Scottish Socialist Party

Crisis in SSP

See below for news and views on the crisis in the SSP. here for the "open letter" by Tommy Sheridan denouncing McCombes and other SSP leaders; here for the decisions of the SSP special National Council of 28/05/06; here for the report in the Scotsman of 5 June of a speech by George Galloway backing Sheridan and denouncing the SSP for "Trotskyite Calvinism"; and here for the Scotsman 's report that Respect is planning to intervene; here for the Scottish Socialist Voice editorial of 8 June; here for Tommy Sheridan's second letter, calling a special SSP conference; here for Tommy Sheridan's...

Tommy Sheridan's call for a special SSP conference

Dear SSP Member: I enclose a copy of the Open Letter I felt compelled to distribute at the Emergency NC meeting of 28th May in Glasgow, I apologise for not sending a copy to you sooner but things have been hectic. Since wrote the letter on late Saturday, 27th May, several important developments have occurred: 1) The Sunday Herald of 28th May ran a front page story about a "senior SSP official"' who apparently supplied that paper with a signed affidavit concerning tie details of the special EC meeting of 9tn Nov. 2004 "within days" of the meeting! What a scandalous breach of confidence and...

"Our party, our decisions": SSP on Galloway and Sheridan

Scottish Socialist Voice editorial, 8 June 2006 . For a second time George Galloway has chosen, from his position as a London-based MP who has never been a member of the Scottish Socialist Party, to stand on the fringes while the SSP is under attack and hurl in a few extra bricks. Last week on TV and radio, he repeatedly insisted that the SSP must replace Colin Fox with Tommy Sheridan as convenor, and if we failed to do so, the party would "spiral into nothing". Which, he continued, would leave the English-based party he represents, Respect, with no choice but to consider organising in...

SSP decisions 28/05/06

Motions voted on at SSP Special National Council Sunday 28 May 2006, Glasgow. Emergency Motion from Inverness Branch (Inverness branch reported that they had convened a meeting on the Sunday morning of the NC, met and agreed this Emergency Motion. The NC voted to hear this motion and it was passed on a show of hands) This meeting notes the revelations in today's Sunday Herald that a senior SSP official handed over a sworn affidavit to that newspaper in November 2004 giving full details of the EC meeting at which Tommy Sheridan was forced to resign as convener. This meeting expresses anger and...

Sheridan declares civil war in SSP

ON 29 May Scottish Socialist Party leader Alan McCombes was freed from jail, where a judge had sent him after he refused to hand over SSP Executive minutes called for by the News of the World in the libel case brought by former SSP Convenor Tommy Sheridan. On 28 May, the SSP National Council had voted down the SSP Executive’s call on Sheridan to abandon the libel case, and decided to release the minutes. Sheridan had issued an open letter accusing fellow SSP members of the Scottish Parliament Rosie Kane, Carolyn Leckie, and Frances Curran of being “an unsavoury cabal of comrades at the core of...

to Holyrood

Meanwhile, George Galloway is seeking new pastures for his ambitious career plans. According to the 26 February Sunday Times, “George Galloway has revealed plans to stand for the Scottish parliament… in next year’s Holyrood elections” (February 26). The article quotes Galloway’s mouthpiece, Ron McKay: “George has not ruled out standing in another Westminster constituency, but he is more likely to stand in the Scottish parliament and/or the European parliament. He gets a lot of requests to stand in Scotland, particularly as the Scottish Socialist Party has weakened.” SSP members, and those of...

Galloway to challenge SSP?

The Scottish version of the Sunday Times says that George Galloway may stand for the Scottish Parliament wherever he can find a "highly dissatisfied" "ethnic component" in the electorate. Extract: "His Respect party had agreed not to field candidates in Scottish Elections. However, Galloway is said to have since received several requests to stand north of the border and he believes the decline of the SSP, following the departure of Tommy Sheridan as leader, has left an opening for another hard-left party in Scotland. "'George has not ruled out standing in another Westminster constituency but...

AWL leaflet for SSP weekend school 8-9 October 2005

Has the Left Lost the Will to Live? GALLOWAY ON THE SSP AND SSP POLICIES: “Unlike the SSP MSPs, with their denunciations of ‘fat cats’ and their average worker’s wage, Galloway disdains the whole issue. He’s not interested in money, he says. At the same time, he’s not the frugal type. ‘As I told Tommy Sheridan once, I couldn’t live on three workers’ wages.’” (“Scotsman”, 19th May 2003.) “Tommy is still fighting his corner in the SSP, but I fear he will have to accept that they have betrayed him and move on. … The idea that these unknown Trotskyite apparatchiks who have done him down are going...

A better version of bad

I recently attended “Socialism,” the annual summer school of the Scottish Socialist Party (that isn't in summer.) My experiences were simultaneously enjoyable, interesting and depressing. I don’t agree with those on the “English left” who think that the SSP is perfect. Its internal democracy has a lot of room for improvement; for example, it doesn’t publish internal debates or critical articles in its paper, the Scottish Socialist Voice. It is appallingly soft on Cuban Stalinism, so much so that the Cuban ambassador spoke at the closing rally. It is understandably but crudely anti-Labour, and...

Scottish Socialists back Iraqi labour movement

by Angela Paton, Kilmarnock SSP conference delegate To judge by the Scottish Socialist Party’s annual conference, which took place in Perth on 12–13 February, the party, despite problems, continues to represent a level of organisation and a commitment to working-class politics that place it in a completely different category from Respect. There were about 300 delegates and 100 observers present; the SSP now has 3,000 members, but, with not all of them active, the bigger factions are able to dominate with relatively small numbers. The International Socialist Movement, a majority split from...

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