Sheridan creates 'Solidarity' in Scotland

Monday, 4 September 2006 12:00 AM

Tommy Sheridan insisted he is keen to make an amicable break from the Scottish Socialist party (SSP), as he launched his new party in Glasgow yesterday.

The former SSP leader has joined forces with fellow socialist breakaway and MSP Rosemary Byrne to create Solidarity: Scotland's Socialist Movement, which will fight for working class people, an independent Scotland and social justice.

"I am looking for an amicable divorce. When you have an amicable divorce, you don't discuss your internal business outside the family," Mr Sheridan said yesterday.

However, the SSP are furious at the breakaway, and yesterday's launch was preceded by a rally in Glasgow on Saturday attended by nearly 400 party activists.

The party's new leader, Colin Fox, has admitted the SSP has now been left in a difficult financial position. It may even have to sell its Glasgow headquarters, which had been secured by a loan of over £38,000 borrowed by Mr Sheridan.

And although Mr Sheridan claimed his party would help get more MSPs elected, the split will reduce the number of SSP candidates standing in next year's Holyrood elections to four.

A statement on the SSP website said: "We reject the claim by Tommy Sheridan that Scotland is big enough to accommodate two socialist parties."

A spokesman claimed the party was "largely composed of bitter opponents of Scottish independence in the London-controlled Socialist Workers Party and the Committee for a Workers' International".

Despite Mr Sheridan's plea for a truce between the two parties, he also wasted no time yesterday in condemning his former colleagues for "stabbing him in the back" during his successful libel battle against the News of the World.

Eleven SSP members, including Mr Fox and MSPs Rosie Kane and Carolyn Leckie, gave evidence against him in the case, in which Mr Sheridan won £200,000 in damages for the defamatory allegations made by the newspaper about his personal life.

Mr Sheridan has admitted there is little political difference between the SSP and Solidarity, but yesterday predicted his new party would attract 1,500 members within "a few months".

"I am not the one burning effigies of other socialists and calling other socialists Nazis," he argued. "They [the SSP] should respect the right of other socialists to organise in the way they want and not indulge in backbiting and backstabbing."

Last week he pledged that Solidarity would "be offering solidarity to working people in struggle, to those fighting for an independent socialist Scotland, solidarity to all those opposing Blair and Bush's illegal wars, to all those fighting for social justice and an end to poverty and discrimination".

Ms Byrne had added: "This is not a party just for ex-SSP members - it is a new movement that is open to all who share our vision of an independent socialist republic in Scotland and an end to global corporate wars."

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• domestic policy
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• party politics
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• scotland