Tommy Sheridan: From Hero to Zero by Gregor Gall, Welsh Academic Press 2012, £25, reviewed by Terry Conway.
Tommy Sheridan was for many years the best-known politician with revolutionary ideas, not only in Scotland, but in Britain as a whole. He fought for working class people on the streets - particularly through his leadership of the poll tax campaign, but also on many other questions - in the Glasgow council chamber and for two terms in the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood. When he talked to people individually, he made them feel special - a talent which he used politically and sometimes abused personally. In 2003 the Scottish Socialist Party - the vibrant radical left party in Scotland with Sheridan at its head - won six MSPs in the elections for the Scottish Parliament, taking a remarkable 6.2% across the 73 constituency seats and 6.7% across the eight regional list seats. This was Sheridan's own second term, as he had previously been elected for the SSP in 1999, when the Scottish parliament reopened. Gregor Gall paints a vivid picture of Sheridan's rise to "hero" during these years, as well as a valuable chronology of some of the key debates and developments on the Scottish left during this period. The situation quickly went into reverse, as a result of decisions by Sheridan himself. Gall tells the tawdry tale of Sherdian's determination to take the News of the World to court for defamation after it printed allegations about the sexual behaviour of a married MSP, which he asserted would otherwise "destroy him". He charts the way that, in doing so, he deeply divided the Scottish Socialist Party, the organisation which he had been crucial to building, and in the end walked out to build a rival group, Solidarity.
Gall describes the way that Sheridan's victory in the courts against the News of the World turned out to be a "hollow and pyrrhic victory" (p209) even at Reviews the legal level, in that it set in train the investigations that would eventually lead to his imprisonment for perjury in 2010. This book, together with Alan McCombes "Downfall, (which was reviewed by Alex Miller here: http://socialistresistance.org/2315/the-politics-ofintegrity-versus-the-politics-ofcelebrity) provide invaluable accounts of how this came about. The SSP, during the early years of the twentieth century was one of the strongest radical left parties anywhere in Europe, so discussion about its successes and about Sheridan's role in splitting from it are of interest to socialists everywhere. The disgraceful and opportunist role of both the WI (Militant) and SWP currents, both of whom had major political disagreements with Sheridan in the previous period, but joined with him in walking out to create Solidarity and denounced those who did not, is spelt out in both books. It is impossible not to make comparisons between Galls book and "Downfall". One of the strengths of Galls account is that he has more to say about Sheridan's early life including his political activity and ideas prior to his initial election to Holyrood in 1999.
On the other hand Gall gives some emphasis (HTZ p254) to what he sees as key differences with McCombes in assessing why this disastrous situation came about.
Gall quotes McCombes saying:
"I never accepted that he Tommy had a psychopathic personality..... I think was wrong in retrospect...
[because] I couldn't recognise him as the person from before". In my view, Gall is right to be critical of this formula, as indeed Alex Miller is in more general terms in his review of Downfall for Socialist Resistance. I agree with the emphasis Gall gives to the fact that Sheridan wanted, needed those around him - though I'm not sure that McCombes would disagree either. But Gall goes further than I would, lumping together those comments from McCombes and others from former SSP MSP Carolyn Leckie, in which she talked about Sheridan having a personality disorder and with Rosie Kane, another former MSP for the SSP saying that he was "paranoid". While personality disorder seems to psychiatric diagnosis, the term speech - and indeed far more which does not in itself merit There is something frustrating about where Gall positions himself in his narrative. It is only in the first Appendix to the book (p342) that Gall explains that he originally agreed to write the book in 2003, at the height of the SSP's and Sheridan's success. I hadn't realised that before and doubt many readers will. He explains at this point that he was a member of the SSP -apparent from the way the book is written and it makes Anyone who has read "Downfall" will be aware of what Alan every event described, both when it happened and later, when he might have expressed a different opinion. You can disagree with one of more of his standpoints but you can't be unaware of what they are.
Gall doesn't do that. His role in the SSP and his relationship with Sheridan was different from McCombes'. But when it came to deeply controversial obviously had a point of view, takes this approach because
page 33 of the scan
he prefers to adopt a neutral, apparently academic approach. I don't think it works, and it is not anyway consistent - at some points it is clear what he thinks but at others not. This brings me to a further issue, most clearly epitomised on p172 when Gall says: "The tactical ineptitude of a number of individuals associated with the United Left and radical feminism within the SSP was very helpful for Tommy in allowing him to show his opponents as he alleged them to be, namely crackpot feminists, Tommy haters, personally vindictive, politically deluded and so on." Here Gall himself uses the label radical feminist without defining it, and then implies that Sheridan's deeply insulting term "crackpot feminists" is accurate. This point is not drawn out but seems to suggest that some women, calling themselves feminists of some sort, are some how responsible for at least part of what went wrong. li is also problematic that in the footnote to this section, Gall lists a number of incidents apparently committed by members of the SSP against supporters of Sheridan, only listing the last of these as an allegation rather than a fact. It would be very surprising if in the intense, charged polarised situation that resulted from "Tommygate" those who opposed Sheridan's course of action did nothing at all that was foolish or was wrong. McCombes talks about some of the things that he did that in retrospect he thinks were wrong. It is a shame that Gall is not more explicit about criticisms he may have, rather than make these vague insinuations Looking back at the book, it occurred to me that the way that Gall unfolds his narrative does not draw out one of the consequences Sheridan's course of action: the fact that a number of women with whom SMASHTHE HBICKS/ARM! he was alleged to have had sexual relationships were dragged into court and questioned by him in a deeply humiliating way. This story comes through in its graphic horror in McCombes' account, but not in Gall's. Both books depict the horror of members of the SSP being forced into court to state (or in some cases, I believe, fail to state) what happened in internal SSP meetings, but not with all the witnesses that were called. Despite these criticisms, Gregor Gall's "From Hero to Zero", along with "Downfall" are strongly recommended reading for anyone who wants to understand the history of the Scottish left over the last thirty years, anyone who is interested in how to spread radical socialist ideas, anyone who is committed to building radical parties which can fill the huge space to the left of neoliberalised former social democratic parties.
WANTED WANTED 33