The SSP and an Infantile Disorder

Mark Gallagher

Well there we have it, our brave comrades in the Scottish Socialist Party standing up for freedom of speech and the right to protest at the G8 in Gleneagles during First Minister's Questions and suffering the consequences. Being banned from the Scottish Parliament for a month and having theirs and their staffs' wages docked -this shall go down forever as another great moment in the canon of socialist dissent. I hope you've realised already that I'm wrapping my initial comments in disdain because if you don't you probably won't wish to read the rest of this article.

The behaviour of comrades Curran, Fox, Kane and Leckie and their subsequent campaign against the completely predictable discipline meted out to them by the Presiding Officer is symptomatic of what the SSP do best, grabbing headlines for all the wrong reasons. They are a party of contradictions. They try to reconcile revolutionary socialism and nationalism in a Scottish context and fail. They cling on to their mix of the politics of Militant and yet run for the middle of the road when it comes to policy on faith schools. They get elected to parliament as so-called workers representatives and whine when they are treated like workers would be if they breached their contracts. Its just one more stop on the way to the political wilderness if they're not careful. If this trend continues they will go off into orbit like those Trotskyites who obsess over UFOs, the Posadists.

According to their appeal for funds and support against their ban from parliament and being docked a month's wages, their party is 'under attack'. Apparently it is all part of a huge conspiracy to crush them, presumably the same one that includes every so often where you ask the voters to vote for you instead of the other guys. It says that this means denying 130,000 voters a voice in the Scottish Parliament. Well apart from the fact that includes the SSP's entire 2003 vote and only four out of their six MSPs have been banned, what exactly did they expect? If they have any sense they'll have known something like a ban would be the result of any MSP from any party doing something like this for whatever reason. The crucial word being if. I'm beginning to have my doubts.

Now if their had been something serious enough happening in parliament to merit a protest like this then maybe I'd have a little bit of sympathy. I might have been calling on Labour MSPs to join the demonstration. Like during the miner's strike when Labour MPs stood in front of the mace in Westminster. I can even see the point in their regular sit-down protests against nuclear weapons along with other parliamentarians and activists. But to do something so blatantly childish that was clearly of little or no value to helping the protest at Gleneagles go ahead speaks volumes and it would come as little surprise if along with their other problems this costs them dearly at the ballot box in 2007. Trying to grab votes from the SNP will only cut it for so long especially if you don't help yourselves by coming across as the loony left.

The parliamentary road is turning out to be not as smooth and straight as the SSP would like even if ultimately they don't truly believe in it. I don't know if it's just me but if I was a member of the SSP I'd be rather cheesed off that the MSPs I'd worked hard to get elected to parliament are making a mockery of themselves and their party. But then I'm mature enough to realise there's no future in gesture politics and left nationalism, and I think there's probably a fair few SSP members beginning to feel the same way. Instead of going down a dead end road I hope that them and a lot of other socialists out there realise this too and join the only fight worth fighting, the fight to turn Labour into a socialist party. It's time to come back down to earth comrades, and Labour is the best place to do it.