Editorial

SUPPORT THE SHERIDAN SEVEN.

This magazine is as restricted as anyone else by the laws of sub-judice in relation to crown proceedings against Tommy & Gail Sheridan, and potential proceedings against the other five of the Sheridan Seven – Graeme McIver, Patricia Smith, Jock Penman, Rosemary Byrne and Gus Healy. This should not prevent us, however, from reminding readers of pertinent facts already in the public domain, or commenting in general on the implications this investigations has for the Scottish left.

Let’s deal with the facts first:

·         The multi-billion dollar Murdoch media empire controls a significant percentage of the media through which people receive their information. That media has consistently been pro-war, pro-big business and consistently anti-left and anti-trade union. It has financial resources and connections which any small party of the left could barely imagine possessing.

·         In the summer of 2006 Tommy Sheridan won a victory in his defamation trial against Murdoch’s Sunday flagship, the News of the World. Tommy Sheridan contested that stories that had appeared in the NOTW were false. The NOTW contested that they were ‘substantially’ true. Six weeks of detailed evidence was led and nearly thirty witnesses heard. The judge, Lord Turnbull, in his summing up to the jury, informed them that if they found even one of the witnesses who had testified against Mr. Sheridan credible they were entitled to find against him. The jury found in his favour by a majority verdict of seven to four.

·         Unusually, according to a number of legal commentators at the time, Lord Turnbull requested a police investigation into possible perjury because ‘contradictory’ evidence had been given in court. BBC solicitor Alistair Bonnington pointed out that contradictory evidence was given almost everyday in Scottish courts and rarely led to a perjury investigation. In fact, as was later established, there has never been a perjury investigation following a civil defamation trial. The investigation and charges faced by the Sheridan Seven are, literally, unprecedented.

·         A number of the News of the World witnesses admitted, either in court, or later, that they misled the court. None of these witnesses have so far been charged. 

·         A Freedom of Information request revealed that 40, 000 police hours had been spent on the investigation as of Feb 15^th this year, with an average of 14 officers being deployed at any one time on the case, and at a cost to that point of £1.1 million. A number of leaks appeared in the media in the course of this period that could only have had their origins within Lothian ad Borders police.

·         Following the 2006 trial, where 11 leading members of the SSP gave evidence against Tommy Sheridan, the SSP split, with a majority of active members forming a new party, Solidarity, with Tommy Sheridan. At the subsequent Scottish Parliamentary elections, Solidarity emerged as the socialist party with the biggest vote in a split left vote that saw no explicitly socialist MSPs returned to the Scottish Parliament. The SSP vote collapsed to just 0.6 % of the vote compared to the 6.87% achieved in 2003 with Tommy Sheridan as convenor.

·         Tommy Sheridan helped lead and popularise the mass campaign against Thatcher’s hated poll tax. He led the rank-and-file campaign against the privatisation of Scottish water. For twenty years he has been the most popular and outspoken spokesperson for the left in Scotland; an intransigent opponent of war, poverty, inequality and racism.

These facts are not disputable, and on the basis of them socialists and progressives everywhere are entitled to ask these questions: 

Whose class interests have been served by this investigation?

Who are the winners and losers should those who long to see the Sheridan Seven behind bars succeed in their aim?

Who would benefit from the partial decapitation of Solidarity?

Who would lose from the resulting and bitter inevitability of a Scottish left divided for a generation or more is absolutely clear, however. The answer is the many tens of thousands of working class people who showed in 2003 that they are looking for a real alternative.

Socialism relies on collective solidarity in the face of attacks from powerful and vested interests. Capitalism and its modern media Wormtongues rely on the promotion of division. Personal opinions about individuals or chip paper allegations about people’s private lives are neither here nor there.

The moves against the Sheridan Seven should be seen as an attack on the whole Scottish left.