Abstract
Tommy Sheridan was one of the best-known far-left political leaders of modern times, and for a period of about ten years, from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s, he was probably one of the most influential. Yet in the space of just a few years he moved from a seat in the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood to a cell in the Scottish prison at Barlinnie. Meanwhile, the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) that he had helped to create and develop underwent an acrimonious and enormously damaging split from which it has yet to recover. The story of Sheridan’s rise and fall is therefore important for all those interested in the creation of a popular left-wing movement that can mobilise large-scale resistance against economic austerity.
Because Sheridan is such a contentious figure in Scottish labour politics, any biography will be thoroughly dissected by his friends and enemies alike. Gregor Gall knew Sheridan through working with him in the SSP, and he was therefore able to interview him as well as members of his family and close friends. His book is based partly on these 28 interviews with key informants, often lasting as long as three hours, as well as on SSP documents and publications and a substantial number of newspaper and magazine articles. The events depicted in the book are therefore thoroughly documented and referenced in almost 70 pages of footnotes, within a text of 375 pages. Gall’s own view is that the News of the World claims about Sheridan’s sexual activities were largely accurate; that Sheridan’s decision to sue the paper was reckless in the extreme; and that his subsequent conviction for perjury was sound. Nonetheless, he is scrupulous in presenting rival interpretations of key events, not least those from Sheridan himself and his key supporters.
The book begins with the development of Sheridan’s world view and its central focus on mobilising against injustice, particularly as it affected local people. He joined the Militant Tendency whilst a university student, declaring that he preferred to work with fellow socialists inside the Labour Party rather than standing outside like the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) or the Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP). He came to national prominence through his leading role in the Anti-Poll Tax Federation, an organisation that ran a highly successful campaign against a deeply unpopular tax. What Sheridan realised in the course of this campaign was that he was a highly effective and charismatic orator, capable of inspiring tremendous loyalty amongst his growing number of supporters. However the Federation’s support for illegal tactics such as non-payment and its control by Militant were more than enough to antagonise the rightward moving leadership of the Labour Party. The expulsions of Militant activists that began in 1982 under Michael Foot’s leadership escalated significantly under Neil Kinnock, and Sheridan was one of a growing number of Militant supporters expelled in the late-1980s. The comprehensive assault on Militant called into question its long-standing policy of deep entry into the Labour Party, and paved the way for the 1991 ‘open turn’ into an independent political party, a policy first tried out in Scotland and firmly backed by Sheridan. In interview he claimed, without any apparent sense of irony, that he had always been uneasy about the secrecy and lies entailed in Militant’s ‘deep entrism’. By 1998, however, he had become disillusioned with the idea of the Leninist cadre party, and was a key player in its dissolution into the more broadly based Scottish Socialist Party (SSP).
Events over the next few years appeared to vindicate the turn to independent and broad left organisation: Sheridan was elected as an SSP Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) in 1999, and after four years of high-profile activity both inside and outside Parliament, the party increased its MSP tally to six in the 2003 election. This was the high point of SSP influence. Within three years, Sheridan’s reckless decision to sue the News of World had ruptured the loyalty of SSP activists, led him to walk out and create his own, rival organisation, Solidarity, and resulted in a collapse of the combined far left vote by two thirds, completely eliminating its parliamentary representation.
Sadly, this tale of the visionary and transformational leader moving from triumph to hubris is all too familiar on the far left. Sheridan has none of the violent and bullying proclivities of the WRP’s Gerry Healy, but what he does share with Healy, and with the SWP’s Tony Cliff and Militant’s Ted Grant, is an unassailable belief that he, and he alone, is indispensable for the success of his chosen political project. In this delusional worldview, an assault that threatens the integrity and reputation of the leader threatens the survival of the party, and must therefore be opposed by every means possible. The dilemma for small parties possessed of such transformational leadership is that it is double-edged: the attributes that it brings to a small far-left group and which help lift it out of obscurity can just as readily tear it apart and plunge it back into oblivion. Sheridan’s story, superbly told by Gall, is a sobering and salutary tale, but one that ultimately has a strong, democratic message: rank-and-file party members must hold all political leaders to account, but they must be especially vigilant in the case of visionary, transformational leaders.