When Tommy Sheridan and Rosemary Byrne quit the Scottish Socialist Party three months ago, they also pulled out of the collective agreement under which the SSP’s caseworkers, researchers and parliamentary assistants are employed.

The two Solidarity MSPs also withdrew £48,000 from the pooled account that paid the wages. As a result, the jobs are under threat.

OK, it’s natural that when launching a breakaway political party, the leaders will seek to secure the resources necessary for it to function. But that should be achieved by negotiating an equitable division of assets with the political party they are leaving.

It is unacceptable for socialist elected representatives to put these people’s jobs on the line in such a fashion.

Unsurprisingly, the employees are now in an dispute with Sheridan - pictured above - and Byrne. My own union, the National Union of Journalists, is giving them official backing. I wonder if Socialist Worker supporters in Solidarity will do the same?

You can read the SSP’s take here. And you can sign a petition in support of the SSP parliamentary team here.

[Hat tip: Harry’s Place]

Now that Tommy Sheridan has lost his seat in the Scottish parliament, he's going to spend more time with his family, he tells the Edinburgh Evening News. There's a first time for everything, I suppose.

Meanwhile, there is speculation that Solidarity could merge with Respect. Presumably the Scottish section of the Committee for a Workers' International will flounce out if that happens.

Footnote: In the regional list vote across Scotland, Solidarity secured 31,066 votes (1.5%), compared to the SSP's 12,731 (0.6%). In 2003, the Sheridan-led SSP got 6.7%. So the fall in support for the far left was precipitous, anyway you want to slice it.

Meanwhile, the Socialist Equality Party declares last Thursday 'a debacle for Labour and an indictment of nationalism'. Their account of the campaign adds that their two lists got 292 votes in South Wales Central and 139 in the West of Scotland. You do the maths.

STAFF IN the sex club at the centre of the Tommy Sheridan defamation trial are said to have claimed they were offered bribes not to co-operate with the police inquiry into the court case, the Sunday Herald has learned.

She claimed she was told by a man with a criminal past that she could make money by changing her evidence.

If only half the things I was told by SSP members turn out to be only half true, the SWP and CWI could end up sorry they threw their lot in with comrade Sheridan, pictured above.

Meanwhile, everyone was open enough to admit that the SSP project has been damaged by the electoral setback of May 3. It looks like all party full-timers will now to be made redundant, for instance.

And without the platform provided by having members in the Scottish Parliament, the most likely perspective is a return to more traditional fields of far left activity, although the internal discussions are still ongoing.

Travel hints: The Southside guest house in Newington Road was several notches up from a standard B&B. True, at £90 for a double room it isn’t cheap, but it’s far better value than most hotels in the city.

Music-wise, the main rock venue is a place called Whistlebinkies, with two-three live bands every night. We caught a band called Bad Boogaloo, who were entertaining in a Nick Cave strangles Howlin' Wolf kind of way.

Meanwhile, plenty of pubs offer ceilidhs and folkie singer-guitarists as free entertainment. Don’t laugh. It can be quite enjoyable once you are a few single malts to the good.

That jibe was delivered from the right, as it happens. But it’s exactly the sort of sneering remark one can readily imagine hearing in the faux prole tones of that certain breed of public school-educated far leftist who has succeeded in memorising the Transitional Programme word for word. Free school meals? And you lot call yourselves revolutionaries?

Actually, when the SSP first started campaigning on the question in 2001, I thought it was quite a politically savvy thing to do. This is just the sort of concrete policy that many working class people will instantly see as making a difference to their lives.

It’s not just a question of the cash, as the SSP pointed out; there is also the very real issue among cool-conscious teenagers of the stigma attached to qualifying for a ‘handout’. Growing up as one of only two boys on free school meals in a middle-class dominated Grammar School, I’m well aware of that one.

Top that off with increased recognition of the public health concerns surrounding obesity and nutrition, particularly on the home turf of deep-fried Mars Bars, and the case is compelling.

What’s more, New Labour and the Lib Dems - parties that would, in another time and place, have come up with exactly the kind of progressive reform the idea of free school meals encapsulates - were forced to oppose such a seemingly modest move. In 2002, they voted down an SSP bill to implement the proposal. It couldn’t possibly be afforded, you understand.

As ‘exposure demands’ that highlight the limitations of reformism in the eyes of the class go, comrades, it doesn’t get any better than that.

The SSP imploded in 2006 and lost its representation in the Scottish parliament the following year. Some of the circumstances surrounding the break up are shortly to be debated in a perjury trial, so I’ll say no more on this score.

But now the SSP are not around in Holyrood to take the credit, the policy is all of a sudden safe, at least in a dramatically watered-down version. So the Scottish National Party has today announced that all Scottish kids will from 2010 get free school meals for their first three years in primary school.

I'm guessing that the SNP - ever the opportunists - are doing this to bolster their social democratic standing ahead of the Glenrothes by-election, rather than out of any genuine conviction.

Meanwhile, New Labour has established a free school meals pilot scheme in Hull, and unions and even some Labour MP are pushing the call. But the role of the SSP in getting things rolling is systematically being airbrushed out; there’s no mention of it in the BBC’s coverage, for instance.

Most unfair, say I. Those SSP members who initiated and pushed the policy should take a bow. And socialists across Britain should be very proud of them. Small as the step may seem to a brand of politics committed to world revolution, it is one of the far left’s most significant practical achievements for many years.

NOW that the Gorbals has been demolished, No Mean City clearly needs a successor, and Glasgow North East fits the bill just nicely. This place is poor; in your face, 40% below the poverty line, smack addicts congregating in the shopping centre, poor.

Things have pretty much always been that way, of course. One hundred years ago, Springburn was the site of the largest workhouse in Scotland. A century of progress later, and levels of deprivation remain among the highest not just in Britain, but come near the top of the table for western Europe as a whole. It never got noticeably better at any point in between, either.

The constituency goes to the polls in a by-election in two weeks’ time, and normally the result would not be in any doubt. The seat and its predecessor have effectively been Labour non-stop since 1935, and may well stay that way, although after the Glasgow East contest last year, the Scottish National Party cannot be written off.

The Tories? You’re having a laugh. True, David Cameron has been on the doorstep. But despite his recent attempts to hit on Tracy Towerblocks by reiterating his passionate concern for single mums on benefits, the bookies are giving 100-1 on the Conservatives.

Interestingly for the far left, Marxists have historically performed reasonably well in this area, at least in terms of the very low bar that obtains on our part of the political spectrum. The Communist Party of Great Britain topped the 5% mark in 1931 and 1955, and came close to doing so on a number of other occasions. The Scottish Socialist Party’s Caroline Leckie did even better in 2001, scoring a handy 7.8%.

The picture was complicated in 2005, as former Labour MP Michael Martin sought election as Speaker of the House of Commons. In accordance with convention, the ballot paper did not describe him as Labour, and neither the Tories nor the Lib Dems ran against him.

To general astonishment, the Socialist Labour Party secured 14.2%, an all-time high for the Scargillites, almost certainly thanks to confusion on the part of the electorate. The SSP tally came to an additional 4.9%.

Nothing like this is expected to happen a week next Thursday. But what is disappointing is that of the 13 nominations confirmed today, three are from the far left. This time around, the SLP and SSP are joined by Tommy Sheridan on the Solidarity ticket.

As a London-based Labour Party member, I naturally urge readers to rally round Labour candidate Willie Bain. But if I lived in Scotland, I would be in the SSP instead, and I will be watching out to see how well Kevin McVey does.

From the little I know about Scottish leftie politics, I can well imagine how the three-way left of Labour split came about. The SLP presumably thinks that its freak vote last time round entitles it to first dibs, while Sheridan is famously proprietorial about anywhere within the greater Glasgow conurbation, and probably feels he could use the publicity right now.

But nothing can excuse the wilful display of light-mindedness the division flags up in neon lights to potentially sympathetic punters, just months ahead of a general election. Credible this is not.

The far left, both sides of the border, should remember that until it starts taking itself seriously, there is no reason why anyone else should do so.

LABOUR has held Glasgow North East, quite handsomely in percentage terms, even though the turnout fell to a record low for a Scottish by-election. Full results here.

Thankfully, the British National Party did not retain its deposit, although it came close. Even so, the fascists narrowly out-polled the combined far left tally, which was split three ways.

Predictably, Sheridan came top of the Trots, with 794. The SSP’s Kevin McVey will presumably be disappointed with just 152 votes, while the derisory 47 picked up by the Scargillites proves that the 14.2% it secured in 2005 was largely down to voter inability to distinguish between the Labour Party and the Socialist Labour Party.

Observations, please? Scottish comrades in particular are invited to comment. Any chance of greater unity before the next general election?