Workers' Liberty

Your editorial about fair reporting of internal SSP matters “without malice or bias” would be hilarious if it wasn’t so seriously deceptive (see Voice 267).

Don’t you read your own paper? Immediately to the right of your editorial with it’s “without bias” claim is a National Council report laced with precisely the “bias” and lack of “balance” the Voice has become notorious for.

The first paragraph of any report is always the most important. It sets the scene. Yours claims the emergency NC was “called in response to the crisis precipitated by former convenor Tommy Sheridan’s legal action against News International”.

Is that so? Pretty straightforward then. It’s Tommy’s fault! Pure balance and no bias!!

Those who took, kept and alerted the press to the existence of a dodgy record or minute of a private and confidential discussion are in the clear. I mean it’s the normal thing to do in the labour movement.

Recording confidential discussions isn’t just a boss class practice after all. It’s what socialists do as well. My arse!!

You obviously promote the cabal line that it’s all Tommy’s fault but I think you’ll find a large, probably majority, number of comrades believe the mess we are in is the responsibility of those “comrades” who arranged to keep a secret record of a private meeting and make sure the media was aware of it’s existence. They have dragged the Party into a court case they should not be part of and their desire to do in Tommy Sheridan has blinded them and you to the damage being done. You are acting as the organ of the undeclared faction in the Party.

The current crisis is not “precipitated” by Tommy Sheridan but by a group of individuals who have acted in a duplicitous, anti-democratic and anti-socialist fashion. No secret and appropriately cooked minute, no Party involvement in an individual’s private court case! You will find this opinion widely held within the Party rank and file but not reflected in the factional pages of the Voice.

By the way your major page 8 Holyrood News piece on the Bankruptcy Bill managed to avoid mentioning the only SSP MSP who participated in the debate. Never mind the rest of the bourgeois press ignored me as well. My contribution on the dangers inherent in the land attachment section and the serious failure to protect benefits from bank arrestments inspired recognition and praise from Citizens Advice Scotland, Shelter and The Scottish Association of Law Centres. What a pity it was overlooked in my Party paper. Too busy conducting the factional war no doubt!

Myself and comrade Rosemary Byrne have grown accustomed to such marginalisation in the Voice but that doesn’t make it right.

The Voice has been a tool of the undeclared faction over the last 18 months and your alleged commitment to “fairness” and “balance” is increasingly cutting no ice with rank and file members.

Tommy Sheridan,

Glasgow