Hugh Reilly: Tommy Sheridan one of few able to sell socialism

Published on Monday 27 December 2010 21:27

I graduated from Strathclyde University in 1979 with a BA (politics and history). Back then, I considered myself to be a socialist with a small "s", the sort of "s" found at the very bottom line of an optician's test card.

Others in my class were either socialists with a capital "T" (Trotskyites) or people who revelled in calling themselves Revolutionary Marxists on the Anarchist Left, a wordy but necessary factional title to avoid needless confusion with the less radical Revolutionary Marxists. To my admittedly unreliable recollection, the only student who marched out of step was Harry Mullin, an ex-army squaddie, for whom the National Front proved to be a natural home for his particular brand of politics.

The mass unemployment and miners' strike of the Thatcher era galvanised me into becoming a political activist, capable of striking at the very core of Britain's capitalist, bourgeois society. My baptism of fire took place when I endeavoured to sell copies of the Socialist Worker in north Glasgow pubs during the Falklands War. The sales department of the SWP had clearly not done their demographic homework because it quickly became apparent to me that the newspaper enjoyed something of a niche market. It would be fair to say that a Big Issue seller with a vending pitch outside a homeless unit had a greater chance of success. To put it kindly, my efforts to bring a socialist analysis of the conflict to the masses were met with a mixed reaction, ie I was either physically evicted by the licensee or aggressively told to f*** off!

As the years passed, marriage, a mortgage and four screaming kids meant that my energies lay elsewhere. Slowly but surely, I morphed into a middle class professional, an idealistic idiot who gullibly believed Tony Blair's New Labour would help create a more just society.

It was around this time that I first encountered Tommy Sheridan. Famous for fighting the iniquitous poll-tax, he was now a Glasgow councillor and, tired of inviting the usual suspects, I asked him to speak to my senior pupils. He arrived sporting a sharp suit and a somewhat incongruous suntan (historians will credit Tommy with being something of a pioneer in the orange-glow movement). The red star turn gave a tour de force performance, positively mesmerising his teenage audience with his oratorical skills.

Over a ten-year period, he had enthusiastically accepted all four opportunities I had given him to engage with upper school students, thus I was happy to help when he asked me for some assistance in writing his speech to Parliament on Scottish education.

In my opinion, Holyrood was a better place for having Tommy Sheridan in it. He gave a voice to those tired of the Punch and Judy show that is Labour and the SNP.While others in the chamber played personality politics or, worse, somehow believed a ban on foxhunting should be a national priority, Tommy proposed policies that would change the lives of those least well off: free school meals, lower class sizes, an end to warrant sales, raising the minimum wage to 7 per hour.

Tommy towered above some of the political pygmies in the SSP parliamentary group. I still have flashbacks of Rosie Kane being introduced at a press conference at the Glasgow Film Theatre. Her couthy speech made a Barras stallholder sound like Stephen Fry reading Tess of the D'Urbervilles.

A few weeks ago, I toddled down to the High Court and, as luck would have it, spoke to Tommy as I queued to see his trial. It was an awkward situation. I wished him well but in my heart I knew he would not be acquitted. Too many good people, such as his former election agent, Keith Baldassara, had given evidence against him.

His fall from grace, while a personal disaster, has been calamitous for the broad left. Tommy's gift was to be able to sell a socialist message to a hitherto largely apathetic public. In Death of a Salesman, Biff Loman states: "I realise what a ridiculous lie my whole life has been." I sincerely hope that's not Tommy's epitaph.