Speaking for himself, the gamble that was a stroke of genius

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Speaking up for himself . . . the gamble that was a stroke of genius

By David Lister and Angus MacLeod

The sacking of his lawyers meant that Tommy Sheridan and his wife could fight the libel battle on their own terms

WHEN Tommy Sheridan announced on July 14 that he had decided to sack his entire legal team, an astonished Lord Turnbull appeared briefly to question the sanity of the sharp-suited individual standing before him.

Just ten days into a complicated libel trial, the idea of dispensing with the services of Richard Keen, QC, known as the Rottweiler for his courtroom pugnacity, and the advocate who won the acquittal of one of the Lockerbie bombing accused, was incomprehensible to the judge.

“Mr Keen must be one of the most talented and experienced practitioners in the country,” Lord Turnbull said. “Very few litigants have the opportunity of obtaining his services.”

When the dust finally settles on Tommy Sheridan v News of the World, the Glasgow MSP’s decision to go it alone is likely to be viewed as an extraordinary gamble, and a stroke of genius. It gave him a convenient excuse in the event of him failing to convince the jury that he was not, as the News of the World had falsely alleged, a cocaine-snorting serial adulterer with a weakness for nipple clamps, PVC body-suits and five-in-a-bed orgies .

Most of all, though, it made sure that the jury would see the case as he wanted them to — as a battle of the plucky street fighter standing alone against the dark, unrestrained forces of a global media empire concerned only with sales.

As well as his undeniable brilliance as a speaker, Mr Sheridan owes a debt to his wife, Gail. Accused by counsel for News of the World of being a “frustrated actress”, Mrs Sheridan has been as much the star as her husband. In every respect the working-class Glasgow wife, the former air stewardess has found herself the subject of newspaper spreads comparing her with the “fragrant” Mary Archer, and admiring her homely but elegant dress sense as well as her forthright answers in the witness box. Speaking to The Times with typical candour during the trial, she said that she was fed up with spending all her time shopping and sipping tea in cafés. “I’m getting bored walking across from the Royal Mile to go shopping on Princes Street,” she said. “There’s only so many shops in Edinburgh.”

Socialist firebrand, non-smoking teetotaller, tireless self-publicist and, in his wife’s words, “that wee boy of mine”, the 42-year-old former leader of the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) has never been one to do things by the book. When he entered the Scottish Parliament in 1999 he declared that “supreme sovereignty lies with the people”, before raising a clenched fist as he took the oath of allegiance to the Queen.

He often joked that he had no vices apart from his propensity for sunbeds and a highly competitive game of Scrabble. Reporters telephoning him at home were left smiling as his answerphone message declared that he was “out fighting Blair and the Tories”.

Even when he married in June 2000, Mr Sheridan, wearing a kilt in McLean tartan in honour of the “Red Clydesider” John McLean, could not resist doing things in his own unique fashion. He attended a political meeting before the ceremony, later admitting that he had been forced to tell a white lie about his whereabouts to his wife. “She’d cut off a part of my anatomy if she knew,” he said, “but it was a very important meeting.”

Mr Sheridan was born in Glasgow in March 1964 into a family of Irish-Scots with strong Trotskyist beliefs. Under the influence of his deeply religious mother, Alice, he flirted with the Labour Party but soon joined the Militant Tendency and came to prominence as a leading organiser of anti-poll tax protests in the late 1980s.

The poll tax gave him the platform he needed to raise his profile, and it was while in prison for publicly tearing up a court order that he became elected as a councillor for the ward of Pollok in Glasgow, winning 52 per cent of the vote.

It marked the start of a career in public office that culminated in 2003 when the Scottish Socialists, the party he had built up almost single-handedly, turned deprived urban areas of Scotland’s political map bright red by clinching six seats in elections to the Edinburgh Parliament.

Despite his position at the fringes of mainstream politics in Scotland, it is an indication of how well-liked Mr Sheridan is that even his enemies refer to him as “Tommy”.

He was met by loud cheers yesterday as he walked down the steps of the Court of Session in Edinburgh and hailed his victory against an international media organisation to which he has referred as “the most reactionary scab outfit in the world”. Throughout the five-week trial in Court 6 at the Court of Session, Mr Sheridan has cut an unusual figure beside the wigs and gowns of the opposing QCs.

His questions were repeatedly cut short by Michael Jones, QC, for the News of the World, as he strayed beyond the strict parameters of courtroom examination. On one occasion Lord Turnbull even sent out the jury as he helped Mr Sheridan to master a courtroom computer.

Some members of the public queued from 7am each day in the hope of watching from one of eighteen seats in the public gallery. They heard lurid accounts of Mr Sheridan’s alleged weakness for sharing prostitutes with his brother-in-law and indulging in unprotected sex with strangers at swingers’ clubs, as well as claims of death threats, secret plots and a “civil war” inside the Scottish Socialist Party. They watched Mr Jones, usually an unflappable court performer, struggle for words as he tried to describe a room called the “Groping Box”. “I hesitate to describe it,” he stumbled, looking at an image of a naked woman on a monitor more used to displaying arcane legal texts.

Doing his best to navigate the website of Cupid’s sex club, in Manchester, he explained: “We see on the wall behind her two holes cut out and hands coming through the holes and going towards the lady’s back.”

In a case that was as much about differing styles as the quality of evidence, Mr Sheridan probably owes his victory more to his passionate, tearful appeals than to the cogency of his arguments. Throughout a 90-minute closing speech that captivated the jury and public, he grimaced and groaned as he drove home his points, at one point even referring to the jurors as “brothers and sisters” before apparently remembering where he was.

Mr Jones, by contrast, rambled for six hours, appearing to confuse dates, people and even alleged orgies as he took the jury through detailed evidence they had already heard. At least one seemed to doze off and others sat with their heads in their hands. Another rolled his eyes as the advocate picked through an apparently interminable list of telephone records.

Whatever glittering future awaits Tommy Sheridan, the irony of yesterday’s victory is that his every move will now, more than ever before, be scrutinised by the tabloid newspapers and the media empires he so despises.

At a stroke, Mr Sheridan and his wife have become Britain’s newest celebrity couple, with a profile far outstripping any other politician in Scotland, and dwarfing that of Jack McConnell, the country’s First Minister.

WHAT HE SAID

“We have over the last five weeks taken on one of the largest organisations on the planet, with the biggest amount of resources to pay for the most expensive legal team, to throw nothing but muck against me, my wife and my family.

“Well, brothers and sisters, what today’s verdict proves is that working-class people, when they listen to the arguments, can differentiate the truth from the muck. The working- class people and the jury who have found in our favour have done a service to the people of Scotland and have delivered a message to the standard of journalism that the News of the World represents. They are liars and we have proved that they are liars.

“I could never have conducted this case without the loyalty and support of my wife, my mother, my father, my sisters, my family and thousands upon thousands of working-class people in Scotland who want me to get out of this court and start fighting for the things that matter most.

“Gretna have made it into Europe for the first time . . . what we have done in the last five weeks is the equivalent of Gretna taking on Real Madrid in the Bernabeu and beating them on penalties.”

see - http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2299897_1,00.html