Emancipation & Liberation

Press release from the CWI Scotland announcing their exit from the SSP

Originally published on the CWI website

The Committee for a Workers International platform of the SSP has agreed to support the building of a new party of socialism in Scotland.

We believe the SSP is now effectively finished as a party that could seek to organise and represent the working class of Scotland. The name of the SSP has been dragged through the mud by the actions of the leadership majority. The CWI believes that the energies and efforts of socialists is now better utilised in building a new force for working class struggle and socialism.

While supporting the idea and building support for a new party the CWI will argue for:

• Any new party to be expressly socialist in character, including in its name.
• At least a basic action programme that deals with the central issues of poverty, low pay, war, workers rights, opposition to neo-liberal policies and other issues facing the working class movement in Scotland and internationally. Central to this is the need for a socialist solution to these problems.
• Democratic structures for the party including an accountable leadership with the right of recall and the right of tendencies and platforms to organise and sell and distribute its material, including publicly.
• All elected representatives of any new party to live on a skilled workers wage.

We will build for a maximum turnout for the September 3rd meeting called by Tommy Sheridan and Rosemary Byrne to discuss launching a new party for socialism.

The CWI platform of the SSP welcomed the victory of Tommy Sheridan over the News of the World. It was a victory for the left and for socialists in Scotland and internationally over one of the biggest media empires on the planet. Its owner Rupert Murdoch is close to both Tony Blair and George Bush. This victory therefore carried important political implications.

None more so than the impact it has had on the Scottish Socialist Party itself. Despite our political differences with Tommy Sheridan, which led to Tommy and other leading members of the SSP leaving the CWI in 2001, we believed it is should have been possible to utilise this sensational defeat of News International to help rebuild the SSP.

Potentially Tommy Sheridan’s victory should have been a victory for the entire SSP. Unfortunately, a majority of the current Executive Committee have, by their actions, made it clear that they will never accept Tommy Sheridan’s victory. And at all costs, no matter what the damage to the SSP, they seem set on a scorched earth policy.

That is the only conclusion to be drawn from their actions which have included a sustained personal campaign against Tommy Sheridan since his court victory. They have abused their control of the EC, the website of the party to pursue their campaign against Tommy Sheridan. All this has done is to increase their political isolation especially amongst workers and trade unionists both inside and outside the party. We expect the overwhelming majority of active trade unionists to now leave the SSP.

There is an urgent need to rebuild the socialist movement in Scotland on a principled basis. There are hundreds of thousands of people in Scotland screaming out for an alternative to the tired establishment parties. All of whom are pursuing variants of the same destructive neo-liberal capitalist agenda.

Despite the political differences we have with him we support Tommy Sheridan playing a central role in that alongside the hundreds of ordinary SSP members and the thousands of trade unionists, young people and anti-war activists who want to build a fighting principled socialist movement. The chaos and carnage in the Lebanon and the burning need to build a movement to end poverty and inequality here in Scotland demands a socialist response. The CWI is committed to helping build that alternative for the working class of Scotland.

Committee for a Workers’ International
21st August 2006

The Socialist Worker platform justify their decision to walk away from the SSP

There can have been very few times when there was such widespread public revulsion against the government. Lebanon is on everyone’s lips and the world seems an increasingly dangerous place in Bush and Blair’s hands. It seems that the only people who do not see the connection between imperialist war and the growth of terrorism are a few Cabinet time-servers.

In that sense the need for a political formation that can express and organize that anger and frustration was never more urgent. We know the people who are demanding that kind of organization; we have marched with them on anti-war demonstrations and most recently in protest at the destruction of Lebanon by Israel. We mobilised with them for the G8 demonstrations and most importantly for the Alternative Summit that followed the Make Poverty History march.

The potential for a mass organization of the left that can draw together all these people is obvious. Yet it is also very clear that the SSP has completely failed to build it.

The reasons for that are political. Underlying the bitter personal exchanges of recent months is an idea of political organization very different from ours. We joined the SSP to build a mass party that could draw together those opposed to war, those fighting discrimination and oppression, those who had joined an anti-capitalist movement to fight the multinationals and their political servants, those who were shocked at environmental collapse, those Muslims who were now more than ever the object of racism and harassment.

That is still our purpose. Sadly, it is obvious that the SSP is not that party, as we had hoped it would be, and despite the work and effort we put in to try and make it happen. Yet the need as well as the potential support for this broad, democratic and active anti-capitalist organization are greater than ever. And there are many both inside and outside the SSP today who have stated their commitment to the project. That is what we now have to build. And it is important that people have the opportunity to express their support in their activity as well as electorally.

We can build that united activity around the key issues on which there is already broad agreement. We are opposed to the imperialist war in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Lebanon. We are in solidarity with the Muslim community in Britain who are part of our movement. We are committed to fighting racism in all its forms. We are internationalists who see ourselves as part of a global struggle against the capitalist system. We are implacably opposed to all and any discrimination on grounds of gender whatever form it takes. We are committed to social justice and the proper use of society’s resources for the benefit of all its members. We are for the defence of pension rights. We support trade unionists wherever they struggle to improve and defend their members’ rights and conditions of work. We are for a defence of the environment against the rapacious economic instruments that destroy it in the name of profit.

Today it is clear that war is the central question that unites us all. A new Scottish left can find its focus and its launching point in our common revulsion against Blair and Bush’s war. On September 23rd the whole of the British left will march on the Labour Party Conference in Manchester under the banner Out Now Britain and America out of Iraq, Blair out of power. Let that be the founding moment of a new Scottish left that looks resolutely out at the world and shares the determination to change it.

Mike Gonzalez for SW Platform

Motion passed at SW meeting on 20.08.06

At a members meeting held today in Glasgow, the members of the Socialist Worker Platform of the SSP unanimously agreed the following motion.

This aggregate of the Socialist Worker Platform recognises with some sadness that the SSP is no longer the broad and open mass party of the left we committed ourselves to building when we joined it some five years ago. While the imperialist war intensifies and spreads into Lebanon, and the level of public anger and opposition grows, the SSP has proved unable to respond to that anger or provide any direction for it.

The potential for building a broad and inclusive organization of the Scottish left is as great as ever. It is the duty of socialists to respond to and build on that potential. We welcome the initiative of calling an open public meeting of the Scottish Left on September 3rd in Glasgow and will actively work to build it, in the belief that it could represent the first stage in building new political formation that can answer the needs of the many socialists and activists in Scotland, embracing all strands of the movement including Muslim organizations taking a leading role in the antiwar movement and all those involved in the resistance to G8.

The SW Platform believes that the ‘Time to Go’ demonstration at the Labour Party conference in Manchester on September 23rd can provide a common focus for every section of the movement and a launching point for a new Scottish left that will be open, democratic, internationalist and committed to the building of a new and better world.

The RCN Statement to members in response to Sheridan’s appeal for a split

The Scottish Socialist Party has been held up throughout the UK and beyond as a model for socialist unity. It was built on the firm ground of direct action and working class resistance. It included the vast majority of socialist organisations in Scotland and local branch organisations of British trade unions.

The SSP is now fighting for its very existence. In the wake of his battle in the bourgeois courts, Tommy Sheridan, the Committee for a Workers International (CWI) and the Socialist Workers’ Platform have all called for a split and are attempting to form a new party.

The RCN has argued that by taking his libel case to the courts, Tommy Sheridan has not only been doing battle with the News of the World but has also used the same court room to conduct another battle – against the SSP. He has in fact been carrying out an anti party agenda.

Fiction

Tommy’s initiation of legal action against News of the World, against the unanimous advice of the party’s executive led to the dragging of eleven SSP Executive members (including 3 MSPs) and office bearers to court against their will. They were not prepared to perjure themselves under oath; to say that the party’s official minute was a lie; and that they were part of an anti-Tommy conspiracy. This is what Tommy demanded in order to maintain the fiction of his chosen public image.

Sheridan’s actions since winning the case have confirmed this: He sold his story to the Daily Record, a New Labour tabloid, attacking those comrades who had advised him not to take the case and then were compelled to attend court as scabs. He then announced his intention to take back my {his} party at the next conference by challenging Colin Fox (who he previously supported) for the party convenorship. He said the SSP required a man of steel to see it through the difficult times.

Sheridan has now made a call to split the SSP supported by the CWI & Socialist Worker platforms. We can only assume that he has added up the numbers and is not convinced he can win a conference majority for his return.

Solidarity: an inauspicious beginning

The basis for the proposed new party is not very auspicious. The essential founding principle of the new organisation appears to be unquestioned support for Tommy and Gail as President and (unelected) First Lady. The two other main sponsors, the CWI and SWP can not bear to be in the same organisation in England, Wales or Ireland. In England and Wales they each promote their own front organisations, Respect and the Campaign for a New Workers’ Party. Similarly in Ireland, the CWI’s Socialist party stands separately from the Socialist Workers party. In the ‘Six Counties’, the CWI promotes single issue candidates and trade union officials in elections to the Assembly, whilst the SWP promote the populist Socialist and Environmental Alliance.

Meanwhile, in Scotland, Tommy Sheridan, a prominent sponsor of the nationalist ‘Independence First’ campaign, and supporter of mandatory sentencing for knife crime, is allied with these two Left unionist organisations, which also strongly disagree with each other over trade union work and the current anti-war movement. Further splits would appear to be likely.

The RCN opposes the cult of the individual which has led in part to this situation. No one individual is above party democracy. Tommy’s ego has led him to ignore the sound advice of his comrades not to take this case to court. Since the case, he has indulged his celebrity through exposure in the media, even posing in white dressing gowns with his wife and child!

Defend the SSP, defend socialist unity

The RCN has worked as an open platform, firmly committed to the SSP. We promote socialist republicanism and internationalism from below. We continue to defend the gains represented by the SSP.

The split in the SSP is a major setback for the socialist and working class movement particularly in Scotland but also by extension, in England, Wales, Ireland and internationally.

The RCN will continue to fight for socialist unity by taking account of the mistakes that have been made.

Democracy, transparency and accountability are essential in a socialist organisation. We argued that the executive minute should have been made available to the party immediately. It could then have been challenged/corrected/amended or agreed as a correct record. It is worth remembering, that Tommy also asked for the minute to be kept secret.

Socialists should not use the bourgeois courts in this manner – If Tommy had been injured as the result of an article in the gutter press, the political response would have been to mount a mass campaign against the News of the World, involving trade unionists and the working class.

We are for the unity of the SSP, against splits, witch-hunts and expulsions. Disputes between members or groups must be sorted out via party structures – not via the media or courts. The interests of the working class and the fight against imperialism are much more important than a court case about someone’s sex life.

The gains made by the SSP in Scotland have been considerable. As well as six MSPs, we have the respect and support of hundreds of thousands of working class people across the country. If we throw away the hard-won, principled unity of the SSP, we are failing our class. We call upon those determined to split to think again!

27th August 2006

Rae Bridges is an SSP member who is not a member of any platform. Here he casts a perceptive eye over recent events.

As Tommy Sheridan emerged from the Court of Session in Edinburgh on August 4, he compared his victory over the gutter press, right wing, union bashing News of the World to Gretna beating Real Madrid.

Remarkable though the victory was (in strictly legal terms) if I were to use a football analogy, it would instead be to compare the current situation for socialism in Scotland with the Munich air crash, when another team in red, the brightest hope of its generation (albeit in football, not politics) perished in the ice and fire of a dark German runway.

Compare the two protagonists in the court case, which one do you think is in most turmoil, the cause of socialist unity in Scotland or Rupert Murdoch’s News International? Rupert must be laughing his head off, he’s destroyed the most united far left party in Scotland for generations, and the cost to him has been what would pass as loose change from his grossly overstuffed pockets.

Theatre of the Absurd

Even by the exacting standards of the Theatre of the Absurd, socialism in Scotland has proved that when it comes to grand farce no one does it better. The only thing missing so far has been the ghost of Brian Rix running into a meeting somewhere and dropping his trousers.

And the play is not over, only the first act. But, so far, it has had audiences spellbound and Sold Out notices there have been aplenty. Depending on whose truth you believe:

• Socialist ‘Sold Out’ fellow socialist.
• Tommy ‘Sold Out’ to the Daily Record.
• And the News of the World and the Sun? Well, they just sold out at the newsagents.

Round about the time of the trial the Sun overtook the Daily Record as the best-selling daily paper in Scotland, quite probably on the back of its reporting of the trial. Bear that in mind if anyone ever tries to tell you that socialists don’t do irony.

A change of tune

Following the trial, Tommy and his supporters swore to win back the SSP, but again depending on whose truth you believe, the tune has changed and Tommy is off to set up another party, Solidarity.

So, now we are to have two socialist parties in Scotland. As a long-time admirer of satire and aficionado of the absurd (there’s that word again) I really don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Consider this scenario.

Some time in the not-too-distant future the firefighters/nursery nurses/civil servants/whoever are on strike. On the cold, wet midwinter picket lines (why don’t they ever strike in the summer?) they are approached in the early morning gloom by two individuals, who each introduce themselves to the shivering pickets thus.

I come as a representative of the SSP/Solidarity (delete as applicable), urging you to stand together. I warn you that the bosses will try to divide you. But, remember this, the workers, united, will never be defeated.

Shop Steward:

Hmm, didn’t you lot used to all be in the same party?

SSP/Solidarity member (together):

Yeah, we did, but we split.

Shop Steward:

Well, in that case, clear off and don’t come around here preaching unity and solidarity. Go and get your own house in order!’

Surreal? Bizarre? Ludicrous?

(Again, delete as applicable, but if you want to use all three, do feel free.)

But, anyway, back from the future to the time of the trial.

At this time, when Lebanon and Gaza were in flames and pundits pronounced the ‘start of world war three’; at this time, while the attack on pensions was still bubbling away in the background, with the prospect of future generations having to work longer for having the sheer audacity to live longer; at this time, as the country we lived in became a place where going to the wrong place of worship or having the wrong colour of skin, or wearing the wrong clothes could get you harassed, attacked in the street, or even killed; at this time, what was the priority of many socialists in Scotland?

Look outward

On both sides of the divide they were busy indulging in an orgy of effigy burning, mud slinging, name calling and generally behaving in a most decidedly uncomradely fashion towards each other. If ever there was a time when unity on the left and looking outward was needed, this was it.

Someone should have phoned Nero to see if he was finished with the fiddle. Though what to play on it might have proved a trifle problematic.

While The Internationale may indeed unite the human race, finding a song to unite the warring socialists of Scotland was proving a tad more difficult as the SSP descended into civil war. However, that for those who were not involved with either of the factions It’s My Party (And I’ll Cry If I Want To) was probably as good as you could have hoped to find. But, with the split, farce darkens into tragedy.

Autumn is now with us and a familiar noise fills the skies. Looking up we see skeins of geese flying in familiar V formation, heading for their winter feeding grounds.

They never fly in a perfect V, there’s a certain raggedness about it, one leg of the V is usually longer than the other, and there’s sometimes a straggler or two slightly detached from the rest.

Which is actually a pretty good description of what the SSP was like before the split, with all its platforms, factions, networks, individuals flying in some kind of formation.

It never was a perfect V, but it had direction, a kind of unity and a destination.

But now the skein that was the SSP has hit some turbulence, and where before there was one skein, now there are two, still heading in the same direction, still with a final destination, and, by the sound of it, making the same noises, but with unity shattered.

Which side are you on?

In my years in the SSP I took a conscious decision to remain independent of all platforms, factions, networks, etc. Now that the split has finally happened I’m reminded of a few lines from the old Bob Dylan song, Desolation Row.

Praise be to Nero’s Neptune,
The Titanic sails at dawn,
Everybody is shouting,
Which side are you on?

Which side, indeed! And there’s the tragedy, for, surely, when you cut away all the debates, all the arguments and all the differences, aye, even all the bitterness, what you should find at the heart of anyone who wishes to call themselves a socialist is a dream — the dream of a better world, a world where the socialist ideals of harmony, justice, peace and fairness for all have replaced the system of exploitation, enslavement, division and waste which we call capitalism. This dream remains a fundamental truth which links all socialists, wherever they may be, whoever they may be.

A few paragraphs back, I quoted from Bob Dylan, and now I’m going to end with another quote.

We cannot think of uniting with others until we have first learned to unite amongst ourselves. We cannot think of being acceptable to others until we have first proven acceptable to ourselves.

—Malcolm X.

I remain comradely yours, till the end, In the sure and certain knowledge of the revolution,

Rae Bridges