Tommy Sheridan and SNP entryism

An article I recently wrote for Darrow.

Whilst the media have been focusing on accusations of entryism in the recent Labour Party leadership race, convicted perjurer Tommy Sheridan’s Solidarity party has been quietly making inroads into SNP branches.

Like the UK Labour Party the SNP experienced a membership surge on the back of electoral defeat, with membership sitting at over 100,000 in March. Whilst this is of course a positive for any party, mass intake on this scale inevitably puts pressure on internal party verification mechanisms. 

The Motherwell Times recently reported that an SNP branch meeting in Uddingston and Bellshill had to be abandoned after rowdy scenes broke out over a vote to allocate funding to Sheridan led organisation Hope Over Fear. Indeed, since the fracas broke out Richard Lyle, SNP MSP for Central Scotland has tweeted claiming to have photographic evidence of new SNP members at Solidarity meetings.

Hope Over Fear, the organisation which was due to receive money from Lyle's SNP branch is a pro-independence outfit established by Sheridan after his exclusion from the official Yes campaign. At an ultra-nationalist flag waving rally held by the organisation last year the former MSP dominated events- with every tragic act being summoned by the customary Sheridan roar. It was also reported that many attendees complicit in facilitating Sheridan's attempted political rehabilitation were paid up SNP members.  

Interestingly Sheridan’s party has recently announced that membership of other political organisations is not banned. Sheridan himself even encouraged voters to vote SNP in May’s General Election under the slogan: “Lend your vote to the SNP”. This approach can only be interpreted as a blatant effort to infiltrate the SNP with the goal of securing SNP voters second preferences for Solidarity and Sheridan at the Scottish Parliament elections next year.

For Sheridan’s and his supporters the national question trumps all others: social justice, they say, can only be delivered within an independent Scottish state. In fact it seems Sheridan has dropped all pretence of being a socialist at all these days- when he's not indulging in wild conspiracy theories he can be found draped in a saltire eulogising William Wallace with members of the Scottish Resistance. 

After the SNP recently announcing it’s 2015 conference agenda it is likely that Sheridan’s influence within the party will only grow. After all the SNP have scheduled no discussion of a second independence referendum- a move which will surely frustrate its new membership, many of whom were galvanised by the excitement of last September. This timidity on the SNPs part will likely push more people towards Sheridan’s charismatic “independence now” approach.   

With the SNP and the Yes movement more generally regarding Sheridan as a political embarrassment, friction between the two is likely to increase in the lead up to the Scottish Parliamentary elections next May.