgeois ideology that only committed, monogamous, heterosexual (preferably married) relationships are acceptable. Even George Galloway apparently advised Sheridan not to sue, as it would “open up his entire personal life”.^[4]

Alas, Tommy’s ego would not allow him to follow this advice and he pursued his case against the wishes of his comrades. And here we see the SSP comrades’ missed opportunity to nip this thing in the bud. It turns out that Alan McCombes had given a sworn affidavit to the Herald newspaper, to the effect that if Sheridan did not resign as SSP convenor then the party would tell all - using the bourgeois media as a leverage over a comrade is hardly the most principled approach to take.

While Sheridan did resign, he was clearly showing no signs of taking his comrades’ advice to drop the action against News International and by this stage the writing was on the wall. The SSP should have told Sheridan that if he went ahead with his defamation case he would be expelled from the organisation. Once Sheridan had confessed to the executive, the SSP itself would be involved, whether it wanted to be or not.

As has been argued in this paper consistently by myself and others, the roots of this whole fiasco goes back much further than a small room in Glasgow in November 2004. They go well back into the 1990s with the anti-poll tax campaign and Scottish Militant Labour. The ego that is Sheridan was cultivated during those struggles and shaped as part of the creation of the SSP. The two were inextricably linked. There was no way in which the SSP could exist as before without the figure of Tommy Sheridan as its public face. Not only was the idealised identity of Sheridan as a working class hero, a militant fighter and firebrand socialist promoted by the SSP, but the leadership also conjured up the persona of a clean-living family man - trying to be the “Daniel O’Donnell of Scottish politics”, as Alan McCombes said in court.

However, what comrade McCombes fails to acknowledge is that he and his other former Militant comrades were complicit in creating that identity. Sheridan’s private life was a far cry from that public persona and that made the allegations of affairs and group sex all the more damning. The desire to protect this clean-living image at all costs drove him to the politically suicidal decision to sue the NotW. The public persona peddled by the SSP would end up contributing to the situation where comrades were put in the impossible position of either having to lie under oath and risk prosecution over a matter that had nothing to do with advancing the cause of working class or tell the truth and effectively align themselves with the NotW.

Victory

After Sheridan’s surprising victory against the News of the World, in which 11 SSP members gave evidence against him, it was clear that the SSP was heading for a split, and in September 2006 it happened. Sheridan left the SSP, followed by the Socialist Workers Party’s members in Scotland, what remained of the Committee for a Workers’ International’s Scottish section and other individuals to form Solidarity, antagonistically self-branded as “Scotland’s Socialist Movement”. But the defamation trial and all of the unpleasantness and pettiness that it brought into the public domain cost the left its credibility and in the 2007 Scottish elections the left lost all its seats. In subsequent elections neither Solidarity nor the SSP have been capable of polling much more than one or two percent of the vote.

The anger and frustration stirred up by the events have taken their toll on comrades both sides of the divide and there remains a good deal of acrimony between former comrades. On winning his defamation case, Sheridan labelled six of his former comrades “scabs” in the Daily Record. In doing so, understandably, he upset a lot of people - one of which was his old friend and best man, George McNeilage.

McNeilage’s actions were surely the worst of any in this whole affair - demanding £250,000 for helping News International to nail Sheridan. Again, the SSP failed to take action. McNeilage should have been expelled for his blatant crossing of class lines (the significant financial gain making the whole thing even slimier), but the leadership refused to take any action because it was “not in their culture”.^[5] Commenting on the verdict the SSP claims: “we have no desire for vengeance” (December 12 2010). But they were by now out to get Sheridan and in effect condoned McNeilage.

There are many lessons that we can draw from this disaster. The left must end its obsession with chasing charismatic figures and instead use the talented, charismatic individuals within our ranks in a disciplined, effective way. Obviously, Sheridan himself should be held responsible. Not for his sexual activities (that is his own private matter), but for taking legal action to protect a façade, and for forcing others into that unenviable courtroom situation. But nothing could excuse the contemptible way in which some of them deliberately tried to put him behind bars in response to his “scabs” taunt.

Sheridan was targeted by the News of the World for his role as a working class leader - and that is why we side with him against News International, the police and the state, irrespective of his own foolishness and irresponsible behaviour.

Notes

The Scotsman December 26.
sheridantrial.blogspot.com/2010/12/grounds-for-appeal.html
The rise and lies of Tommy Sheridan BBC Scotland, Thursday December 23.
The Herald January 2.