The tragedy of Tommy Sheridan

December 23, 2010 at 10:52 pm (Jim D, scotland, sectarianism, Sheridan, Socialist Party, SSP)

.

The shifty-looking middle aged man with the fixed smile, outside the High Court in Glasgow today on the arm of his loyal wife, cut a despicable figure. Found guilty of perjury, few but his most mindless supporters can now seriously believe in his innocence. But it is not his perjury – in the course of suing the Murdoch press – that should bother socialists. It is the vanity, arrogance and hypocrisy that lay behind the perjury that should concern us.

.

Sheridan, who liked to portray himself as a clean-living fellow, was exposed in the News of the World as a frequenter of a sex club. He admitted his mistake to his comrades on the executive of his then-organisation the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP), but then announced that he intended to sue the News of the World and that he expected his comrades to lie for him. Such arrogance succeeded in destroying the SSP and alienating  friends and comrades of twenty years.

.

But for a while it looked like he’d got away with it: he won his action and was awarded £200,000. But significantly, it was  former close friends and comrades who helped the News of the World and the police hit back with the perjury case.

Sheridan’s reckless destruction of the SSP and his arrogant demand that comrades must lie for him, was born of a terrible culture of hero-worship and personality-cultism on the left. After his 2006 victory over the News of the World he stood down as an MSP and started appearing on chat shows and things like Celebrity Big Brother (for a reported fee of £100,000). Increasingly he came to resemble another vain fake-left, George Galloway. It’s surely no coincidence that Galloway has been one of Sheridan’s staunchest supporters.

.

But unlike the charlatan Galloway, Tommy Sheridan was once a brave and principled socialist. The young militant pictured above defying the poll tax was an admirable figure. He served six months for his anti-poll tax activity and was jailed again for campaigning against the nuclear fleet at Faslane.  The ex-socialist Sheridan now faces jail in a much less noble cause. We prefer to remember the young militant before the trappings of minor celebrity and a taste for the good life turned him into the creature that emerged from the court today.