Tommy Sheridan, formerly the main public figure of the Scottish Socialist Party, has declared he will split away and form a new group at a meeting on 3 September.

This move suggests that Sheridan thought he would fail to win a majority at the SSP's conference due in October.

There is no sound political basis for the split. Sheridan's move is entirely based on his personal anger at leading SSP members who gave evidence, in Sheridan's recent libel case against the News of the World, that Sheridan himself had admitted to them some of the claims about his sex life that the News of the World had made.

The split is a "Sheridan party". Its political programme is to support Tommy Sheridan. With lamentable opportunism, the Socialist Worker Platform (SWP-linked) and CWI group (linked to Peter Taaffe's Socialist Party) within the SSP have jumped behind Sheridan.

Sheridan was coy about links with George Galloway. "I'm sure George will support what we do here in Scotland but it won't be a version or a form or an extension of Respect." With the strong SWP presence in Sheridan's faction, though, a Galloway-Sheridan link-up seems a certainty.

There is plenty to criticise and improve in the SSP: its over-electoralism, its Scottish nationalism, its softness on such figures as Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez. But against Sheridan's split it should be defended 100%.

We must not forget that it was the SSP - i.e. the SSP leaders who have done the writing and organising for the last decade, while Sheridan did the public speaking - that created Sheridan as a political being, as he has shown himself to be. The SSP leaders must be called to account for that. But to call them to account requires a political organism with vitality and structure to call them to account, i.e. a continuation and a rebuilding of the SSP.

Weblinks, news, and views on the crisis in the SSP

Statement from SSP Executive, 20/08/06 [1]
Scotsman report on Sheridan's split plan, 19/08/06 [2]
Appeal by SSP industrial organiser Richie Venton to trade unionists [3]
The initial "open letter" by Tommy Sheridan denouncing Allan McCombes and other SSP leaders [4]
Decisions of the SSP special National Council of 28/05/06 [5]
Report in the Scotsman of 05/06/06 of a speech by George Galloway backing Sheridan and denouncing the SSP for "Trotskyite Calvinism"
Scotsman report on Respect plans to intervene [6]
Scottish Socialist Voice editorial of 08/06/06 [7]
Tommy Sheridan's second letter, calling a special SSP conference [8]
Tommy Sheridan's letter to the SSP's paper, Scottish Socialist Voice, of 08/06/06 [9]
"SSP United Left" faction launched by supporters of the SSP leadership majority [10]
Comment from Solidarity and the AWL [11]
View from the CWI tendency in the SSP (supporters of the Socialist Party in England and Wales) [12]
View from the Socialist Worker tendency in the SSP (supporters of the SWP in England and Wales) [13]
Other material from the AWL and the Solidarity tendency of the SSP [14]