CWI
United States: Seattle socialist Kshama Sawant defeats Democrat incumbent
KEXP Interview with Kshama Sawant.
United States: Socialist local candidate wins 35% of vote, enters run-off
By the Kshama Sawant Campaign for Seattle City Council
South Africa: ANC sees 'Swedes and Irish' behind miners' anger; Solidarity forces ANC back-down
Liv Shange returns to South Africa, July 14, 2013.
Ireland: What’s left after the ULA?
Happier days before the Socialist Party and Socialist Workers Party abandoned the ULA.
Australia: Socialist Party local councillor re-elected in Yarra, Melbourne
Re-elected socialist municipal councillor Steve Jolly.
Ireland: Shock, austerity, Sinn Féin and the United Left Alliance
Scotland: The politics of integrity versus celebrity
Review by Alex Miller
Downfall: The Tommy Sheridan Story
By Alan McCombes,
Birlinn 2011
326 pages, pb
September 12, 2011 -- Green Left Weekly -- In the elections to the Scottish parliament in May 2003, the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) polled just under a quarter of a million votes and won six seats. By any stretch of the imagination this was a remarkable achievement for a party well to the left of Labour. It was a beacon of hope and inspiration for socialists the world over.
By 2011, the SSP’s vote had slumped to below 9000. It failed to regain any of the six seats it had lost in 2007. The single biggest factor in the SSP’s electoral demise was almost certainly the civil war and split that followed the scandal surrounding the SSP’s former convenor, Tommy Sheridan.
In this well-written and often gripping book, Alan McCombes — the SSP’s former press and policy coordinator — gives the inside story of the events surrounding the scandal and split.