I have owed an explanation and I now feel free to give it.
— Craig Murray (@CraigMurrayOrg) March 1, 2025
I was elected to Alba national exec last year and declined to take up the post - thus disrespecting my nominators and voters.
In truth, Alex phoned me and asked me to decline. He said there was somebody else he needed to…
Craig did you witness my public resignation? Did you witness me then being called a bitch a witch, a troublemaker and a racist? All for posting that the NEC had been engineered and asking for the results in full. Alba needs a massive reset.
— Leanne Tervit (@LeanneTervit) March 1, 2025
I did, and not only you Leanne. A number of people left the party, with more or less noise, at that time. I was very sorry for it.
— Craig Murray (@CraigMurrayOrg) March 1, 2025
Alex had asked me to stand down in a conversation he had specified was confidential. At that moment I knew nothing about the much wider problems…
Are you kidding?? Rejoin that? No way Craig. You missed the bullying out of many candidates? Maybe you didn’t care but some of us did care an awful lot, yet we were smeared for asking for our results and raising the alarm. I can’t believe you turned a blind eye to cheating
— 💚🤍💜 Can’t Wheesht, Won’t Wheesht (@m1lllavvies) March 1, 2025
I did care a lot. Alex asked me to stand down in a conversation he said was confidential. I did not know at that moment about what had happened to other candidates, I thought it was just me. But when I gound out I still felt bound by the confidentiality.
— Craig Murray (@CraigMurrayOrg) March 1, 2025
It was all strange but I…
Handy there’s nobody to corroborate.
— Middle class woman of a certain age, can be stern (@ipa1869) March 1, 2025
I believe Tasmina was with Alex at the time. And I told a couple of people at the time in confidence - I think Barrhead Boy and Wings.
— Craig Murray (@CraigMurrayOrg) March 1, 2025
Can confirm.
— Wings Over Scotland (@WingsScotland) March 2, 2025
The same thing happened to me. I was standing for Organisation Convener two days before voting reopened Alex phoned me and asked me to withdraw.
— Denise Findlay 💚🤍💜 (@gracebrod1e) March 1, 2025
Like Craig I did as Alex asked.
He didn’t tell me the reason but asked me to do it out of loyalty to him. https://t.co/5tGHmvPvvZ
Although I believe this is the first time Denise Findlay has spoken publicly about the pressure Alex Salmond put on her to withdraw from the re-run of the Organisation Convener election, it won't be a surprise to readers of this blog, because I touched on it in my post about the rigging of the 2023 internal elections. As you'll recall, when the elections were first held in October 2023, Ms Findlay was re-elected as Organisation Convener and Jacqui Bijster was re-elected as Membership Support Convener - but those results were 'unacceptable' to Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh, who had seemingly given Mr Salmond an ultimatum that the election of both women had to be stopped somehow. So Mr Salmond stepped in to prevent the results being announced, and then simply nullified the results - which he had absolutely no power under the Alba constitution to do, but he somehow bluffed his way through with a ludicrous cock-and-bull story about a non-existent "black dossier". He then announced the elections would be re-run in December, but the intention was always to ensure that Ms Findlay and Ms Bijster weren't even candidates second time around, because they undoubtedly would have won again. So Ms Findlay received a phone call from Mr Salmond putting totally inappropriate pressure on her to stand aside, and exactly the same would have happened to Ms Bijster if she hadn't already long since withdrawn in disgust by then.
What's new to me, though, and I think new to most people, is the revelation that Craig Murray received a similar phone call from Mr Salmond putting pressure on him to step aside after he had already been elected an Ordinary Member of the NEC, and that like Ms Findlay he had reluctantly gone along with the demand. This is entirely consistent with what I was told in early 2021 about Mr Salmond wanting to model his new party on the Brexit Party with himself in total control, and with no internal democracy. I believe he had a rethink after reflecting on how bad a look that would be for any left-of-centre party, so he eventually accepted a system of internal elections, but he never intended that to be anything more than window-dressing. The plan was always to get the people he wanted "elected" by any means necessary, no matter whether fair or foul.
The 2023 elections were manipulated and distorted from top to bottom. The sheer scale of the fiddling looks almost comical in retrospect. The office bearer elections were rigged by the means set out above to overturn the legitimate victories of Ms Findlay and Ms Bijster. The elections for Ordinary NEC Members were initially rigged by means of the notorious pay-per-vote system (and it was done in such a cack-handed manner that the exact results had to be hushed up to prevent people bursting out laughing at how implausible they were), but it seems even that wasn't enough for Mr Salmond and Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh, who quickly got rid of several of the people who had been elected, with Craig being the most high-profile victim (albeit a semi-voluntary one).
I have to say I think Craig is being astoundingly naive in his repetitions of the article of faith that Mr Salmond must have done what he did for good reasons and in the best interests of the independence cause. The reality is that we already know with a high degree of confidence that Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh's jealousy was the reason for the ousting of Ms Findlay and Ms Bijster, and with all due respect to the Sheikh family (like others, I'm a huge fan of the Great Zulfikar Sheikh), who Tas feels jealousy towards has got absolutely nothing to do with whether or not Scotland becomes an independent country. I don't know what the reason was in Craig's own case, but I'd be amazed if it turns out to be any more legitimate. To be blunt, I very much doubt that Mr Salmond told him the truth at the time - I don't think the reason had anything to do with wanting a specific person on the NEC, because if you look at who replaced Craig, there's no real logic for Mr Salmond being so desperate for that to happen. I think it had much more to do with negative reasons for not wanting Craig on the NEC - and those reasons are more likely to have been Tasmina's rather than Mr Salmond's.
As someone who was elected no fewer than six times to various internal roles within Alba, including once as an Ordinary Member of the NEC, I've thought at some length about how I would have reacted if after being elected I'd received the dread phone call from Mr Salmond telling me to withdraw out of personal loyalty to him, simply because he preferred to have someone else in the role. I've written many times about how Mr Salmond was my political hero from the age of 16 until very recently, but frankly if he'd done that to me, no matter how much charm he'd deployed, I'm pretty certain I'd have told him to take a running jump. I'd have said to him that what he was asking was absolutely bloody outrageous, and that he appeared to have no understanding of what democracy is meant to be all about - or no true belief in the concept, at any rate. It's not supposed to be about one man making de facto appointments (under severe pressure from one woman) and everyone else dutifully rubberstamping them for him.
No wonder I was expelled - it was only ever the truly obedient and subservient who were welcome in the Alba Party. It's just a pity that wasn't explained to us in 2021, rather than all the endless guff about a "member-led party". It would have saved so many of us a great deal of stress and upset. We didn't sign up to be used and dumped like that.
I say in all seriousness to the decent Alba members who have not yet been expelled or bullied out of the party that they have literally one last chance to save their party from oblivion, and that will be later this month when the issue of constitutional reform comes up at the party conference. Nothing less than full democratisation and one-member-one-vote will do - and even that won't be enough, you'll need to build in safeguards to ensure transparency and to prevent behind-the-scenes manipulation of elections. Squander this last opportunity, as the leadership will be pressuring you to do, and I truly believe your party will be finished forever. It might stumble on indefinitely as a sort of "zombie party" (like the SDP did after 1990, or as the SSP did after 2007) but in electoral terms it will be an irrelevance and the public will forget it even exists.
Worrying or what. Craig then tells wings and Barrhead person! Are they member of ALBA?
ReplyDeleteIf they are then Alba is really scraping the barrel.
DeleteWings isn't, but Barrhead Boy was at the time. From memory, he was the person who was initially announced as the replacement for Craig on the NEC, but he too declined and was replaced by Josh Robertson. I believe he resigned from the party not too long afterwards, although I'm not 100% certain about that.
DeleteThey were a trusted part of the ALBA ecosystem.
DeleteLOL. Well, that's one way of putting it.
DeleteCraig Murray stood for George Galloway's Workers Party of Great Britain in Blackburn at the last Westminster election. Considering that Galloway is a unionist and opposed to Scottish independence how does CM reconcile that with being a member of the pro-indy Alba ? By the way, one of the donators to Galloway's party in none other than Andrew Tate's brother !
ReplyDeleteWe should cut Craig Murray some slack in all of this.
DeleteFew people have done more and sacrificed more for human rights.
Kier Starmer has probably done more for human rights as a human rights lawyer. Mr Murray appears to be mentally unstable and has recently gone from spearheading the dictatorship of the proletariat in Lancashire to hiding from his family in Beirut.
DeleteIn confidence of course.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting you mention the SSP. Despite their very obvious personality-driven split, it strikes me that a genuine 'socialist' party could and should do very well in the climate. I'm not sure if it is poor organization and leadership, because I do think I there is a fertile niche that they could carve for themselves quite separate from the SNP and the Greens.
ReplyDeleteProbably not enough room given SNP's strong positioning.
DeleteThe SNP is socialist? I've heard John Swinney and Kate Forbes called many things, but that's a first!
DeleteThe SSP was a one man band, as far as the public was concerned. In 2003 it flourished along with Tommy Sheridan, but when his reputation was publicly destroyed, their support vanished overnight, along with their chances at any electoral success ever again.
Colin Fox hadn't a chance. The split didn't help, but even if they'd stayed together, it really was all Tommy as far as anyone was concerned. He was ruined, and Scotland's socialist movement was ruined too.
Looking back, Tommy Sheridan's downfall was a warning sign for trouble to come for Alex Salmond. When they take out a star like that, they destroy the whole movement around them. Alba failed on contact with the electorate in 2021, just like RISE and all the other microparties of the left.
Sheridan wanted his fellow SSP members to perjure themselves.
DeleteIronically Sheridan will be on the 'Ordinary Member' ballot for Alba's NEC.
DeleteFred McKarno's circus rolls on.
ReplyDeleteFunny Barrhead Boy and wings never mentioned it. So much for openness!
ReplyDeleteThe reverend was in Barcelona at the time.
DeleteTo be fair to Stu Campbell, he's hardly ever mentioned Alba on Wings at all!
DeleteI get that he considered himself Salmond's buddy, and "in confidence" means something on the phone. It's not this incident I’m moaning about. It's the fact that Wings Over Scotland hardly ever lifted a finger to help Alba at all.
Why was that? What was the problem? It's not like Stu had it in for Salmond, or that he was afraid to split the SNP's vote!
Campbell never got over the disappointing realization that his would-be Wings party wouldn't amount to anything than a dead loss.
DeleteStu is a realist he knew after the 2021 election the game was up as far as an Alex Salmond party was concerned
DeleteHe remained friends with Salmond but he cares about his reputation and wouldn’t it his reputation on the line for a party that was failing
Unlike James Kelly.
DeleteIn fairness both live abroad.
ReplyDeleteWhile telling us Scots how to run our country.
DeleteWhy?
ReplyDeleteSalmon - a giant amongst the Alba liliputians.
ReplyDeleteNot sure that's the moral of this story
DeleteQuite!
DeleteWhy didn’t Stu Campbell expose what was going on he knew but stayed silent.
ReplyDeleteAlba weren't the SNP, that's why.
DeleteI'm not really sure that I'm going to listen very hard to anything from a member of The George Galloway Brit Party.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, who would have thought that Alba would create its own Podgy Dossier as a pretext for control?
A lot of this won't be a surprise to many who were active in internal SNP campaigns on NATO membership and the monarchy in Salmond's day. On these matters and others, the leadership either heavy-handedly used their influence to steer conference votes in its direction (NATO) or outright ignored the vote if they didn't like it (the monarchy). Sturgeon inherited that culture and expanded it.
ReplyDeleteBut at least the SNP under Salmond and Sturgeon was an electoral colossus, so you could tell yourself that the suffocation of internal democracy is just the price that parties pay to be successful. Alba are carrying on like this while their crowning achievement is fourth place in a cooncil by-election in Wemyss Bay.
I once saw Sharleen Spiteri in Wemyss Bay. She was easting crisps but I don't know what flavour.
DeleteI once saw Celine Gottwald in Stockbridge eating smashed avocado.
DeleteGlenn Campbell away with your drivel.
DeleteIf they hadn't got Nato through we'd have as well just not bothered having the vote. Same with monarchy. An argument for another time.
DeleteSometimes internal democracy isn't great shakes if it means members out of sync with population at large.
Salmond argued Scotland must be a NATO, EU, Commonwealth member under the Crown.
DeleteIt is a matter of enormous regret to all of us in the Alba Party that Chris McEleny has chosen to personalise this.
ReplyDeleteThe personality of Chris McEleny is a matter of enormous regret to many people who have been in the Alba Party.
DeleteWhy was Salmond going to such lengths to appease Ahmed-Sheikh? Was keeping her happy worth driving so many people out of the party?
ReplyDeleteHe was getting more in return from her than is widely realised.
DeleteAnon 7:30 Legs Akimbo, you mean?
DeleteIt’s the obvious answer. An open secret.
DeleteShe was valued for her political nous, her experience of all those political parties she was a member of.
DeleteYes, if Roy Castle's Record Breakers was still going, Tas would be on it every week. She's been in the Tories, Labour, the SNP, Alba...and maybe Reform before the year is out?
DeleteIsn't Tasmina bankrolling the party, and therefore Salmond's lifestyle while he was still its leader?
DeleteWhen the *owner* objects to decisions by the management, only one of them can win that battle.
"Huh ! What about us, eh?" - the Lib Dems.
DeleteWasn’t Tasmina his long term partner? My understanding is that they’d been together for over ten years
DeleteI thought everybody was writing about Tasmania till I read the messages more carefully. What am I like!
DeleteSo it was another husband and ‘wife’ at the top of a political party. Same disastrous results
DeleteMisogyny smells putrid in the morning.
DeleteVery statesmanlike media performance by Swinney.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely becoming more statesmanlike
Impressed by his tone, poise, and serious approach.
You're paid per post, right?
DeleteCraig Murray’s naïveté is clear a for all to see. Speaking as a Dundonian who has long experience of him, unfortunately he’s a liability not an asset due to his frequently poor judgement. Having said that, I can attest that he genuinely means well and is an honest bloke, more’s the pity.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that his heart is in the right place but he is naive and so easily misled. Any claims he has made about A S must be questioned. Not good for Alba.
DeleteSo 1 main candidate for ALBA’s top job probably knew what was happening. Still going over old blogs the sermon on the mount type speeches from ALBA, Wings and the rest does seem hypocritical. Still I am sure it must all be the SNP’s fault that they have been “exposed”.
ReplyDeleteKenny McAskill knew everything
DeleteHe was complicit
SNP baaad !
DeleteBaaa!
DeleteAnon at 10.43. Anyone in Alba holding any official position must have known. Yet still they asked us to support and vote for them. Do we want them in the Indy movement?
DeleteThe bullying continued. And that’s why many people left because they couldn’t be associated with the bullying. The people that stayed continue to abuse those that left and make up bizarre theories as to why hardworking supporters left.
DeleteIt’s simple the leadership of Alba are toxic bullies and being a member of Alba is bad for your mental health
Rats in a sack. Alba, WOS, Barrhead Boy, Craig Murray. All it seems against transparency. What a surprise.
ReplyDeleteSo Alex Salmond was the bad guy all the time, so what, thousands of us knew that but the usual suspects all defended him, except now he's gone and can't bring down a vendetta on them, so they feel they must speak out now
ReplyDeleteMake you vomit the lot of them
Speaking out is more to do with the fact that Alba internal elections are on at the moment. But look at the abuse the alphabetties endure. Do you honestly think any women would tell the truth about Salmond without the protection of anonymity?
Deletealex salmond was so good at the raping he could do it to women who weren't even there - he did it with the power of his mind
Deleteor else woman H should be up for perjury
That's Magic.
DeleteWas reported yesterday: “Shameful delay to Salmond probe on perjury is slammed. Crown Office still to conclude investigation four years after first complaint, say lawyers.
Delete“A Crown Office investigation into perjury during the trial of Alex Salmond has still not concluded - despite it being almost four years after the initial complaint was made.
“The allegations were first raised following the trial of the former First Minister, who had faced a number of sexual assault charges.
“It is understood the perjury claims relate to alleged contradictions in evidence given by a witness subsequent statements by the same witness to an inquiry into the Scottish Government's mishandling of harassment complaints against him.
There is a similar shameful delay in the cases of Nicola Sturgeon and Peter Murrell. Any thoughts?
DeleteThe Scottish court system is so fucked there is a 3.5 year backlog for murder cases. Any thoughts?
DeleteThat means you spend 3.5 years in a Scottish prison on remand even if you are innocent. Murrell's lucky he only got a court order to disallow him from property sales in the meantime.
DeleteCraig finishing of the job Sturgeon started it seems.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile Sturgeon effectively neutered and silenced by a dodgy police investigation and deliberate Crown Office delay to ensure a cloud of suspicion stays over the SNP for the Holyrood 26 election. Unionist forces are destroying thenIndy movement and people can’t see it because of their blind hatred of Sturgeon. The irony is colossal.
DeleteI feel the Ukraine conflict makes independence harder.
ReplyDeletePeople are thinking bigger than Scotland.
I wonder if we'll see a reduction in the polls
France is hardly going to pressure the UK to become weaker and divided nowadays either.
DeleteAn alliance we prob needed.
Is it not maybe that Salmond needed half decent folk in post as real politik?
ReplyDeleteHaving nice but dims wasn't going to get them anywhere
Sounds more like pagan idolatry than a political party.
ReplyDeleteInteresting to read your comments about Salmond. I too revered Alex as a politician but it didn't prevent me from criticising him back in the years between 1992 - 2000 when I thought it was due. Salmond could be a bit of a chancer but back in the day inside the SNP there were always people around who were not scared to tell him when they thought he was wrong. I don't think that was the case within Alba and it looks to me like the cult of personality prevailed there. What you described in your critique, James Kelly, will be recognised by many as a prototype Stalinist approach to politics within Alba. Stalin's quote about the person who counts the votes being more important than the people who have voted certainly springs to mind.
ReplyDelete