Edinburgh Evening News: "TWO and a half weeks from now, MSPs will be back from their summer recess. But unless they can overturn a decision of parliament through the courts, four of Scotland's elected representatives will be missing.

Four Scottish Socialist MSPs who staged a protest in the chamber on the last day of business before the recess have been suspended for the whole of September.

They've not just been barred from the parliament's premises, but stripped of their salaries and allowances too, with a knock-on effect on staff wages.

MSPs in the other parties were enraged at the SSP's 'antics', which brought parliamentary proceedings to a halt for about an hour. But there is now a feeling in some quarters that the unprecedented penalty imposed on them was over the top.

The protest, during First Minister's Questions, was over what the SSP claim was Jack McConnell's failure to uphold a previous resolution passed by the parliament supporting the right to march on the G8 summit at Gleneagles.

The four Socialists - SSP leader Colin Fox and fellow MSPs Carolyn Leckie, Rosie Kane and Frances Curran - left their seats at the back of the chamber and stood behind Mr McConnell's chair, holding up pieces of paper which said 'Defend Democracy'.

Presiding officer George Reid suspended the four until the end of the next day, the maximum penalty he could impose, but also referred the matter to the parliament's standards committee, which agreed the further measures.

Mr Fox claims the sanctions are 'an authoritarian over-reaction' and the SSP has embarked on court action, arguing the four were tried in their absence without due process.

The 30-day suspension does seem harsh compared with past penalties imposed at Westminster, where five days' suspension is the norm. When flamboyant Tory Michael Heseltine swung the Mace, symbol of the Queen's authority, over his head in 1976 he was only suspended for the rest of that day's sitting. In 1987, former Leith MP Ron Brown was suspended for five days after he seized and dropped the Mace and refused to apologise. And in 1972, Bernadette Devlin was back in the chamber within five minutes after she physically attacked Home Secretary Reginald Maudling over remarks about Bloody Sunday."

Defend Scottish Socialists - Socialist Worker Online (USA)