Alan McCombes was clearly the ring leader of the criminal elements that plunged the Scottish Socialist Party into crisis (from which we have yet to recover) fifteen excruciatingly long months ago. That said, he can rehabilitate himself in my eyes. But only if he publicly recognised what precisely he did wrong, the seriousness of it, and apologised personally to Tommy and to the rest of the party. We could then all move on. If, that is, he proves capable of growing up. However, this forgiveness should not be extended to all of McCombes' posse. While he might still deserve re-election to the party's executive, this year and for the foreseeable future, the same does not go for his loyal lieutenants. MSPs Frances Curran, Carolyn Leckie and Housing Spokesperson Keith Baldassarra certainly do not warrant any forgiveness. Why not? Two reasons.

In the first place, McCombes had drawn into his orbit the overwhelming majority of the SSP's executive at the time of Tommy's resignation, a process that had escaped my attention and, I am sure, that of almost all the rest of the party's ranks. Their absolute blind loyalty to McCombes as an individual and, it turns out, to his seedy leadership ambitions, overrode their loyalty to the party as a whole. McCombes' wings need to be clipped by purging the executive of such toadies. While McCombes will probably scrape back into the executive regardless of any apology for what he did, his groupies need to be left languishing on the back benches, from whence they can go home to think again.Then and only then can the party's leading body be restored to something approximating health. Then and only then will the catalogue of disasterous mistakes be brought to an end.

Of all McCombes' aides, Frances Curran is by far the most poisonous. I find it extraordinary that McCombes has managed to keep the massed ranks of the party in the dark about what she has done. I have tried, with insufficient success thus far, to sound the alarm. Hopefully in the month left before the party's conference I can successfully make the case for her removal from the executive. Here goes.

I could provide a list of over one hundred SSP members who heard Curran boast that if anyone asks her about Tommy Sheridan's private life, she will tell the truth. If she was expecting this commitment to "the truth" to be rewarded with a standing ovation, she will have been disappointed. Gasps of incredulity and disgust were audible throughout the hall as she made this threat. Decent members of the SSP will continue to tell any such curious individual to mind their own business. I would have done this prior to discovering Rupert Murdoch's News of the World were engaged in a witchhunt against Tommy - had I known anything about his private life, which I did not. Given the circumstances known to me now though, I will be taking a mental note of everyone who asks such questions: why are they asking this? Might they be wired for sound? For Murdoch? The British security services, perhaps? Frances Curran has effectively boasted that she intends to act in exactly the same manner that lead to former North East regional organiser Duncan Rowan's suspension from the party. Every delegate to our annual conference needs to be aware of Curran's petty, malicious gossip-mongering against Tommy, and who knows how many other comrades. They need to ask themselves whether our party can afford to tollerate such an individual polluting our party's executive. Or our MSP group for that matter. I trust they will make the correct decision.

If anyone still needs further proof of the undesirability of having Curran on the party's executive, consider the following. She was personally charged with organising the press conference of all our MSPs, a press conference specifically designed to anounce the "unity" of our party. Incredibly, Curran decided that Tommy should not be invited to this press conference, although the party's extraordinary executive meeting had only hours previously confirmed Tommy as a member of the party and our MSP group. When this unilateral declaration of independence from Tommy Sherdan lead to a rebellion by other leading members of the party, and she was told Tommy had to be invited, Curran considered unilaterally cancelling the entire press conference! Over one hundred SSP members heard her say that she wishes she had done this! This episode provides us with further proof that her bitterness towards Tommy is far more important to her than her commitment to democratic votes within our party.

As if this was not bad enough, Curran chose to use the run up to last year's general election to express public contempt for her MSP colleague. Colin Fox pointed out that Tommy was not treated with the respect he deserved during his resignation. When this was put to Curran, she thought it wise to give a journalist a quote to the effect that Tommy Sheridan did not deserve her respect, and, by implication, neither did he deserve the respect of Glasgow's voters. So intent on demonising Tommy is she that it did not concern her that the party's potential voters would ask themselves why they should respect those who sit alongside Tommy Sheridan, such as herself. If Curran did not appreciate the electoral consequences for our party of such a statement, then she is too stupid to be granted any responsible role in the party. The truth is, of course, that she knew perfectly well what she was doing.

This public indifference to the electoral consequences of knifing Tommy Sheridan in the back also explains her particularly nasty role in the party's election for national convenor, although it has to be said that McCombes was no less nasty in his bid to stop Colin Fox getting elected. They both seized every opportunity they could to reintroduce the man who was shortly to be elected as the party's national convenor as, amongst other things, a coward, a Tory collaborator, anti-democratic, opposed to women's rights in the party, someone lacking any leadership qualities, and someone whose judgement had been suspect for years, and in particular since Tommy's resignation. These were the politics of the gutter, and, I am pleased to say, backfired spectacularly. McCombes leadership ambitions turned to dust as his campaign grew nastier and nastier. Unfortunately, while Curran simply helped to destroy McCombes leadership campaign, the pair of them further destroyed the credibility of our newly elected leader when he needed it most. Our party's catastrophic collapse below 2% of the popular vote in the general election, in what was a record low turnout, was the price we all paid for their miserable ambitions. If McCombes accepts this analysis and apologises, I will forgive him, and hope that Colin and Tommy will do likewise. However, Curran is beyond redemption.

Curran was the first of McCombes' toadies to appear on the telly to attempt an explanation for our party's executive, and MSP group, being unwilling to lend any solidarity to Tommy Sheridan in his libel action against Rupert Murdoch. She did this in a Newsnight Scotland interview with Gordon Brewer on the evening of our MSP's press conference. Like McCombes himself a couple of days later, Curran justified her so-called neutrality on the basis of Tommy failing to provide catagorical proof that the News of the World story was fiction. Over the next forty eight hours two of our MSPs (Colin Fox Rosemary Byrne) came to their senses. Both understood how vital it was to break out of the straightjacket that McCombes' majority on the executive had placed on them. Both publicly stated that Tommy's word is good enough for them. Although Tommy has resorted to half truth in the past, just like the rest of the adult population of planet earth, Colin and Rosemary realised that Tommy would not have raised the stakes in the way he did (effectively putting his solvency and liberty, not to mention his reputation, at stake), unless truth was on his side. Notwithstanding the ruinous consequences for Tommy of his defeat in an entirely unnecessary libel action, three of Tommy's closest collaborators for two decades saw fit to mobilise the overwhelming majority of the party's executive to deny Tommy the solidarity he had every right to expect.

Policy Coordinator, McCombes, International Secretary, Curran, and Housing Spokesperson, Baldassarra, were key in denying Tommy this support. I have heard each and every one of them express incredulity that the press corp found their Pontius Pilate impersonations so extraordinary. The reason is obvious. The public refusal of McCombes et al to take Tommy's word is intended to poison the jury's mind against Tommy. Fifty percent of our MSPs, still over fifty precent of the party's executive, and most of Tommy's longest standing political confidantes, are, by a process of nudge, nudge, wink, wink, hinting to the jury that they secretly know that the News of the World story was accurate, which is clearly nonsense. The only alternative explanation for their "neutrality" is that they want the jury to be aware that, as far as they are concerned, our former national convenor, and still one of our MSPs, is perfectly capable of launching a libel action based on lies and deceit. These people want the leader of the mass campaign that destroyed the poll tax and Margaret Thatcher's reactionary political reign to be confined to the dustbin of history courtesy of the world's most reactionary billionaire. And they are perfectly prepared to destroy the SSP's electoral fortunes in order to achieve that dispicable end. Incredible, but absolutely true.

As stated previously, if McCombes woke up to the consequences of his actions and went on to beg forgiveness, then he should be welcomed back as a prodigal son. But these are the only circumstances that should result in his rehabilitation. As for Keith Baldassarra and Carolyn Leckie, though... both are, like Curran, entirely beyond the pale. I will explain in detail precisely why that is in my next couple of posts.