Socialist Worker to split SSP and launch tartan RESPECT?

The Tommy Sheridan affair is splitting the Scottish Socialist Party, which has been the most succesful left party in Britain outside Labour. The SWP are rumoured to be importing RESPECT from south of the border to bring Muslims and socialist together under the leadership of Tommy, perhaps George Galloway (who was a Glasgow MP) and the SWP.

I predict chaos! Search the web, think about it for more than 5 seconds and you will agree. The consensus seems to be that Sheridan has wronged many in his party during the recent high octane court case with the News of the World.

I don't want to be sectarian, I think the SSP has been a good thing and would like to see stronger links with them and the Greens but the Scottish Green Party demands support rather than a tartan RESPECT party.

here is the statement from the SWP

'Socialist Worker Platform statement on Scottish Socialist Party

At a members' meeting held on Sunday in Glasgow, the members of the Socialist Worker Platform of the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) unanimously agreed the following motion.

This aggregate of the Socialist Worker Platform recognises with some sadness that the SSP is no longer the broad and open mass party of the left we committed ourselves to building when we joined it some five years ago. While the imperialist war intensifies and spreads into Lebanon, and the level of public anger and opposition grows, the SSP has proved unable to respond to that anger or provide any direction for it.

The potential for building a broad and inclusive organisation of the Scottish left is as great as ever. It is the duty of socialists to respond to and build on that potential. We welcome the initiative of calling an open public meeting of the Scottish left on 3 September in Glasgow and will actively work to build it, in the belief that it could represent the first stage in building new political formation that can answer the needs of the many socialists and activists in Scotland, embracing all strands of the movement including Muslim organisations taking a leading role in the anti-war movement and all those involved in the resistance to G8.

The SW Platform believes that the 'Time to Go' demonstration at the Labour Party conference in Manchester on 23 September can provide a common focus for every section of the movement and a launching point for a new Scottish left that will be open, democratic, internationalist and committed to the building of a new and better world.'