Scottish Militant Labour (SML) was a minor Trotskyist political party operating in Scotland in the 1990s and was part of the Committee for a Workers' International.
It played a major role in the formation of the Scottish Socialist Alliance and the Scottish Socialist Party, changing its name to the International Socialist Movement, now dissolved. It was formed when Militant tendency split after abandoning its entryist strategy towards the Labour Party. Its best known member was Tommy Sheridan, although Alan McCombes played an important role behind the scenes. The party had six councillors in Glasgow during 1993-95.
In 1996 it led the formation of the Scottish Socialist Alliance, the precursor of the modern Scottish Socialist Party (SSP), formed in 1998. As part of the SSA and SSP it changed its name to the International Socialist Movement. Many of its leading members were leading members of the SSP. A split occurred after years of debate centred around questions such as what the SSP should be, what the nature of a revolutionary party is and the relationship of the ISM to the CWI. The majority of ISM members broke with the CWI while a minority stayed part of the CWI and created the International Socialists (Scotland). Both claimed to be the descendents of SML.
Former members of SML form a large part of the leadership of the SSP today, while Tommy Sheridan is now co-convenor of Solidarity (Scotland), and the International Socialists are a platform within it.
Famous quotes containing the words scottish, militant and/or labour:
“I have hardly begun to live on Staten Island yet; but, like the man who, when forbidden to tread on English ground, carried Scottish ground in his boots, I carry Concord ground in my boots and in my hat,—and am I not made of Concord dust? I cannot realize that it is the roar of the sea I hear now, and not the wind in Walden woods. I find more of Concord, after all, in the prospect of the sea, beyond Sandy Hook, than in the fields and woods.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We find the most terrible form of atheism, not in the militant and passionate struggle against the idea of God himself, but in the practical atheism of everyday living, in indifference and torpor. We often encounter these forms of atheism among those who are formally Christians.”
—Nicolai A. Berdyaev (1874–1948)
“Through throats where many rivers meet, the curlews cry,
Under the conceiving moon, on the high chalk hill,
And there this night I walk in the white giant’s thigh
Where barrren as boulders women lie longing still
To labour and love though they lay down long ago.”
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)