Sunday, March 2, 2025

Craig Murray's shock revelations about Alex Salmond add to the mountain of evidence that Alba's internal democracy has been a sham from day one

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pressure on her to stand aside, and exactly the same would have happened to Ms Bijster if she hadn't already long since withdrawn in disgust by then.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.

Posted by James Kelly at 5:17 PM 84 comments
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