Alan William McCombes (born 1955) has been a leading member of the Scottish Socialist Party for several years, and was the editor of the Scottish Socialist Voice until 2003. With Tommy Sheridan, he was also author of Imagine: A Socialist Vision for the 21st Century, described by Tony Benn as "one of the very best books I have ever read on the subject of socialism". Political career Militant tendency McCombes first became involved in socialist politics in the 1970s, as a member of the Militant group. Together with Tommy Sheridan he played a leading role in the anti-poll tax movement. His 1988 pamphlet, How To Beat The Poll Tax, written a year before the tax was introduced, set out the strategy of a Scotland-wide united mass non-payment campaign. In 1992 McCombes was a leading figure in the persuading Militant in Scotland to break with Labour resulting in the creation of Scottish Militant Labour. Throughout the 1990s, he challenged the traditional "British Road to Socialism", arguing for the left to champion the idea of an independent Scottish socialist republic. In 1995, he called for a Scottish Socialist Alliance to unite the left. This was established six months later, laying the basis for the emergence of the SSP. In 1996, McCombes established the Scottish Socialist Voice as a new fortnightly paper of the left, which he edited until 2003. This later became the newspaper of the Scottish Socialist Party. Scottish Socialist Party McCombes held the position of policy co-ordinator for the SSP for a number of years. In this role, he encouraged a rethink of the educational approach within the party and the adoption of more Marxist styles of engagement, influenced in particular by Paulo Freire. He has also argued that the party should embrace more diffuse structures than the traditional models of socialist parties championing the introduction of issue-based networks in addition to the geographic branch structure. Alongside Tommy Sheridan, he co-wrote Imagine: A Socialist Vision for the 21st Century. During the bombing of Afghanistan, McCombes travelled to the Pakistan-Afghanistan border to report for the Scottish Socialist Voice. McCombes co-ordinated the SSP's electoral campaign for the 2003 Scottish Parliament election, which saw the return of 6 MSPs for the party. He announced his candidacy for convenor of the SSP on 19 January 2005. At the party conference on 13 February, he won 154 votes from SSP delegates, losing by 98 to