Its Been too Long

It´s been far too long since our last post. We´ll try to keep it updated more regularily as we continue our travels.

In the three weeks since we left Turkey we´ve been on a real whirlwind tour of England, Scotland and the Netherlands. From London we stopped for a night in Oxford. In the Oxford Museum of Natural Science (of all places) we bumped into Osama from the DSP in Australia! A complete surprise. Osama had been travelling through Latin America and was over in Oxford to visit his cousin. A pretty amazing coincidence.

From Oxford we went to Sheffield (where we were graciously hosted by Ruth´s wonderful aunt Liz). Then we went through to Glasgow (massive thanks to Lisa and Jo for putting us up and showing us around) and on to Edinburgh (cheers Gerry) to catch some of the Edinburgh festival.

Again in Edinburgh we unexpectantly bumped into comrades from home on the street - this time we ran into Erin K and Troy S from Newcastle who are on a similar extended overseas trip. Another amazing - and pleasant - coincidence.

From Edinburgh we travelled back to Glasgow, then to Sheffield, then to Birmingham for a drink and lunch with Alex M, and through to Bath where we unfortunately missed catching up with Ben and Kim (hey. where were you two!?). We left early for another night in London (thanks Tom, Ana, Sadie & Nell) before taking the bus to Amsterdam where we stayed three nights. Now we´re in Barcelona and plan to stay in Spain for another couple of weeks before the real part of the trip begins - Latin America.

Just finally, we arrived in Scotland one day after Tommy Sheridan´s libel action against the News of the World was decided in his favour and he launched a bitter and abusive attack on his comrades in the SSP who he denounced as ´political scabs´. We met a number of SSP members and discussed the issues concerning the case in our time there. In short we were outraged at Sheridan´s hypocrisy, his determination to slander people who he had worked together with for decades, and his cynical attempts to bust apart a socialist organisation that has been an inspiration for socialists the world over. Our views of Sheridan/SWP/CWI engineered debacle wholly correspond to Alex Miller´s article from GLW (link below).

======================================================
SCOTLAND: Sheridan sparks crisis in the Scottish Socialist Party

by Alex Miller

On August 4 at the Court of Session in Edinburgh, Tommy Sheridan, Scottish Socialist Party MSP and former national convener of the party, won a defamation case he had brought against the right-wing tabloid newspaper the News of the World. In 2004, the newspaper had printed stories alleging that Sheridan had attended swingers clubs, participated in orgies, been unfaithful to his wife, and indulged in champagne- and cocaine-fuelled group sex. By a majority of 7-4, the jury awarded Sheridan the equivalent of A$600,000 damages.

On the face of it, this might seem like a victory the left should cheer, but the court battle has brought the SSP to the brink of destruction. Sheridan accused 11 key members of the SSP leadership of lying under oath and engaging in a political conspiracy to destroy him, and similar accusations have been levelled against a substantial segment of the most active part of the SSP rank-and-file.

http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2006/679/679p22.htm