I've been glancing at Worker's Liberty now and again. I was at first surprised and interested after seeing an offhand criticism of George Galloway, so subscribed to their feed.
. The internal details of foreign parties' wrangling are not usually interesting in themselves, but I liked the calm and reasoned tone of their piece.
Galloway - with his long-time friendship with Saddam Hussein's
deputy Tariq Aziz, his avowed reliance on funds from Saudi Arabia and
the Emirates to run his campaigns, his pose as a "fighter for Muslims",
his contempt for the idea of "workers' MPs on a workers' wage", and his
insistence that such a great man as he "needs" £150,000 a year ("I
couldn’t live on three workers’ wages" - Scotsman, 19/05/03) -
represents communalist populist opportunism, not class-based socialism.
Tommy Sheridan has a much more honourable history. But now
George Galloway has repeatedly appealed to Sheridan for an alliance - a
Scottish version of Respect - against what he calls the "Trotskyite
Calvinists" of the SSP -and Sheridan has not rebuffed him, not even
mildly.
By his tacit alliance with Galloway - and on the basis of his
personal grievances against other SSP leaders, not of any argued-out
political principle - Tommy Sheridan taints himself. All friends of the
SSP, and all admirers of the fine class-struggle work Tommy Sheridan
has done in the past, must wish for a firm stand by a majority of the
SSP to pull Tommy Sheridan away from this disastrous direction. Get a
grip on yourself, Tommy!
Splits may be necessary and fruitful - when they are on issues
of political principle, so that the split has the effect of liberating
the progressive side in a clear political division from paralysis by
infighting, clarifying and galvanising political energies.
There is no evidence of anything like that here. On the major
issues where the SSP leadership deserves heavy criticism - Scottish
nationalism, over-electoralism, lack of strategy towards the Labour
Party, uncritical alignment with Chavez and Castro, etc. - Sheridan is
not one bit better.
They sound clinically sane. Which is nice.
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