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Who is Pulling the Strings? |
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Tommy Sheridan’s victory in his defamation case against the News of the World (NotW) in July 2006 sent shock waves throughout the entire Scottish legal establishment, the media, and society in general. Rupert Murdoch himself was reported to have been enraged by the outcome of the case, in which a jury decided that Sheridan had been a victim of libellous and fabricated stories over his personal life that were carried in the NotW in 2004 and 2005. The jury awarded £200,000 in damages – a record amount for a civil defamation case in Scotland. In a meeting with News International executives following the verdict Mr Murdoch apparently declared that no matter what it cost he wanted that “commie bastard” brought down. Not only had Sheridan taken on the might of News International, a corporation with almost unlimited resources at its disposal, he did so while representing himself in court, having dispensed with the services of his legal team midway through the trial.
But perhaps Sheridan’s victory should not have come as a surprise at all. For what was also held up to public scrutiny and examination during the trial was the right wing propaganda machine that is News International, and, wider, the malign influence of the tabloid press in general.
Iain McWhirter, writing in the Sunday Herald, summed up the significance of the result: “It was a rebuke to an industry that preys on human misery and disclosure; that uses chequebook journalism, spin, sensation, distortion. This has been a long time coming”.
An appeal by the NotW against the outcome was, of course, to be expected. They claimed that the jury’s verdict was “perverse” and immediately called for a re-trial, preferably this time without the inconvenience of a jury as arbiter. In effect what they were and are seeking is a re-run with the same evidence being presented hoping for a different result in front of a Judge instead of a jury.
But in the aftermath of Sheridan’s victory, rather than wait for the result of their appeal, the NotW immediately began a vicious campaign designed to by turns ridicule, impugn and traduce not only Tommy Sheridan but also his wife, family, and various political allies and associates. It is a campaign that has been aided and abetted by the leadership of the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP), many of whom gave evidence on behalf of the NotW during the original trial. News International, through the NotW and The Sun in Scotland, provided a platform for these prominent SSP members to denounce Sheridan and demand a police investigation in the immediate aftermath, accusing their former Party Convenor of committing perjury. They demanded that he resign as an MSP in advance of the Scottish elections earlier this year, and even went so far as to organise the sale of a videotape, taken by an SSP member, to the NotW in return for a reported £20,000.
Since then a slow drip of news stories regarding the progress of the perjury investigation has appeared on an almost weekly basis in the pages of the Sunday Herald, stories authored by the newspaper’s political editor, Paul Hutcheon. In his weekly reports, Mr Hutcheon has been able to produce facts pertaining to the ongoing investigation which suggest that he is being provided with information from sources that are close to or involved in the investigation itself. He has sought to reduce what is supposed to be an investigation into the original case in its entirety, and the role that all the witnesses played, to an investigation solely of Tommy Sheridan. This is a clear and wilful distortion, one which reveals Mr Hutcheon’s bias. Further, Mr Hutcheon’s former colleague, Tom Gordon, reported on the original court case for the Sunday Herald’s sister paper, The Herald. During the course of the trial in 2006, Mr Gordon supplemented his daily reports in The Herald with almost nightly TV appearances on Newsnight Scotland. The tenor of Mr Gordon’s reports, both in print and on television, were hostile to Tommy Sheridan. This alone would be of little interest; however, after the trial, Tom Gordon left The Herald and now writes for The Sunday Times, another newspaper owned by Murdoch’s News International
As already stated, the NotW’s vendetta is no surprise. We expect the NotW to continue to wage a campaign against Tommy Sheridan, against his friends, family and his supporters from now to eternity. That is to be expected. They embody all that Tommy Sheridan as a socialist is committed to opposing. What is disturbing, however, is the possibility that the NotW’s vendetta against Sheridan is being assisted by sections of the Scottish legal establishment and the police.
For more than a year now Lothian and Borders Police have been conducting one of the most expensive and intensive perjury investigations ever conducted in Scotland. And this over the outcome of a civil defamation case – not even a criminal trial. Thousands of hours have been spent interviewing people the length and breadth of the UK. In June this year the Sunday Herald reported that the investigation had already cost the taxpayer £500,000, quoting estimates of £20,000 per day running costs. Recently the same paper also quoted a Crown Office source saying that, despite the rising cost to the taxpayer, there was still “no end in sight”.
By comparison, the recent police investigation into ‘cash for peerages’ allegations made against the Blair government, a case involving the serious issue of corruption at the very heart of our political system, cost the taxpayer £750,000. It is certain that the police investigation into possible perjury in the Tommy Sheridan defamation case will now exceed this amount. Surely this is a phenomenal waste of resources, a claim which gains added weight when you consider the shocking figures that were released recently which reveal that last year Lothian and Borders Police only managed to successfully prosecute a derisory 1.4% of all rape cases brought to them.
Moreover, in the weeks leading up to the Scottish elections in May of this year a bugging device was found planted in Sheridan’s car. This was reported to the police but as yet they have failed to ascertain either its provenance or those responsible for putting it there. It is worth pointing out that at the time of the discovery of his listening device in Tommy Sheridan’s car, he was a sitting MSP, a fact which surely elevates the importance of such an investigation beyond the everyday.
With all of the aforementioned taken into consideration, there are a number of questions that need to be answered. Why was there a decision to launch a police investigation into this case in the first place and how was that decision arrived at? It is extremely unusual for perjury investigations to be ordered in Scotland following a criminal trial, never mind a civil case.
Alistair Bonnington, BBC Scotland’s solicitor, commented following the trial: “Traditionally, we have very few perjury persecutions in Scotland, despite the fact that an application of elementary logic tells you that perjury must be committed every day in almost every court in Scotland in criminal trials. So, setting all special factors aside, it is highly unlikely that there will be a perjury prosecution following on the civil jury trial in the Court of Session.”
In a very telling point made in light of the decision by the Crown to launch a perjury investigation, Bonnington also said: “The prospect of a lengthy, complicated and inevitably useless investigation into the possibility of perjury having been committed in the Sheridan case should fill the Scottish taxpayer with horror. Why should precious resources be wasted on such a stupid exercise?”
Good question. Why indeed? Bonnington, interviewed on Newsnight Scotland, went on to give this explanation: “The Faculty of Advocates was severely embarrassed by the fact that its two leading QCs in Scotland were involved in this case. Tommy Sheridan sacked one and beat the other. There is something very odd about this.”
It is almost without precedent for such an inquiry to be launched after a civil defamation case. There are almost never perjury cases into criminal trials even where a Sheriff or a judge openly says he does not believe a witness or the accused. So why has this unprecedented action been taken?
We believe, in this case, that there exists the strong possibility of collusion involving sections of the Scottish legal establishment and Lothian and Borders Police, responding to pressure being exerted by News International, a multinational news and media corporation owned by a man who hardly pays a penny of UK income tax but who exerts, though his various newspapers, an inordinate and corrupting influence over the body politic of this country. The sole aim of News International in all of this from the very beginning has been to destroy the reputation of a prominent socialist and political figure in Scotland because of his political convictions and, more, his effectiveness in communicating those convictions. Tommy Sheridan’s only crime, the real reason that the NotW have gone after him, is that he has spent his entire adult life speaking truth to power, in so doing threatening their own interest in maintaining a status quo of inequality, racism, poverty, and a weak and fractured trade union movement. Some may claim that in this we are delving into the realms of conspiracy theory. Yet it is indisputable that the massive resources exerted on this investigation, with at least £500,000 of public money having already been spent at time of writing, married to the way in which the police have conducted their inquiries thus far, points to a strenuous effort being made to target Tommy Sheridan.
As such, we demand:
1. An end to vast amounts of public money being used to bankroll a private vendetta by News International against Tommy Sheridan .
2. A public inquiry into how and why an unprecedented decision to launch a police inquiry was taken.
3. An inquiry into the possibility of collusion between the police, the Scottish legal establishment and News International.
Make no mistake we fully understand the serious nature of the claims made in this statement. We have not made them lightly. However, as a political party formed to fight inequality, injustice, poverty, war, racism and exploitation in our society, we will not stand by and allow Tommy Sheridan, an outstanding socialist and class fighter, to be crucified by the establishment and a right wing news corporation.
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