There seems to be a misconception that the perjury investigation initiated (on October 2nd) by the Lothian and Borders police around the Sheridan trial is an investigation into Tommy Sheridan and those who supported him in court.

This is not the case. It is an investigation into everyone who appeared in court during the course of the trial - including the 11 who told the truth. It is rational to assume, given the balance of evidence, that the TS side has more to worry about than the EC 11 - but they will be investigated as well. Everyone who gave evidence at the trial are under potential threat of perjury charges - with a possible maximum 10 years jail at the end of it. We should not invest too much faith in the police to see right from wrong, they haven't got a brilliant record.

According the Scotsman's account (which seems to have logic on its side) the issue of perjury goes back to the trial judge who asked for an investigation at the end of the case. The Crown Office (responsible for prosecutions in Scotland), back in August, then instructed the Edinburgh Procurator Fiscal to conduct an investigation to establish if there were grounds for a criminal investigation. It has now received the report and made its decision, and that is that there are indeed such grounds. The Crown Office has therefore instructed the police to investigate possible perjury. Everyone who appeared in court is now likely to be interviewed.

Many on the left were sceptical as to whether there would be action for perjury, given that there is often contradictory evidence given in court which does not result in such action. This was an extreme case and has always been treated as such by the authorities in Scotland who have been pursuing perjury from the beginning.

The Daily Record of October 4th claims that Borders police have allocated a team of 10 CID officers to the case and expect them to be working on it full time for at least a year.

It is also being assumed that the announcement of the police investigation was triggered by the release of the tape in the NoTW on Sunday October 1. This does not appear to be the case. The Crown Office insists that the process initiated after the trial had been completed and that the fact that the announcement followed the publication of the tapes was coincidental. The tape will now be taken into account but the process leading to the perjury investigation existed independently of it.

It is important to get this legal process right because it establishes why everyone who appeared in court, or were dragged into it, including the EC 11, have the right to defend themselves and clear their names. This includes the handing to the police of the hand-written notes of the minutes of the EC meeting of 9.11.04 by the minute taker who was accused in court of fabricating the printed version. It also includes this tape - which is legitimate evidence that the 11 were telling the truth.

The tape features Sheridan admitting that he told the EC on 9.11.04 that the allegations against him were in part true. To make the admission, he is heard saying, had been a "humungus" mistake.

Is the tape a fake as Sheridan claims? Those who have heard the 40-minute tape say that there is no room for doubt that it is Sheridan who is speaking. The NoTW is now acting with such confidence - repeatedly calling him a liar, a cheat and a perjurer - that they are clearly convinced it will hold water in court.

The person who taped it (sometime before the trial started) and released it is a long-standing member of the SSP and former close personal friend of Sheridan. He claims that he taped it when he thought Sheridan was starting to rewrite history as a safeguard. He did not release it before the trial because he thought the outcome was inevitable: i.e. Sheridan would lose the case. When Sheridan not only won but also branded 11 members of the EC liars and scabs he decided to release the tape to the NoTW. It looks like another (Jeffrey Archer tape) case of a friend who could not stand the hypocrisy any more.

The tape confirms what Alan McCombes said in his account of the whole thing at the end of the trial - that Sheridan and his lies were "a walking talking ticking time-bomb who could be blown up at any time in the future". It could hardly have turned out to be more true. Even he might be surprised at how quickly it came about.

There may be questions about how the tape was handed over to the NoTW (there are allegations of a payment being made) but that should not be allowed to obscure the wider picture - that the tape substantiates what the 11 have been saying all along and it should help protect them against perjury charges.

The problem Sheridan and his supporters have is that they might not only face perjury charges but charges for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. In other words, allegations that they discussed making the statements they did collectively beforehand.

It should also be remembered that Sheridan and his supporters invented a story about a supposed conspiracy inside the SSP to oust Sheridan from something (it was never quite clear what) as the rationale for the 11 "telling lies" in court.

It looks highly likley that this case will end up back in court within the next year or so either as an appeal, a retrial or perjury charges - or any number of these options. Perjury charges, if filed, will have serious consequences for anyone convicted.

We do not want to see anyone penalised by the courts over this. It would be better if this mess could be sorted out in the worker's movement and the courts kept out of it. But the person who dragged everyone involved into the courts was Tommy Sheridan. He was the one who insisted on taking the NoTW to court, at the EC meeting on 9.11.06, knowing that some of the allegations they were making were true. It was him who rejected other rational proposals like telling the NoTW to go away and mind their own business. It was his action which resulted in 15 members of the EC being dragged into court. It was him who called 11 of them liars and scabs in court when all they were doing was telling the truth.

The problem that the 11 have had is that the decision of the jury not only vindicated Sheridan but it branded them as perjurers at the same time. They have the right to clear their names and that can only be done by establishing the truth. The fact that the truth puts Tommy Sheridan and those who supported him in court in a difficult situation is unavoidable. It was, however, as a result of their own misguided actions. The problem with this case all along is that the statements presented in court were so contradictory that only one side could be telling the truth - the other had to be telling lies.