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Sheridan v News International case Imminent.

Galloway Sticks His Oar In.

George Galloway has been on television in scotland this evening telling us that unless the SSP reinstates Sheridan as leader, Respect will stand in Scotland.
 
tollbar said:
George Galloway has been on television in scotland this evening telling us that unless the SSP reinstates Sheridan as leader, Respect will stand in Scotland.
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Has this got the support of his Islamo-Trot allies?

In the unlikely event of this line really being adopted by Respec', the Social Workers in Scotland are going to be in a very awkward position.
 
tollbar said:
George Galloway has been on television in scotland this evening telling us that unless the SSP reinstates Sheridan as leader, Respect will stand in Scotland.
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Fucking tosser.
 
Fullyplumped said:
And the spinning begins.
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That's interesting.

1. It seems Galloway & Respec' are talking of Respec' standing in Scotland if the SSP implodes. That's rather different from saying they'd stand unless Sheridan is brought back as top comrade.

2. If it is true that Sheridan's SSP comrades have accused him of drug dealing, trafficking women from eastern Europe and using prostitutes, perhaps Sheridan should be suing them, instead of News International. :eek:



What a fuckin' mess!
 
There's a gloriously abusive article by Allan Brown in the Sunday Times, obviously from the News International stable based in the same offices in Tradeston as the News of the World - not too far from the SSP's offices.

"Once a beacon of poker-faced Trotskyite rectitude, the SSP has thrown itself to the wolves to emerge bloodied and decimated. Its former leader, Tommy Sheridan, is embroiled in that most bourgeois of concepts, a sex scandal, a snare he this week surreally countered by claiming that his former comrades believe him to be involved in the eastern European sex trade."

"Electable only in areas where a sufficient number of friends, fellow travellers and close relatives of the party apparatchiks live, the SSP long ago settled into its role as the Kevin the Teenager of Scottish politics, sulkily bemoaning how unfair everything was.

Hard-left groups commonly devolve into schism and recrimination. Being typically small and secretive, they are more like cells than fully fledged organisations and are prone to cell division. And, because their beliefs resemble self-evident truths, it is rarely disagreement over policy that destroys these parties but disagreement over tactics, such as how to handle libel cases or whether to hand over documents to the Court of Session."

And, most relevantly to this bit of the discussion,

"Whether Sheridan is vindicated or the party is bankrupted in court, the ground has been prepared for an independent Sheridan to break free and dazzle Glasgow’s disgruntled, sink-estate poor with his 100-watt charisma."

Because that really is the point, isn't it. Tommy Sheridan will be in there, somewhere, when the paper sellers and also-rans of Scottish trotskyism have buzzed off. He has a rapport with ordinary Scots in Glasgow and surrounding towns that the rest couldn't dream of, and probably despise.

The question is who will hang on to his coat tails.
 
JHE said:
That's interesting.

1. It seems Galloway & Respec' are talking of Respec' standing in Scotland if the SSP implodes. That's rather different from saying they'd stand unless Sheridan is brought back as top comrade.

2. If it is true that Sheridan's SSP comrades have accused him of drug dealing, trafficking women from eastern Europe and using prostitutes, perhaps Sheridan should be suing them, instead of News International. :eek:



What a fuckin' mess!
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It seems from the SOS article that the trigger for Respect will come if Sheridan splits, or is forced out. Galloway made it perfectly clear on Television yesterday that he wants Sheridan back as leader, see STV site, Sheridans document was distributed by Respect member (not even SSP/SWP) Robina Quereshi who was also at the Sheridan/Mullen lunch at Holyrood. Respect are up to their eyeballs in trying to split the SSP.

And by the way. Sheridan has not produced one shred of independent evidence to back up his claims about accusations.
 
If Galloway was so concerned about the Scottish left, why didn't he stand as an MSP rather than fucking off to London?

The whole situation is godawful. Perhaps the worst thing about it is that the even the membership doesn't know
a) what specifically Tommy is accused of,
b) whether there is any truth in it, or
c) whether the whole thing has been whipped up for factional reasons.

It really is a dog's breakfast :(

.
 
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/default.stm

There is a video of a clash between Galloway and Rosie Kane of the SSP on the above web page. neither came out with much credit Galloway in true Stalinist fashion calls the sheridans crititcs in the SSP Trotskite Calvinists. Galloway claimed to have been involved in scotish politics since before Rosie Kane was born which makes him about 82 years of age.
 
Best quote from that is carried in The Scotsman -

Colin Fox, the current SSP leader, said Mr Galloway should be supporting the party as it stands. "The SSP didn't go calling on people to vote for Michael Barrymore when George was in trouble on Big Brother," he added. :D
 
Macullam said:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/default.stm

There is a video of a clash between Galloway and Rosie Kane of the SSP on the above web page. neither came out with much credit Galloway in true Stalinist fashion calls the sheridans crititcs in the SSP Trotskite Calvinists. Galloway claimed to have been involved in scotish politics since before Rosie Kane was born which makes him about 82 years of age.
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Just watched the video - Rosie Kane is in complete denial, whilst GG is not even a member of the SSP and is sticking his oar in to create maximum damage. And what a sexist, arrogrant prick the man is.

And a fucking hypocrite - remember all that about women talking openly about sex as "profoundly shocking to someone of my age and class" (big brother)? But when Tommy gets involves in sexual fun and games (of one sort or another) anyone who criticises is a "Trotskity Calvinist"? Double standards or what?
 
Macullam said:
http://www.scottishsocialistvoice.net/pages/centrepages.html
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It is sheer pompous arrogance that leads George Galloway to believe he can instruct SSP members on who they elect within the ranks of our party.
We suggest he halt his imperial march on Scotland from London, and either join the SSP, where he would have to donate half his wages to the party, or shut up.
As Colin Fox told press at the weekend when asked for a response:
“We know all about solidarity. The SSP didn’t go calling on people to vote for Michael Barrymore when George was in trouble on Big Brother.”


nicely put!
 
tollbar said:
George Galloway has been on television in scotland this evening telling us that unless the SSP reinstates Sheridan as leader, Respect will stand in Scotland.
Click to expand...

which assumes the Scottish SWP will follow his orders. from what i know- rank and files SWPers up here are simply not prepared to jumop ship
 
JimPage said:
which assumes the Scottish SWP will follow his orders. from what i know- rank and files SWPers up here are simply not prepared to jumop

ship
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I doubt if some of their leaders in London are too chuffed either. It goes once again how little control anyone has over the georgeous one.
 
The print edition of the Sunday Herald is running a story this morning that Tommy Sheridan is to be investigated by police over the circulation of the email carrying the Cardonald motion and an admission by one of Sheridans allies that he (Martin Mcardie) was responsible for drawing up the motion, getting it through the branch and passing it on to Sheridan for circulation.
 
Vince Mills burys the Scottish Socialist Party in todays Morning Star. I bet he enjoyed writing this article:

Lessons for left in past and present
(Thursday 15 June 2006)
VINCE MILLS
Voices of Scotland with VINCE MILLS

THIS year will, no doubt, see retrospectives on the anniversaries of some historical landmarks. No, not the England victory in the 1966 World Cup, enough of that, please - I am thinking of the outbreak of the Spanish civil war in 1936 or Khruschov's 1956 secret speech to the closed session of the 20th party congress.

An admittedly lesser anniversary, but, in the light of the crisis enveloping the Scottish Socialist Party, a relevant one for all that, is the launch of the Scottish Labour Party (SLP) in 1976 led by Jim Sillars, the then Labour MP for South Ayrshire.

The SLP split from the Labour Party largely because of disaffection over the increasingly right-wing drift by the Callaghan-led Labour government on the one hand and the failure of that government to make any progress on home rule for Scotland on the other.

The SLP quickly adopted a left-wing programme, although not left enough for some of its members, and support for independence in Scotland.

Despite a comparatively positive press for a left-wing party, the SLP quickly ran into the electoral quicksand. With only a few council seats to its name and polling only 583 votes in the Garscadden by-election in 1978, it disappeared without trace in the 1979 general election, where it fought three seats. Only Sillars polled well, but not well enough. He lost his seat.

Why dwell on this, however briefly? Well, much of the current analysis of the crisis facing the Scottish left and, in particular, the SSP, is offered in a historical and political vacuum.

Let us consider the role of leadership. Whereas it may be true that the specifics of the SSP situation are entirely new, many of the issues that it has thrown up are certainly not new for any organisation seeking to build a healthy internal democracy in a society obsessed with media profile and leadership positioning.

We are used to charges being made against Labour Party leaders, not least the current incumbent of No 10, that they routinely dismiss the democratic decisions of the Labour Party, assuming that they have failed to derail them at Labour Party conference in the first place.

What is probably forgotten is that the left of the Sillarsite SLP was highly critical of what they saw as a leadership that was domineering and manipulative and frustrated with a Scottish media that assumed that what a leading MP said was what the membership of the SLP believed. Sillars was not the first left MP to dominate the political stances of his party.

The Independent Labour Party's charismatic leader Jimmy Maxton MP once insisted that the ILP change a conference position because he could not argue it in Parliament. The ILP membership complied.

Since its inception, the SSP has struggled with this issue. Former convener Tommy Sheridan is a gifted media and Scottish parliamentary performer who can make socialist ideas sound like common sense. Inevitably, at least from a ratings perspective, it was to him that the media looked if it wanted the SSP take on any given issue.

Of course, this generated concerns in the SSP and, I would argue, in the wider left, about how both talent can be put to use and democratic control over party policy retained.

In the end, I think that it was this underlying tension which led to the decision by the SSP executive to remove Sheridan from the leadership, a decision which some have considered fatal for that party.

This is not a trivial matter for any socialist and it should certainly not be dismissed as a matter of personalities, although the tensions in the party were, no doubt, real enough.

These tensions were also well founded. Like the SLP before it, the SSP quickly began to lose electoral momentum after initial successes and, crucially, this began to happen before the crisis of leadership. It is this more than any other issue that the Scottish left should think long and hard about.

The SLP had a more left-wing profile than the increasingly unpopular Callaghan Labour government and espoused left nationalism at a point when the Scottish National Party had 11 MPs in Westminster. Still, it could not build an electoral base at the expense of either the central party of labour or the central party of nationalism.

Yet it is by displacing these political colossuses that the SSP hoped and hopes to flourish. I believe that, like the SLP before it, its increasing failure to make progress heightened tensions in the SSP.

In the 2001 general election, the SSP polled 72,528 votes, over 3 per cent. By the May 2005 general election, the SSP vote was down to 43,516, under 2 per cent. The central reason offered by some SSP supporters for this is the loss of Sheridan as leader.

Arguably, Westminster elections are not the best way to gauge support for the SSP - it does better in non-first-past-the-post elections. In the 2003 Holyrood poll, the SSP picked up 7.68 per cent of the vote on regional lists across Scotland, but, interestingly, by the June 2004 EU elections, which are conducted on a PR basis, the SSP vote had dropped to 5.21 per cent before Sheridan resigned as the SSP national convener in November 2004.

The numbers are perhaps less important than the extent to which the SSP was being seen as an emergent force in the comparatively new political context of devolved Scotland.

For reasons that are beyond the scope of this article, but which lie in working class allegiance to Labour as the vehicle for progress, whether you believe that to be a forlorn hope or not, the SSP, like the SLP before it, has remained marginal.

Few commentators in the mainstream press, however, have chosen to look to the frustrations and difficulties that such failure engenders as the basis of the current crisis in the SSP, choosing instead the garish headlines that the politics of personality offers.

For socialists, understanding the past is critical to navigating the future. So, perhaps we should take anniversaries a little more seriously, but, if it's all the same to you, can we skip the one commemorating 1978 World Cup in Argentina?

• Vince Mills is secretary of the Campaign for Socialism.
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Ho, Ho.

Vince Mills on the politics of personality.

remind me again who Vince Mills former MP was ?.

Mills did a good job of controlling that one didnt he ?.
 
Council bye election result

West Dunabrtonshire UA< Dunbarton West

SNP 592 45.1 (+ 24.5%)

Lab 588 44.8% (- 16.4%)

SSP 75 5.7% (- 12.5%)

Con 58 4.4% (+ 4.4%)

Maj 4 SNP gain from Lab
Turnout 46.2%
 
Macullam said:
West Dunabrtonshire UA< Dunbarton West

SNP 592 45.1 (+ 24.5%)

Lab 588 44.8% (- 16.4%)

SSP 75 5.7% (- 12.5%)

Con 58 4.4% (+ 4.4%)

Maj 4 SNP gain from Lab
Turnout 46.2%
Click to expand...

So the SNP are the prefered protest vote in Scotland are they Macullam... still?
 
Divisive Cotton said:
So the SNP are the prefered protest vote in Scotland are they Macullam... still?
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I was just wondering how much the recent internecine war fare had contributed to this slump/ Some in the SSP view this as a victory given the recent conflict.
 
Macullam said:
I was just wondering how much the recent internecine war fare had contributed to this slump/ Some in the SSP view this as a victory given the recent conflict.
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in my view, very little impact. unfortunatley polling poorly in by-elections well before the problems became public..

hopefully, better times ahead in council elections in 2007, which will be by PR

victory my a***. anyone who suggests that to poll a third of the vote you did previosuly in a ward needs a reality check.
 
Nigel Irritable said:
There seems to be a general feeling that McCombes and his close associates have been the ideological driving force in the SSP's slide into outright nationalism and also its move towards certain forms of gender politics (quotas and the like). How much these issues actually divide them from Sheridan and his supporters is open to question however.
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Yes, McCombes looks like a bit of an arsehole to me.
 
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