Politician charged with lying

If a rookie journalist came up with the above headline, he'd be laughed out of the news room (where such things still exist). So what's the big deal about former Scottish Socialist MSP Tommy Sheridan being charged with perjury?

The big deal, of course, is that a year before George Galloway's spat with the SWP tore apart one of the most successful electoral initiatives to the left of Labour in England for many a long year, Tommy Sheridan's libel case against the News of the World in Scotland did the same thing to the far more successful Scottish Socialist Party. Sheridan had been accused, among other things, of visiting a swingers' club. He sued, and won £200,000, despite a succession of his former party colleagues standing up in court and saying that they'd been at a meeting at which Sheridan had admitted going to the club twice but said he would sue anyway because there was no proof.

The News of the World, unaccustomed to such reverses, described the jury's verdict as 'perverse' and launched a dual strategy of character assassination in its columns and legal appeal in the courts. Iain McWhirter, writing in the Sunday Herald, understood the outcome of the case better as 'a rebuke to an industry that preys on human misery and disclosure; that uses chequebook journalism, spin, sensation, distortion. This has been a long time coming.'

The left is broadly divided between those who see the whole thing as a vendetta against a leading socialist by Rupert Murdoch and the state, and in many cases don't much care whether Sheridan is telling the truth or not, and those who are convinced he is lying and refuse to back him as a matter of principle. The latter include former SSP MSPs Rosie Kane and Carolyn Leckie, who said after the libel case that it had not been 'about judging behaviour but about the most popular, most famous convener with a huge reputation for principle, honesty and integrity being shown to be a hypocrite and a liar'. That distinction between different kinds of moral judgements begins to a look a little less clear cut unfortunately in the light of the SSP's own website's reference to what it calls Sheridan's 'squalid secret life' and the involvement of SSP members in organising the sale of a secretly recorded tape of Sheridan to the News of the World for a reputed £20,000.

Meanwhile, Sheridan has won the unequivocal moral backing of George Galloway. himself no stranger to the libel courts. For Galloway, 'Tommy's real crime in the eyes of News International is that he has spent his entire political life speaking truth to power.' Soon, for a second time, a Scottish jury will be asked to decide just how truthful he has been.

Is the left psychologically flawed?

This week’s edition of Socialist Worker contains several articles, a column by Alex Callinicos and an editorial about the crisis in Respect. As you might expect, the SWP puts it down to an ‘underlying left-right political split’, with George Galloway and company cast in the role of the Mensheviks (‘patronage politics aimed at electing a few big names’) to the SWP’s Bolsheviks ‘true to [Respect’s] original vision as a radical left-wing party with appeal across the working class’.

If only it was so simple …

Alex Callinicos is at least right in his assessment that ‘what has been happening in Respect is very far from being unique’. As he points out, ‘Right across Europe the radical left is in crisis.’ He might have added that, right across the world, and throughout political history, the radical left has rarely been out of crisis.

There is something endemic to left politics about this state of permanent upheaval. Divisions often coalesce around particular individuals (George Galloway in Respect and Tommy Sheridan in the Scottish Socialists are only the latest in a long line in both the UK and internationally), while those on either side insist on the importance of key principles and politics.

But it’s hard to escape the feeling that when something is repeated so often and in so many different circumstances, both historically and geographically, something else is going on. Part of the explanation, no doubt, is to do with the impotence of opposition (though the left has never been noted for its unity when in positions of power). And the SWP is right in identifying a common theme in what’s happening to the radical left Europe-wide that boils down to the old left dichotomy between revolution and reform – or, less grandly, as it applies today, between a focus on extra-parliamentary activity or electoral politics.

But I can’t help feeling that there’s a more emotional, or psychological, explanation underlying so much of this sort of thing. Is the left psychologically flawed? No more so than any other current in human thought and behaviour, in my opinion – but then that’s not saying much, is it?

Praise George Galloway and pass the samosas

Nick Cohen, in a fit of literal-mindedness, has accused me of being too literal-minded to get the joke about his ‘Bring Back Blair’ Facebook group. But if you really want a laugh at the expense of literal-mindedness, you should pop over to Harry’s Place, where Dave Dudley, ‘Editor, Leninist Vanguard, writing in a personal capacity’, has set the cat among the literal pigeons with his ‘Defend Respect’ posting.

The piece is an obvious spoof. Well you’d have thought so:

‘I am aware that some of our comrades in Leninist Vanguard have been alarmed by George [Galloway]’s recent derogatory comments about ‘Leninists’ in Respect but I can assure you, having spoken personally with George about this, he was not referring to any of us. I quote: ‘No, don’t worry about it Dave, you’re a good lad.’ In fact George bought me a samosa as we walked back from the Tower Hamlets branch meeting – a clear signal that the alliance we have forged remains strong.’

This is in addition to the references to the ‘Zionist SWP’ ‘gyrating at Israeli jazz festivals’, homosexuality as a ‘bourgeois deviation’ and Respect ‘taking on and defeating New Labour across its heartlands, bringing millions on to the streets to oppose imperialism [and] forging deep and lasting links between class conscious workers and the massed ranks of Celebrity Big Brother viewers.’

But the legions of the literal-minded have leapt in from left, right and centre to protest at the ‘odious views’ expressed. There’s someone pointing out that Lenin was ‘as big a murderer as Hitler and Stalin’. There’s a complaint about allowing Dave Dudley to ‘spout totalitarian rubbish’. There’s even a Zionist defence of the SWP in there, which is surely a first, as well as what must be the worst excuse for missing a joke that has ever been made: ‘In my defence, I didn’t actually read the post.’

The best bits are when those commenting don’t spot the parodies of the parody. ‘Whether he exists or not is a diversion from the key question: why is the contemptible Dave Dudley given a platform here to air his odious views, whether he has any or not?’ says one poster. ‘I was wondering that myself,’ replies another. ‘I’ve not really been following this particular story but what's all this shit doing on your blog, exactly?’

Praise George Galloway and pass the samosas.

'Nuff Respect

History repeats itself, as Marx almost said, the first time as tragedy, the second as farce. With the 90th anniversary of the Russian revolution almost upon us, what used to be the tragedy of the left’s propensity for splitting has long since descended into the most predictable of farces.

Hot on the heels of the Tommygate sex libel reducing the Scottish Socialist Party to an embittered laughing stock, the SSP’s southern cousins in Respect are repeating the trick. This time it’s the Socialist Workers Party versus George Galloway (who knows a bit about sex libels himself, if you check the archives) that’s defining the battle lines.

Like all those historical splits on the left, the main parties to the argument will claim that there’s some deep and irreconcilable political principle that’s driving the divisions (the SWP likes to see it as a ‘witch-hunt of socialists’). But it’s difficult from the outside to see it as anything more than the latest example of the terminal failure of a certain category of leftist ever to find sufficient common ground to do anything without the ruthlessness of a Lenin to make it happen.

The left blogosphere is stuffed full with what passes for debate, if you’ve the time to follow it in detail. One of the more illuminating discussions, as is often the case, can be found on the Socialist Unity blog – a name, incidentally, that passes further into the realm of wishful thinking with every new comment that is added. Try Jerry Hicks’ letter of resignation from the SWP, for example, for a cogent explanation of his take on events (which has attracted 200 or so comments, at the time of writing).

Harry’s Place enjoys its usual schadenfraude at the expense of Respect, the SWP, George Galloway and his Muslim allies (killing at least four sitting ducks with one stone there). A hat-tip to Harry, too, for this link to Ray Grange and the late Joe Strummer discussing revolution and the SWP (plus the Clash playing an Anti-Nazi League rally) back in the late 1970s:



The Clash in Rudeboy

Harry’s Place also has what could well be my favourite comment of all offering background to the Respect split. Written by ‘Simon B’, it’s referring to Alan Thornett, a veteran leftist of the revolutionary Trotskyist persuasion who’s lined up with Galloway’s faction – for now:

I'm not an AWL member, but an ex-member, I'm also too young to have first hand experience of Thornett in the same group (the WSL as it then was). But briefly this is the history as I understand it.

Thornett led an opposition in the WRP in the 1970s and when expelled started his own group, the WSL, which went on to merge with the I-CL (led by among others the current leaders of the AWL).

I do know that the split was partly about the Falklands war when Thornett supported the military junta and what is now the AWL opposed both sides, but also that Thornett thought that everyone else should defer to him because he and his mates were the 'proper workers' and the rest were all posh.

Aside from this being untrue - Sean Matganma, for example, was a docker before becoming a full-time activist - it is also a ridiculous way of operating.

There was a pamphlet about the debates and the split with Thornett called 'The Worker Leader Against Marxism' which detailed all this. I've no idea where my copy is and it is sadly not online.

Thornett merged with what was left of the IMG and formed the ISG, which was, and still is, the British section of the USFI. The ISG consists of, I'd generously guess, about 50 people, and until now has been the SWP's good cop in Respect. They are now assuming the role of Galloway's court jesters.

By the way, anyone bemused by all the acronyms I mentioned should just count themselves lucky that they don't know what they mean and get on with their life.