Tommy Sheridan

Tommy Sheridan

Tommy Sheridan (born March 7, 1964 in Glasgow ) is a Scottish politician and former member of the Scottish Parliament . Sheridan attended Lourdes Secondary School in Glasgow. He then earned bachelor's degrees in economics and politics from the University of Stirling .

Political career

Sheridan was initially a member of the Labor Party , where he belonged to the Militant Tendency , a Trotskyist circle within the party. In 1989 he was excluded from the party, along with other members of the Militant Tendency, among other things because of his aggressive rejection of the poll tax . Since he refused to pay poll tax, he was sentenced in 1992 to a six-month prison term. During his imprisonment, he ran in the 1992 general election for the Scottish Militant Labor in the Glasgow Pollok constituency . With 19.3%, he achieved the second highest percentage of votes. He also applied for a seat on the Glasgow City Council. Sheridan won the election and held his seat until 2003.

Sheridan next stood in the 1994 European elections and received the third highest number of votes in his constituency, Glasgow. In 1996 various socialist groups formed the Scottish Socialist Alliance and Sheridan stood for the 1997 general election as a candidate for the new party in the Glasgow Pollok constituency. With 11.1%, it received the third highest share of the vote. From the Scottish Socialist Alliance, the Scottish Socialist Party emerged in 1998 , for which Sheridan ran in the Scottish parliamentary elections in 1999 in the constituency of Glasgow Pollok . Although he only finished third behind Johann Lamont from the Labor Party and the SNP candidate Kenneth Gibson , he moved into the newly created parliament based on the election result on the regional electoral list of the Glasgow electoral region . In the parliamentary elections in 2003 , he was able to expand his share of the vote to 27.9% and thus received more votes than Kenneth Gibson and moved up to second place. He also defended his mandate for the Glasgow electoral region.

In 2006 he left the Scottish Socialist Party and became a founding member of Solidarity - Scotland's Socialist Movement , which he chaired with Rosemary Byrne . The party ran for the parliamentary elections in 2007 only on the regional election lists and could not win a seat in the Glasgow region, which Sheridan lost his seat in parliament. After the return of the mandate of Labor politician Michael Martin for the constituency of Glasgow North East , new elections were scheduled in this constituency for November 12, 2009, for which Sheridan ran. He received 794 votes (3.9%) of the vote. In the European elections in 2009 Sheridan ran on the electoral list of the left coalition alliance No to EU - Yes to Democracy , but could not win a mandate.

Litigation

In July 2006, the notorious negotiation between Sheridan and the editors of News of the World began in Edinburgh . The newspaper had previously reported negatively on Sheridan several times, including that he was seen while his wife was pregnant in a swingers club in Manchester , drinking champagne there and taking part in group sex with party colleagues. The alcohol opponent Sheridan denied both the consumption of alcohol and adultery and attending a swingers club. In the course of the hearing, contradicting testimonies were given. However, one journalist testified that she knowingly added untrue details to her articles to make the case more interesting. In conclusion, the editors of News of the World were ordered to pay £ 200,000, which was initially not paid as the verdict was contradicted. In the years that followed, several witnesses were charged with perjury , including politicians from Sheridan's new Solidarity party, his wife and Sheridan himself. After it was established that Sheridan had engaged in group sex and attended swingers clubs, as reported at the beginning. In January 2011, he was sentenced to three years in prison. After serving about a year of his prison sentence, Sheridan was released early in January 2012.

In connection with the perjury trial, Andy Coulson, the editor of the News of the World, was named as a witness by Sheridan and is testifying under oath. Coulson testified, among other things, that he knew nothing about illegal telephone surveillance on the News of the World. This statement was later found to be false under oath by prosecutors and Coulson was charged with it. The Edinburgh High Court in June 2015 did not consider this part of the testimony to be relevant to the proceedings at the time and ruled that Coulson was not guilty of the indictment.

literature

• G. Gall: Tommy Sheridan: from Hero to Zero ?: A Political Biography , Welsh Academic Press, 2012. ISBN 978-1-86057-119-0

Web links

• Scottish Parliament information

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} page no longer available , search in web archives: information on scottishpolitics.org
2. ↑ BBC News: The rise and fall of Tommy Sheridan and the left
3. ↑ Results of the general election in 1992 ( Memento of the original from January 16, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
4. ^ Information from BBC News
5. ↑ Results of the 1997 general election ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
6. ↑ Results of the general election 1999 on the Scottish Parliament website.
7. ↑ Results of the general election 1999 on the Scottish Parliament website.
8. ^ Results of the general election 2003 on the Scottish Parliament website.
9. ^ Results of the general election 2003 on the Scottish Parliament website.
10. ↑ BBC News: Sheridan's unveils Solidarity party
11. ↑ Results of the 2007 parliamentary elections
12. ↑ BBC News: Date set for Glasgow by-election
13. ↑ BBC News: Labor wins in Glasgow North East
14. ↑ Information from No to EU - Yes to Democracy ( Memento from February 23, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
15. ↑ The Herald: Sheridan trial: perjury inquiry stepped up
16. ^ The Herald: Police focus on Sheridan sex trial witness
17. ↑ BBC News: Sheridan victory in court battle , August 4, 2006
18. ↑ BBC News: Three charged over Sheridan case
19. ↑ BBC News: Sheridan's wife on perjury charge
20. ↑ Tommy Sheridan jailed for three years for perjury in: BBC, January 28, 2011, accessed April 8, 2016
21. ↑ BBC News: Tommy Sheridan vows to clear name after release from jail
22. ↑ Andy Coulson cleared of perjury as Scottish court case collapses in: The Guardian, June 3, 2015. Retrieved on June 3, 2015