Tommy Sheridan arrested on perjury charge

Tommy Sheridan is facing yet another fight in his colourful career as Scotland's best known socialist. He has been arrested on suspicion of perjury arising from his widely publicised defamation case against the News of the World for which he was awarded £200,000 damages. Sheridan has not seen a penny of this, as the News of the World appealed against their decision. This prompted a police enquiry into allegations that Tommy and his supporters told lies at the trial held in 2006.

It has been reported that nine officers raided his home in Glasgow whilst he was broadcasting for a talk radio station in Edinburgh, causing truama to his wife and young child. Tommy is naturally very angry at the police actions, which he rightly claims to have been unneccessary and over the top. Tommy has come out fighting declaring that Rupert Murdoch, owner of the News of the World, has it in for him.

All right minded socialists would condemn any attempt by the wealthy and influential capitalist press to use the resources and power of the police to do their dirty work for them, as seems to be happening. It seems that Murdoch, an American billionaire who doesn't pay a penny tax in this country, can just snap his fingers and get the police in Scotland to do his bidding. Activists remember the thousands of hours of Liverpool police time wasted trying to get some dirt on Derek Hatton, deputy leader of the Liverpool Council guilty only of fighting the Tories on behalf of working people. We remember the absurd charges circulated against miners' leader Arthur Scargill of siphoning off union funds in the great miners' strike of 1984-85.

Socialists would also say that lies are sometimes justified against the forces of the establishment in order to defend the gains of working people, and would quote the example of John McLean in his famous declaration to the capitalists court that "I come here not as the accused but as the accuser of capitalism."

However, the problem for Tommy is that no one on the left in Scotland gives a damn what the News of the World says, as far as his alleged lies in court are concerned. It was the way Tommy and his accusers within his own party had a furious row leading to a split that concerns us. The row was about Tommy taking the NoW to court. The split apparently blew up out of nowhere. In fact it was the inevitable outcome of a wrong turn, false perspectives and a fundamental misunderstanding by the SSP of the tasks facing socialists in Scotland.

In the process the Scottish Socialist Party, including the faction of Alan McCoombes the ex Militant member, was effectively destroyed. That is the main issue which concerns not only the SSP but also Solidarity, the new party Tommy formed when charged with bringing the SSP into disrepute, which is the real substance of the matter.

The damage not only done to the SSP but to the socialist movement in Scotland will take many years to heal. The SSP and Solidarity had disastrous Scottish election results earlier this year. The SSP is a shadow of its former self with membership down on previous years despite claims of a comeback. Solidarity does not appear to be doing much better. Its only councillor recently defected to Labour. Any signs of revival for those parties and the cause of socialism in general may well be stopped in its tracks by another court case which will drag the present and former leaders of the SSP through the mud of a perjury trial.

The history of this sorry turn of events can be traced back to the early 1990s and the split by former leading members of Scottish Militant, including Tommy Sheridan and Alan McCoombes away from their marxist ideals of working within the mass party of working people, the Labour Party, and looking for an easy way forward to socialism through the formation of an alternative party, the SSP. It was doomed to failure from the start, despite temporary successes in electing six MSPs to the Scottish Parliament. In drifting away from their marxist roots and attempting to court populism through alliances with the supporters of bourgeois nationalism, the die was cast for inevitable splits. That is the way of sectarian parties which try to operate outside the mass movement. The fact that these splits happened over Tommy's alleged social habits rather than political ideas were neither here nor there, and the results are there for all to see. Socialist Appeal takes no satisfaction in another court fiasco. Sadly, many of his ex colleagues who are still hurting as a result of the consenquences of last year, will probably be hoping that Tommy gets his come uppance from capitalist law instigated by part of Rupert Murdoch's media empire. That is the extent that the SSP has fallen and the danger is that by association all socialists are suffering in the eyes of the very people we strive to support and win over to the ideas of socialism.