Hugh Kerr:
“Tommy Sheridan’s former press officer Hugh Kerr has defected from the convicted perjurer’s Solidarity party to the SNP. ... His former boss, Kerr insisted, was ‘very sympathetic’ to his decision to join the SNP.”
“”Kerr also said that there ‘could well be’ other members of Solidarity planning to defect to the SNP. ... Sheridan will ‘review the political situation’ before making any decision about his future as convenor of Solidarity, Mr. Kerr said.”
This is how the “Scotsman” reported last week’s news – or non-news, as far as the general public is concerned – that Hugh Kerr has joined yet another political party.
Kerr began his political life as a member of the International Socialists (today’s SWP). He later joined the Labour Party and was elected as an MEP in 1994. Expelled in 1998 for his opposition to Blair’s drive to shift the party to the right, he joined the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) the following year.
Elected SSP co-chair, Kerr was also Sheridan’s press officer during the first session of the Scottish parliament (1999-2003) and contested Euro-elections and Holyrood elections as an SSP candidate.
In 2004 Kerr moved to Denmark. Returning in 2006, he backed Sheridan (and the SWP and Socialist Party) in splitting the SSP and became press officer for the breakaway ‘Solidarity’.
In the 2010 General Election Kerr campaigned for a vote for the Green Party in Brighton. In May of this year he was a list candidate for Solidarity in the Holyrood elections. And now he has joined the SNP.
When Sheridan stood trial for perjury in 2010 Kerr was the first witness he called in his defence. According to Kerr, “harmony” had reigned in the SSP when Sheridan was its sole MSP. But things changed after the 2003 elections.
As one report of his testimony put it:
“Mr. Kerr claimed that some of the new intake of MSPs were more interested in power and money than maintaining party unity. He named Frances Curran, Rosie Kane and Carolyn Leckie for this state of affairs. People were envious of Mr. Sheridan’s public profile and were jealous of him.”
Given that the source of the “Scotsman” article is self-evidently Kerr himself, little or no credibility should be attached to its contents.
(Other than the mere fact that Kerr has joined the SNP, and that he wants to be elected as an SNP candidate: “He said he would be ‘delighted’ to stand for the SNP as a Holyrood candidate or in the 2012 council elections: ‘... If I’m to have any influence, the truth is that this has to be in the SNP.’”)
Having said that, it would certainly be logical for Sheridan to sympathise with Kerr’s switch to the SNP. In this year’s Holyrood elections Sheridan called for a vote for Solidarity candidates first, but otherwise a vote for the SNP!
And if it were not for the fact that Solidarity is long since dead in the water and no more than a flag of convenience for the SWP and Socialist Party to stand candidates, it would be logical for other members of Solidarity – if there were any left – to consider joining the SNP.
Solidarity – like its nemesis, the SSP – had gone from recognising the right of Scotland to independence to a position of raising independence for Scotland as the precondition of socialist advance in Scotland. (Although, it is true, the argument was raised by Solidarity in a more restrained form than it is by the SSP.)
So why not join the only party of any size with a prospect of delivering independence? Even if that party – unlike the Labour Party – has no links with the trade union movement and no desire to establish any organised relationship with it.
In Hugh Kerr’s case, joining the SNP has the added bonus of joining a party which, if it was foolish enough to stand him as a candidate, offers him the chance of securing power and money through holding electoral office.
The SNP has welcomed Kerr into their ranks. They’re welcome to him.
