I don’t understand, so talk me through this one.
a) Tommy Sheridan visits clubs and fesses up to the SSP when the press find out
b) SSP advise him to ‘lay low and say nuthin’
c) TS decides to brazen it out in the libel court
d) SSP comrades know they’ll be called as witnesses, and as I understand they have no choice about turning up. Their only choice is whether to lie and commit perjury or tell the truth. They (mostly) tell the truth.
e) but TS rhetoric wins the day, and he brilliantly persuades the jury. Result!
f) and immediately afterwards he publicly calls the truthful SSP members ’scabs’ and announces that he intends to ‘destroy them’
Now at this point our SSP comrades, like Colin Fox, are socialists in good standing, who gave TS sensible advice that he ignored. TS, hitherto a socialist in good standing, asserts that their unwillingness to risk jail for his family-man reputation renders them ’scabs’ to be ‘destroyed’ by unspecified means.
OK. At this point, who are the good guys and who the bad guys? The people with the correct analysis or the guy who wants to destroy them because they wouldn’t put their testes in a vice for him? Not for socialism, not for a principle, but to perpetuate a false image of a Great Leader?
Now I’m not too sure about going to the police with affidavits and secret tape recordings. But one socialist has insulted and threatened to destroy other socialists - on completely insufficient and self-interested grounds. Don’t they have a right to self-defence - in the last resort, to destroy the man who’s trying to destroy them?
(this piece of course assumes that d) is correct. My whole analysis rests on the assumption that the SSP exec had no choice about testifying in court.
Is this correct ? I don’t know Scots law. Martin ?
If it’s not correct and they were under no obligation to testify, then my analysis falls to bits - because the exec should then, from an SSP perspective, have lain low and said nuthin - leaving TS in his own juice rather than adding their own.)
8 comments:
"Not for socialism, not for a principle, but to perpetuate a false image of a Great Leader?"
I suspect that in Sheridan's ideologically warped view perpetuating a false image of the great leader was part of achieving socialism (whatever that may be!).
Laban,
Those members of the exec who were present at the meeting of November 2004 would all have been pefectly competent and compellable witnesses to his behaviour at it.
Rosie Kane had a two page spread in last weekend's 'Sunday Mail' about it all. She really doesn't like him at all.
Yes, but did they HAVE to testify? Or could they have stayed schtum?
" Tommy Sheridan visits clubs and fesses up to the SSP when the press find out"
To be fair he won the first court case and this sequence of events was found to be lies by a jury. Assuming we agree that once a man is found not guilty and wins a defamation case that should be the end of it then he is right to feel agrieved at the betrayal and call them scabs.
In a normal world the SSP members who said he had admitted to going to the Cupids club would be done for perjury since they must have lied according to the first jury.
In our world we spend millions going after the innocent party because he's a thorn in the side of the establishment. money is no object to bring him down.
Personally I think he did go to Cupids and did become just another champagne socialist. Perma tanned and feted by all the usual wankers in the left wing media. The attempt to make his wife a terrorist was beyond the pale though and brought shame on Scotland. As if we needed any help in that department with regards justice.
"Yes, but did they HAVE to testify? Or could they have stayed schtum?"
It's only in the US that you can 'plead the Fifth', and then only to avoid incriminating yourself, not others.
If they'd refused, would they have been in contempt of court?
Laban,
You wrote,
"Yes, but did they HAVE to testify? Or could they have stayed schtum?"
My apologies if my previous comment wasn't absolutely clear. If they had been cited to testify, they would have had to appear to testify, on pain of being arrested and brought to court in handcuffs to testify. That's the 'compellability' I mentioned earlier.
The procedural history of 'Sheridan - v - News Of The World' contains an interesting example of the lengths to which some witnesses are prepared to go in order to avoid having to give testimony. Prior to the hearing of the case, Alan McCombe, one of Sheridan's former SSP associates, was imprisoned for contempt of court for failing to hand over SSP documents when requested to do so. When he gave his evidence, he indicated that Sheridan had fessed up to the whole group sex thang at the exec meeting of November 2004. If McComber perjured himself in so doing, it might be the first time a witness had perjured himself after previously being imprisoned for trying to frustrate the interests of those in whose favour he had committed perjury.
Which makes me think he didn't perjure himself at all.
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