Most of the central leaders of the Scottish Socialist Party, including Tommy Sheridan, Alan McCombes, Frances Curran and Murray Smith are members of a revolutionary Marxist organisation, the International Socialist Movement (ISM), formerly Scottish Militant Labour. This current initiated the Scottish Socialist Alliance, and then led it to consolidating into the SSP.
The ISM had been part of the Committee for a Workers International (CWI) the international Trotskyist organisation based in London, but for the past few years the ISM had been in political disagreement with the CWI leadership which opposed the formation of the SSP.
Just four weeks before the SSP conference the ISM finally broke their relations with the CWI, at a meeting on January 14.