Militant tendency

The Militant tendency was an entryist group within the UK Labour Party founded in 1964. Its philosophy descended directly from Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky.

In 1972, the Militant tendency won a resolution at Labour Party conference which committed the next Labour government to introduce "a socialist plan of production based on public ownership". In 1975, it came into the public eye through a Labour Party report giving evidence for its entrist tactics and a number of press exposés which followed. Between 1975 and 1980, attempts by Reg Underhill and others within the leadership of the Labour Party to expel the Militant were rejected by the Labour Party's National Executive Committee, which appointed a Militant member to the position of National Youth Organiser in 1976.

In 1982, a Labour Party commission found Militant in contravention of clause II, section 3 of the party's constitution, and declared it ineligible for affiliation to the Labour Party. In 1983, the five members of the 'Editorial Board' of the Militant newspaper were expelled from the Labour Party. In 1986, the journalist Michael Crick argued that the Militant was effectively Britain's fifth biggest party (after Labour, Conservative, Liberal and the SDP) in the early to mid 1980s.

Between 1983 and 1987, the Militant played a leading role in the Liverpool City Council's struggle against the Conservative government, which initially won concessions from the government, but ended with the banning and surcharging of 49 Liverpool City Councillors, including up to sixteen Militant supporting councillors, in 1987.

From 1985 onwards, a series of moves led by Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock against the Militant ended its influence in the Labour Party, and the loss of its three Militant supporting Labour MPs.

Between 1989 and 1991 the Militant formed and led the All-Britain Anti-Poll Tax Federation in a non-payment campaign against the Conservative government's Community Charge ('poll tax') legislation. This is widely thought to have led to the downfall of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

After a conference decision in 1991, the Militant tendency abandoned the Labour Party, arguing that the Labour Party had lost its working class base and become a wholly capitalist party. It first changed its name to Militant Labour and then in 1997 to the Socialist Party.

Foundation

The Militant tendency gained its name from the Militant newspaper which its supporters sold. Founded in 1964, the Militant was in fact an orthodox Trotskyist political 'party' with roots that stretched by to the Workers International League in the 1930s, through the Revolutionary Communist Party before splitting with the separate factions led by Gerry Healy and Tony Cliff.

Other Trotskyists referred to the new group - known internally as the Revolutionary Socialist League - as the Grantites after their leading ideologue, Ted Grant.

The new group, about 40 strong, adopted the tactic of entryism seeking to build their party within the body of the Labour Party. They were Labour Party members mainly based in Liverpool, "with small forces in London and in South Wales", organised in a group called the Revolutionary Socialist League which followed the ideas of Leon Trotsky, and had been organised around a newspaper called Socialist Fight, which had ceased publication. After the foundation of the Militant newspaper the group became known as the Militant tendency, and the name 'Revolutionary Socialist League' fell into disuse.

National Secretary Jimmy Deane, together with Ted Grant, Keith Dickenson, Ellis Hillman and others on the executive of this group agreed to launch the Militant newspaper. Peter Taaffe was appointed the first editor, and in 1965 became national secretary.

The name of the paper was the same as that of the American publication The Militant of the American SWP, and as a result "most of the pioneers of Militant were not enthralled by the choice of the name" writes Taaffe. But "Militant did stand for what its proponents intended: the aim of winning in the first instance, the most conscious, combative, fighting, i.e. militant, sections of the working class.

Outlook

The Militant newspaper was founded after the Labour Party won the 1964 general election with a radical programme which appeared to reject "half-hearted" measures and argued for a "scientific revolution", nationalisations and "purposive planning".

In the first few issues Militant highlighted the tasks before the 1964 Labour government, calling for "No retreat by Labour" from its radical promises, urging the carrying out of its promised nationalisation of steel and urban land and calling on it to "take action against the big monopolies, combines and trusts which dominate the economy".

Under the headline, "Another election 'pledge' broken", Militant denounced the £35 billion spent on nuclear weapons and their retention by Labour contrary to the recent Labour Party commitment to nuclear disarmament. Spending on arms was increased.

Militant campaigned on the question of the rising cost of living and its effect on working class people, and in support of the trade union struggle against the Labour Government’s incomes policy.

In addition to many other specific and episodic demands, the Militant consistently argued that the only long term solution to the problems afflicting capitalism in Britain and internationally was to end capitalism in a socialist transformation of society, nationally and internationally. In 1965, it demanded: "Nationalise the 400 Monopolies. Taken together, these demands constituted the Militant tendency's version of Trotsky's Transitional Programme. The wage demands changed with the cost of living, the wars it opposed came and went, and the number of monopolies to be nationalised reduced over time, as monopolisation increased. The Militant tendency consistently demanded the nationalisation of those companies which were said to control 80 percent or more of the British economy and place them under workers' control and management, with the establishment of a socialist plan of production. For the Militant tendency this would mark the end of capitalism and enable the "socialist transformation" of society.

The Labour government came into conflict with the trade unions in 1969, over its In Place of Strife white paper which was humiliatingly withdrawn. In the first issue of the Militant International Review (Autumn 1969), Taaffe outlined how "the trade union and Labour Movement scored a tremendous victory in forcing the Labour government to climb down over its proposed anti-trade union legislation". Several strikes had taken place, the "first directly political strikes" in what threatened to be an "irreparable breach between the Labour leaders and their base in the Labour Movement".

Whilst some city financiers considered the 1964 Labour government an "extremist Bolshevik Government" and were "conspiring" against it, the Militant tendency argued that the struggle between the Labour Party leadership on the one hand and the trade unions and socialists in its own membership on the other, arose from the poor economic performance of Britain compared to its competitors. For them, the "capitalist class" wished to make the working class pay for this "crisis" through a policy to restrict workers' incomes: "For a generation now British Capitalism has been in decline... The capitalists are responsible for this mess. But they want the burdens to be borne by the working class, while their fabulous profits continue to rise. They wanted the Labour government to impose an incomes policy. The editorial of Militant International Review issue 4, (summer 1971), displayed charts on which the growth of the British economy between 1949 and 1962 is given as 2.5%, France 4.8%, Italy 6% and west Germany 6.5%. It comments: "Britain is steadily losing out in relation to her competitors."

International outlook

The Militant tendency's outlook was international. It opposed the Vietnam War, the US intervention in the Dominican Republic in 1965, and Franco's fascist regime. Ted Grant, one of the founders of the Militant tendency, arrived in the UK from South Africa in the 1930s already a convinced follower of Leon Trotsky. Trotsky, together with Lenin, led the Russian revolution of 1917, but the 1930s was the decade in which Stalinism in the Soviet Union became most associated with show trials and brutal dictatorship. Trotsky was one of the foremost Marxist opponents of Stalinism, and by the time of his assassination by a Stalinist agent in 1940, Trotskyism formed a distinct trend of Marxism.

A cornerstone of the Militant tendency's political outlook was based on Trotsky's analysis of developments in the Soviet Union and elsewhere. The Militant argued that the establishment of socialism requires the efforts of workers in a number of advanced capitalist countries. It argued that countries like Russia in 1917 could not, on their own, achieve socialism in a capitalist world. Socialism, it argued, must be international. The Russian revolution of 1917 had "degenerated" into a bureaucratic dictatorship partly because Russia was largely feudal and could not sustain socialism and partly because the revolutions in the capitalist West which followed the 1917 Russian revolution were not successful. As a result, the Militant argues, Russia suffered an international trade boycott, invasion, civil war, and famine, destroying the prospects for socialism. Out of this privation, the Militant contested, a dictatorial bureaucracy arose.

In 1945, Grant, Jock Haston and others played a role in re-orienting their followers to what they began to see as the new but limited period of economic expansion of the 1950s and 1960s in the west, in opposition to the perspectives of the US Socialist Workers Party led by James Cannon in 1945. In 1965, after the Eighth World Congress of the reunified Fourth International, and highly critical of its politics, the Militant tendency abandoned attempts to remain a section of this international grouping.

Beginning in the 1970s, the Militant tendency spent much energy building sister organisations in Europe and the rest of the world, such as in Sri Lanka, South Africa (where they tried to work within the African National Congress, but were repeatedly expelled and harassed), the Republic of Ireland, and Spain, beginning the formation of the Committee for a Workers' International.

Militants in Merseyside

Jimmy Deane was national secretary of the 'Revolutionary Socialist League' in 1964 when it decided to found the Militant newspaper. He was an electrician and shop convenor at Cammell Laird in Birkenhead. Deane joined the Labour Party in 1937 and was one of the pioneers of Trotskyism in Merseyside. He helped form the Militant Workers' Federation after the war, which was involved in a large apprentices movement mainly amongst engineering and electrical apprentices in the AEU and the ETU.

Deane came from a long line of trade unionists in the Labour movement in Merseyside. Deane’s maternal grandfather Charles Carrick was elected president of the Liverpool Trades Council in 1905, served for fourteen years as one of Labour's first councillors, and was an organiser for the Marxist Social Democratic Federation. By 1905 the Social Democratic Federation, one of the founding parties of the Labour Representation Committee which became the Labour Party, had left the Labour Party, but Charles Carrick, like many trade unionists since, remained active within the Labour Party. Deane's mother and brothers were all in the Trotskyist movement and were members of the Walton Constituency Labour Party in the 1950s and 1960s.

At that time the Liverpool District Labour Party and the Trades Council was a single body, the Liverpool Trades Council and Labour Party, until it was split, against the wishes of the left, in 1969. The Liverpool Labour Party as a whole was considered to be under the control of Bessie and John Braddock. Bessie Braddock was a former Communist Party member who had joined the Labour Party in 1922. She became president of the Liverpool Trades Council and Labour Party in 1945 and was MP for Liverpool Exchange. The Braddocks moved to the right of the Labour Party, but some did not. Albert Houghton, originally a founding member of the Communist Party in Merseyside, had drawn Trotskyist conclusions and by 1939 had "long battled with the Stalinists" in the Labour Party in Merseyside.

Almost ten years before the founding of the Militant tendency, in 1955, Ted Grant was almost selected by the Walton Constituency Labour Party as its parliamentary candidate. In 1959, another supporter of Socialist Fight, the forerunner of the Militant, was selected by Walton Constituency, defeating Woodrow Wyatt in the selection process.

Tommy Birchall, another pioneer of Trotskyism in Merseyside in the 1930s and of Militant in 1964, was secretary of the Harland and Wolff shop stewards committee, "representing 100 shop stewards and 5000 workers", and chairman of Litherland Labour Party in Bootle after the Second World War. He played a leading role in the 1945 dock strike, which lasted five weeks and successfully secured a guaranteed wage and working week, paid holidays and other benefits for the dock workers. Subsequently working as a printer and Father of Chapel of the union, he set up Marxist discussion classes which went on to win Tony Mulhearn to Marxism. Mulhearn became one of the most prominent Militant supporters in Merseyside and was President of the Liverpool District Labour Party during the battles of the 1980s.

In 1958, Terry Harrison, a boilermaker at Cammell Laird in Birkenhead, joined the RSL. Peter Taaffe joined the Labour Party in 1960, and "In the Labour Party I discovered radical, socialist, Marxist ideas and in the course of discussion and debate I accepted those ideas. Shortly after his election to the position of editor of the Militant, Taaffe, together with Ted Mooney and other Militant supporters, participated in an apprentices' strike, leading apprentices in English Electric on the East Lancashire Road.

The Militant newspaper

The Militant began as a four page monthly, becoming a 16 page weekly in the late 1970s. It outlined the policies of the Militant tendency and publicised its activities and campaigns. Militant supporters intervened in labour disputes and moved resolutions in Labour Party branches and at annual conferences. There were constant appeals for money. Issue two states, "Alas, if only all this enthusiasm could be translated into hard cash! Money, we regret, is already very short.

Various moves against the paper and its supporters, beginning in 1975, failed until 1983. (See Expulsion from the Labour Party below) Articles in the Militant newspaper almost always carried a 'by-line' stating the author and the Labour Party or Labour Party Young Socialists branch of which he or she was a member, or the trade union branch where appropriate - the Militant never employed professional journalists.

A sister publication was the quarterly journal, Militant International Review, which carried more substantial articles analysing economic, political and worldwide events in greater detail. The Militant International Review became monthly and was renamed Socialism Today in 1995.

Entryism

In the editorial of the first issue of the Militant in 1964, Taaffe wrote:

The job is to carry the message of Marxism to the ranks of the labour movement and to its young people. There is room for all tendencies in the labour movement, including the revolutionary Left. Above all the task is to gather together the most conscious elements in the labour movement to patiently explain the need for these policies on the basis of experience and events.

Critics of the Militant tendency claimed that this group 'entered' the Labour Party contrary to its rules and regulations. 'Militant supporters' (as the members termed themselves) at the time of its foundation claimed a membership of the Labour Party stretching back to the 1930s. The Militant tendency also claimed that groups of Marxists and socialists, as well as non-socialists, had been organised as separate organisations within the Labour Party since its inception.

The Labour Party NEC Hayward-Hughes inquiry, which reported in June 1982, found that the Militant was guilty of breaking Clause II, section 3 of the Labour Party constitution. Michael Crick, author of The March of Militant, shows that many other groups, left and right, also broke the same Labour Party rules, naming Labour Solidarity, the Labour Co-ordinating Committee and the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, amongst others. The constitution, Crick writes, has always been taken "by all pressure groups, on the left and on the right, with a particularly large pinch of salt".

The Militant tendency claimed that groups such as the Social Democratic Federation and the Independent Labour Party considered themselves Marxist or had Marxist trends within them, and were active within the Labour Party since its foundation, for various periods of time. For opponents of this argument, the distinction between 'reformist' and 'revolutionary' currents was a deciding factor.

Revolutionary currents

During the formation of the British Communist Party in 1920, Lenin had advised the Communist Party to affiliate to the Labour Party, claiming that the Labour Party is "obliged to grant its members complete latitude", citing the freedom of the British Socialist Party to publish articles in its newspaper which were highly critical of the Labour Party leadership.

Affiliation by the Communist Party was prevented, however. The leadership of the Labour Party, especially Arthur Henderson and Ramsay MacDonald, were strongly anti-communist, but by 1919 the Labour Party membership had swung in support of the Russian Revolution and voted for "direct action" to stop the British invasion of Russia "to the distress of its leaders at the 1919 Labour Party conference. A vote to join the new Third [Communist] International received a "respectable number of votes". The conference agreed that all party branches and sections should convene to discuss the Labour Party's affiliation.

Lenin argued, "In such circumstances, it would be a mistake not to join this party". The Communist Party applied for affiliation and was rejected. Affiliation of Communists was formally blocked in 1924 and a 'proscribed list' of organisations which were ineligible for Labour Party affiliation was established in 1933.

Despite the split between the Second and Third International in 1920 at the time of the former's reconstruction, for the Militant tendency Lenin's argument was their self-justification. The Militant tendency considered that Lenin's argument that "we favour affiliation insofar as the Labour Party permits sufficient freedom of criticism", which Trotsky later echoed, meant that revolutionary socialists who joined the Labour Party should clearly identify themselves and make clear their criticism of the Labour Party leadership and of the other trends, both in Labour Party meetings and in print.

Bans and proscriptions

By the mid to late 1930s, many Communist Party members, former Communists, and Trotskyists, including some of the forebears of the Militant tendency, were in the Labour Party following Lenin and Trotsky's advice, despite the Labour Party's rejection of repeated Communist Party appeals for affiliation, some of which came close to success. The Labour Party leadership regularly disaffiliated groups that appeared to be Communist or Communist sympathisers operating within the Labour Party. Future Labour Party leaders such as Michael Foot, Barbara Betts (the later Barbara Castle), Aneurin Bevan and Stafford Cripps were leaders of the Socialist League which was disaffiliated in 1937 because it advocated unity with the Communist Party. Cripps and Bevan were expelled. However, Crick argues that there was a genuine desire for unity with the Communist Party against fascism.

In 1936 or 1937, Bevan, an avowed Marxist, was a founder member of the editorial board of the Tribune newspaper, alongside another Marxist, Harold Laski, who became Labour Party chair in 1945-6, and founders Stafford Cripps, Victor Gollancz and others. Foot was a journalist for the newspaper. In the 1950s, with remarkable parallels to the period of 1983-86 when the Militant was being expelled, there were several moves against Aneurin Bevan, who had been responsible for the formation of the National Health Service in 1948, and Michael Foot, who later became Labour Party leader. These expulsions culminated in 1955, when Bevan survived expulsion by one vote. In the mid 1950s, Jim Mortimer, later to become Labour Party General Secretary, was forced to leave the Labour Party because of his Communist sympathies. But by 1959, Bevan was deputy leader and in 1963 the whip was restored to Michael Foot, who had been expelled from the Parliamentary Labour Party.

In 1964, when the Militant newspaper was founded, the 'witchhunts', as they were widely termed, which had caused the 'Tribunites' such problems, had halted and Labour was voted into power again. The period of proscriptions and expulsions of the 1950s is cited by Crick as having a profound effect on the Labour Party and its subsequent reluctance to discipline the Militant tendency. Many on the Labour Party's National Executive Committee were "determined not to allow a return to what they saw as the 'McCarthyism' of the past". The proscribed list fell into disuse and when he became General Secretary in 1972 Ron Hayward burned the Labour Party central office files on left-wingers.

Militant and its forerunners, like many socialists, regarded leaders such as Ramsay MacDonald, who encouraged expulsions of Communists within the Labour Party, to be traitors to the working class, and more or less openly disregarded regulations which sought to bar the revolutionary left, which they saw as vestiges from the former right-wing period. They were able to disregarded bans and proscriptions with considerable impunity until the mid 1980s.

The Militant was forthright in its criticism of the Labour Party leadership. At its mass rallies in the 1980s the Militant displayed two huge banners at each side of the stage, one showing Marx and Engels, and the other showing Lenin and Trotsky, and never disavowed the ideas of Lenin and Trotsky.

Organisations on the right-wing of the Labour Party

The Militant tendency argued that the Fabian Society, on the right wing of the Labour party, was a well organised group which campaigns against the constitution, since its leading figures had tried in 1959 to remove the "Socialist clause", the original "Clause IV, part IV", from the Labour Party constitution, but were overturned by conference. The Militant did not argue that the Fabians should be expelled as entryists, but rather that it demonstrated that the Labour Party is a "broad church".

The "Socialist clause", printed on every party member's membership card from 1959 until abandoned in 1995, called for the "common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange" and was itself written by a Fabian in 1918, following the Russian revolution of 1917, though in fact it was ambiguously worded in order to gain support from the radicalised membership while allowing the Labour Party leadership to distance themselves from more revolutionary currents.

In the early 1980s the Militant tendency contrasted the treatment that the "Gang of four" received from the press and right-wing in the Labour Party to the treatment of its own case, in particular after this group split for the Labour Party to form the Social Democratic Party, and, the Militant argued, went on to take enough votes at the 1983 general election to rob the Labour Party of victory.

Politics of struggle between left and right

The Militant tendency argued that attacks on the Militant and the left in the Labour Party by the leadership were ultimately political in nature, and represented a struggle between a pro-capitalist leadership which wished to implement anti-trade union legislation in order to improve the competitiveness of British capitalism, and Labour Party members who saw such legislation as attacks on the working class who they sought to defend. Among Labour Party members, drawn in many cases from a trade union background, the Militant tendency saw many who to varying degrees aspired towards a socialist solution to the problems that the working class faced, and who themselves saw socialism in the Labour Party's 1964 manifesto and its apparent support for "purposive planning" against "economic free-for-all". The Labour Party's 1964 manifesto said:

Tinkering with policies that have clearly failed and half-hearted conversion to principles previously rejected will not suffice. Only a major change of attitude to the scientific revolution, including an acceptance of the need for purposive planning, will enable us to mobilise the new resources technology is creating and harness them to human needs. .

The Militant tendency and others argued that resistance to expulsions by the right-wing of the party was a defence of the socialist traditions of the Labour Party. They argued that the Labour Party was the mass party of the working class, and socialists such as supporters of the Militant tendency are an integral part of the working class. Many Militant supporters were regarded as "life-long socialists".

See also Expulsion from the Labour Party below

Growth in the 1970s

Background

The first half of the 1970s was a convulsive period in UK politics and industrial relations, which coincided with a period of rapid growth of the Militant tendency. It began with the election of a Conservative government in 1970, a year in which days lost in strike action had risen to almost 11 million. In 1972 this had doubled to over 22 million. In 1974, support for the miners' strike, particularly of the electrical power workers, together with other mounting industrial trade union activity led the Conservative government to declare a state of emergency, petrol rationing and power cuts. The government introduced a three day working week, and called a sudden general election in February 1974 to "let the voters decide who governs the country", the Government or the trade unions.The Conservative government fell and a minority Labour government was elected.

Growth

In 1970, the Militant tendency bought premises belonging to the old Independent Labour Party, one of the founding parties of the Labour Party, and which originally had a Marxist element in its leadership. In September 1971, the Militant newspaper became fortnightly, although still just four pages, and in January 1972 it became weekly. By the end of 1972 it became an 8 page weekly.

During the period 1969 - 1972, Militant supporters began to win a majority in the Labour Party Young Socialists (LPYS), and by 1972 had a clear majority on the LPYS National Committee. The Labour Party Young Socialists grew rapidly. In 1973, the Labour Party Young Socialists conference attracted one thousand delegates and visitors. Taaffe claims that Militant had 397 "organised supporters" in March 1973, but by July of the same year this "had grown to 464." In 1965 the Militant tendency claimed 100 members, and by 1979 claimed 1,621. The Labour Party's 1973 decision to abolish the old 'proscribed list' of organisations which could affiliate to the Labour Party reflected the radicalisation of the Labour Party membership, and particularly the affiliated trade unions, during the early 1970s and isolated those right-wing elements within the Labour Party officialdom who wished to ban the Militant tendency.

Demands for nationalisation

At the 1972 Labour Party national conference a resolution moved and seconded by well known, long standing Militant tendency supporters, Pat Wall and Ray Apps, was passed by 3,501,000 votes to 2,497,000. It demanded that the Labour government commit itself to enacting "an enabling bill to secure the public ownership of the major monopolies". The conference agreed to call on the Labour Party executive to

formulate a socialist plan of production based on public ownership, with minimum compensation, of the commanding heights of the economy.

Militant supporter Pat Wall declared: "No power on earth can stop the organised labour movement!" and "called for Labour to win the workers to a programme of taking power by taking over the 350 monopolies which controlled 85 per cent of the economy." The Militant newspaper commented "This is an answer to those who argue for a slow, gradual, almost imperceptible progress towards nationalisation.

The vote of leading Militant supporter Peter Doyle, the elected representative of the Labour Party Young Socialists on the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the Labour Party, helped give the left a majority on the NEC and enabled a successful vote in 1972 to adopt the programmatic demand of the left-wing Tribune newspaper in the Labour Party, for the public ownership of 25 of Britain's top companies. However, "The day after the NEC, Harold Wilson threatened that the shadow cabinet would veto its inclusion in the next election manifesto.

In 1973 Militant quoted comments from right winger Denis Healey:

We are all agreed with the need for a massive extension of public ownership... establishing comprehensive planning control over the hundred or so largest companies in Britain... and to extend public ownership in the profitable manufacturing industries.

When Reg (later Lord) Underhill's report into the activities of the Militant tendency was leaked to the press and began to attract media attention in 1975, the Militant newspaper emphasised the consonance of its policies with the decisions of the Labour Party conference, which, it said, demonstrated its legitimacy as a genuine current within the Labour party. During this period Militant supporters debated with the Tribune newspaper supporters about whether, at first, to nationalise a minority of the corporations which dominated British society, as the Tribune argued, or whether to proceed immediately to nationalise the commanding heights, as Militant held. Articles in both newspapers reflected the discussion.

By the end of the 1970s, the Militant tendency's call for the nationalisation of the top 350 monopolies, was changed to call for the nationalisation of the top 250 monopolies, as, it claimed, monopolisation continued to concentrate the ownership of industry and commerce into fewer hands.

Press attention and 'the Winter of Discontent'

In 1975, Cabinet minister Reg Prentice, later Lord Prentice of Daventry, was deselected by his constituency of Newham North-east, and the Militant were implicated. Militant cited Prentice’s attacks on trade unionists, such as the imprisoned Pentonville Five in 1972, and his refusal to meet a delegation of trade unionists from the West Ham trades council lobbying for the release of the imprisoned Shrewsbury pickets, as reasons for anger in his constituency. 181 MPs, including 13 cabinet ministers, backed Prentice. Prentice's deselection was later endorsed by the Labour Party's National Executive Committee. Prentice appealed to 1976 Labour Party conference but failed to overturn the decision, and defected to the Conservative party in 1977, where he was made a minister in the Thatcher government of 1979. But in 1975 the Labour Party Prime Minister Harold Wilson declared that "small and not necessarily representative groups" had "infiltrated" the constituency, thus beginning the "bed-sit infiltrators" accusation which was regularly made against the Militant by Labour leaders over the next ten years or more.

The Militant is not now considered the primary force behind the move to oust the right-wing Prentice, but is thought to be part of a broader coalition of left groups. The Militant candidate only received one third of the votes in the selection process and denied moving members into the constituency. Michael Crick says, "the more notable bed-sit infiltrators proved to be Paul McCormick and Julian Lewis, two students who had come to Prentice's defence." Lewis was funded by the right wing Freedom Association and became a Tory MP himself. Prentice described his deselection as "pure communism."

By 1975 the security service MI5 had become alarmed by a developing economic crisis and the growing militancy of the left, and felt that the stability of the British state could be severely threatened. In November 1975 Reg (later Lord) Underhill, who had become the Labour Party National Agent with a "long-standing reputation as a witchhunter produced a report for the Labour Party National Executive Committee on Trotskyist groups in the Labour Party which was leaked to the press.

The Observer newspaper ran the first article on the activities of the Militant tendency with the headline: "Trot conspirators inside Labour Party" by Nora Beloff, who wrote that the Militant was a "party within a party", with the implication that this was illegitimate.

In October 1976, after James Callaghan took over as Labour Party's Prime Minister, there were a series of press articles attacking the Labour Party National Executive Committee's decision to appoint well known Militant tendency supporter Andy Bevan as Labour Party Young Socialist Youth Officer. Bevan had been a member of Reg Prentice’s constituency and played a part in his removal. The Daily Express wrote: "Just five men have Labour on the Trot... Express dossier of the unknowns behind the Red challenge to Jim." The Times carried three articles and an editorial about the danger of the Militant tendency, which it exposed as wanting to "establish a group of MPs"

Observer journalist, Michael Davie in December 1976 interviewed Peter Taaffe, then the Militant tendency's general secretary. Davie wrote:

'No country constitutes a genuinely democratic workers’ state,' Mr Taaffe said. He spoke of the ‘monstrous police apparatus’ in Russia, and the dictatorships of China and Cuba. Why would not the same thing happen here, if everything was taken over by the state? "Because Britain has a long democratic tradition, and there is no possibility of a socialist society being attained here without the working class, and the middle class, being convinced of the necessity of the change." I left Mr Taaffe thinking that Militant and Andy Bevan between them have got Transport House over a barrel.

The Militant newspaper argued that the Labour Party lost the 1979 election due to anger at the £8 billion cuts carried out by the Labour government, following the crisis caused by international speculation on the pound and the subsequent visit by the International Monetary Fund. Rather than heed the advice of the IMF, the Militant argued, the government should have turned to socialist policies to end the reign of the speculators. It also blamed the Labour government's wage restraint of 1978-9, which, it claimed, gave rise to the "Winter of discontent" - a period of union struggle against the government's wage restraint in the winter of 1978-1979, prior to the general election.

Instead of carrying out socialist policies, the Labour leadership, attempting to manage capitalism in a period of crisis, embarked on attacks on workers' living standards, in particular through a series of pay policies...Through their policies during 1974-9, the Labour leaders paved the way for Thatcher." .

These views were widely held in the Labour Party and led to a major defeat for the right wing of the Labour Party.

The Militant tendency in Liverpool

In Liverpool, the City Council was mostly under the control of coalitions between the Conservatives and Liberals in 1979-1983. But when, for a short period in 1980, the Labour Party gained minority control, it had reluctantly opted for a 50% increase in the rates to avoid further cuts in local services, which were threatened due to central government changes in the rate support grant. The Militant criticised this approach. Labour lost control of the council with the loss of six seats in the subsequent 1980 council election, a significant punishment at that time, and the worst losses since 1964..

In July 1981, in the depressed area of Toxteth in Liverpool, serious riots broke out. Conservative Minister Michael Heseltine was appointed Minister for Merseyside, and £20 million of extra money was made available for the area by the government. However the housing charity Shelter, in its journal Roof, criticised Heseltine's "professions of concern about the problems he has seen on Merseyside" since "it was he who savaged the Housing Investment Programme and re-calculated the Rate Support Grant to favour the shire counties at the expense of inner cities." . Liverpool's housing was amongst the worst in Europe.

The Militant tendency highlighted the social deprivation in Merseyside. Total income for the city council between 1974 and 1979 had fallen by 18 percent, and expenditure fell by 14%, yet its rents were the highest outside London. In 1981 unemployment in Merseyside almost equalled the number unemployed in the whole of Wales. Householders also suffered. The Liberal-Tory coalition of 1981 raised rates for 1982 by 21.5%.

Programme

It was the government's cuts to the Rate Support Grant for the city which the Militant tendency claimed was unfair. It argued that £30 million was "stolen" from Liverpool by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's government. Prominent Liverpool Militant supporters such as Derek Hatton and Tony Mulhearn argued that the minority Labour Council of 1980 should have attempted to set an illegal "deficit budget", spending money on the needs of the people of Liverpool, even if it exceeded the council's income. It should demand that central government return the "stolen" money to balance the books.

By 1982 the Liverpool District Labour Party and a broad alliance of left leaning Labour Party councillors in the Liverpool Labour Party adopted the policies which the Militant tendency had been proposing for the city. It adopted the slogan "Better to break the law than break the poor" which had been the slogan of the Poplar council in the east end of London in 1919-20, which took on the unfair rating system of the time and won. The Labour Party's opponents in Liverpool made the most of the far-left Militant basis of the policies of the Liverpool Labour Party. In the Vauxhall ward, a Liberal leaflet proclaimed "Why no Catholic can vote Labour on Thursday" and carried a picture of the Pope. It claimed "Labour's Militants not only want to close our schools but would ban religion as well." .

In 1984 the Liverpool council, already widely seen as a militant council due to local and national media coverage, launched its Urban Regeneration Strategy to build 5000 houses, seven sports centres, new parks, six new nursery classes and other works, many of which were seen to completion. 1,200 redundancies planned by the previous Liberal administration to balance the books were cancelled, and 1000 new jobs were created. The office of Lord Mayor was abolished and the ceremonial horses sold.

Electoral success

In Liverpool, in the face of sustained negative local and national press coverage, the newly Militant-led Labour Party won a substantial victory in the May 1983 local elections, and then again in the June general election. The Liverpool Labour Party, now committed to an ambitious regeneration strategy, whilst refusing to make any above-inflation rent and rate rises, gained 12 seats, including the seat of the Tory leader, and Labour took control of the council.

Labour's local election vote in Liverpool increased by 40%, or 22,000 extra votes. In Broadgreen, Labour's vote increased by 50% and in the June 1983 elections, Militant supporter Terry Fields, standing on the slogan of "A workers' MP on a workers' wage", won the seat for Labour. The BBC had classed the seat as a marginal Tory seat in 1979. "It was the only Tory seat that was won by Labour" the Militant reported..

The Liverpool Labour Party's vote continued to rise: "In 1982 Labour got 54,000 votes in the city, in 1983 77,000 votes, and in 1984 this soared to over 90,000. In 33 of the 34 contested seats Labour's vote increased. Labour held all 14 seats it was defending and seven seats were won from the Tories." No more than sixteen of the elected councillors were Militant members.

Success in 1984

20,000 demonstrated in support of the council's stand in December 1983. At first, during the Miners strike of 1984-85, the Liverpool City Council was successful in getting concessions from central government. The Times said, "Today in Liverpool, municipal militancy is vindicated...a third rate provincial politician, a self publicising revolutionary...Mr Derek Hatton has made the government give way."

Opinion polls showed that the council's defiant stand had considerable support, and this was also indicated in the very high turn out in the council elections in 1984, in which the Labour Party increased its seats by seven. At the 1984 Labour Party conference later that year, a motion calling for unlawful defiance of the ratecapping law was passed.

Issues ninety-day 'redundancy' notices

On June 14 1985 Liverpool Council passed "what has been called an illegal rate...but the Tory Government had left them with no choice." (A precedent for such an action may have been the Poplar Rates Rebellion of 1921.) The Council argued that, "The Treasurers report on April 16th 1985 spelt out where the blame lies...In 1975/76 ratepayers paid just over one third of the total net cost of local services; in 1985/86 they will pay over one half. This means ...a 53% increase in rate levels."

During 1985 the council's campaign to get more money from the government had not succeeded. The council was in an alliance with left-led councils across Britain. Apart from Lambeth, the sixteen other councils which had followd a policy of not setting a rate had bowed to the rate-capping measures of the Conservative government, and set legal rates. The left leaderships of these councils favoured a strategy of delaying the setting of the budget, but one by one they found the means of setting a budget, leaving Liverpool and Lambeth to fight alone. The council declared "In the event of Tory threats of bankruptcy and possible arrests becoming a reality, all out strike action will take place". However as bankruptcy loomed and plans for all-out strike action were finally discussed, they were narrowly lost, although not all unions balloted their members.

Liverpool councillors were advised in late August 1985 by the District Auditor that the council was about to break its legal obligations and would not be able to pay wages to its staff by December of that year. It was required to issue ninety-day notices to all staff. All business traders, the council was advised, face a statutory requirement to give ninety days notice if trading is likely to cease. In September 1985, rather than face immediate confrontation with the law, the Labour group on the council decided on the 'tactic' of issuing ninety-day notices to the 30,000 strong workforce to gain leeway to "campaign more vigorously than ever before". In his autobiography, Deputy Council leader Derek Hatton acknowledges that taking this advice was an enormous mistake, from which the council never recovered. Although technically not redundancy notices, and not technically necessarily leading to redundancy, as indeed they did not, this was a minor detail to the majority of council staff, who felt the future of their jobs at the council were no longer guaranteed, and it was not understood by the media. The 90-day notices were seen as three months notice of redundancy in all but name and treated as such by the media. It was, the Militant's general secretary wrote, "a major tactical error."

A Harris Research poll carried out in late September for Channel Four News found that 47% blamed the government and 33% blamed the council for the Liverpool situation. The Council, still under Militant's leadership, was forced to balance the books in November 1985 after gaining £30 million in loans which, the Militant argued, had previously not been available, and that only brinkmanship had brought on to the table. The Militant labeled the budget an "orderly retreat" in a special Militant Editorial Board statement.

See also Expulsion from the Labour Party below

Regeneration strategy

In the mean time, the Urban Regeneration Strategy of the Liverpool City Council continued to provide jobs and build houses, schools and sports facilities. Lord Reg Underhill, since 1975 a long-standing opponent of the Militant, wrote in a letter to The Guardian (25 September 1985)

I went to see the effects of Liverpool's regeneration strategy... The five year plan is to get rid of outdated and sub-standard housing, the crumbling tenements and soulless systems-built tower flats. Already 3800 separate homes have been built, with their own private gardens and nearby off-street parking... improved street layouts, with tree-lined residential roads are planned. We saw the start of the

Expulsion from the Labour Party

A Labour Party National Executive Committee (NEC) inquiry team was set up in December 1981 and reported the following June. The Hayward-Hughes inquiry proposed the setting up of a register of non-affiliated groups who would be allowed to operate within the Labour Party. The inquiry had sent a series of questions to the Militant tendency and the Militant general secretary, Peter Taaffe, had told the inquiry that the Militant's Editorial board consisted of five people, with an additional sixty-four full time staff.

The inquiry found that the Militant was in breach of Clause II of the party constitution, and that in the opinion of the inquiry the Militant tendency "would not be eligible to be included on the proposed Register". Labour Weekly, the Labour Party's own newspaper, cast doubts on the viability of a register, which it said would only work in an "atmosphere of co-operation" but that "There is no evidence that such an atmosphere exists. The Militant nevertheless applied to register.

In September 1982 the Militant tendency organised a special conference against the "witchhunt" at the Wembley Conference Centre at which Ken Livingstone spoke, which claimed an attendance of 1622 delegates from constituency Labour Parties and 412 trade union delegates plus visitors, showing the considerable influence the Militant tendency had at that stage amongst ordinary members of the Labour Party. Livingstone said "The people fighting to get rid of the Militant, were previously fighting alongside those who deserted to the SDP."

At the 1982 Labour Party conference which followed, the Hayward-Hughes report was endorsed, the Militant tendency was declared ineligible for affiliation to the Labour Party, and the right-wing gained the leadership of the NEC, due to the support of the trade union block votes. Most Labour Party constituencies were against the register.

On February 22, 1983, after an investigation, to enormous press publicity, the Labour Party's National Executive Committee expelled from membership the five members of Militant's Editorial Board, Peter Taaffe, Ted Grant, Keith Dickinson, Lynn Walsh and Clare Doyle. They appealed at the Labour Party national conference in October of that year. Two thirds of constituency delegates supported the tendency against expulsions. However the appeal of each member was lost when the big unions cast their block votes, on a card vote of 5,160,000 to 1,616,000 in each case except for that of Ted Grant, who got 175,000 extra votes in his favour.. "The votes, which had already been lined up by right-wing union general secretaries, were heavily in favour of the platform’s recommendation for expulsions" comments Taaffe.

Opposition

The opposition to the expulsions was widespread, and was even reflected in the Labour Party's own publications. In Labour's magazine, New Socialist (September-October 1982) an editorial denounced the 'witch-hunt' against the Militant tendency:

The expulsion of leading Militant supporters [is] wrong. The Labour Party always has been a broad collection that includes Marxists amongst its ranks. The Militant tendency, drawing as it does upon Trotsky's critique of Stalinism, belongs to this Marxist tradition, and has a legitimate place within the Labour Party.

The charges being levelled against Militant that it is 'a party within a party' is one that can be levelled with equal justification against any other groups within the Labour Party on both the left and right...

The very existence of the Militant and other groups within the Labour Party is a source of strength rather than a weakness. By working for the adoption of alternative policies and candidates, they assist the democratic functioning of the party.

This unusual history of the Labour Party, as one of a "broad church" of affiliated parties (such as the Independent Labour Party) and socialist societies, including Marxist leaning groups, for a while prevented Labour Party leaders such as Michael Foot from acting against the Militant. But after the election defeat in 1983 the NEC agreed to ban sales of Militant at party meetings. Militant was prohibited from using party facilities.

Although as Trotskyists the Militant tendency did not share, in various ways, the same analysis of much of the rest of the Labour Party, they were a visible component of that coalition. The Militant, who claimed to be nothing more than readers of a newspaper, were demonstrated to be members of a Leninist or else a Trotskyist political party, with an elected central committee and an internal regime based on democratic centralism, by organisations within the Labour Party such as the Merseyside Labour Coordinating Committee (LCC), which submitted a report to the Labour Party leadership in 1985-6. However, the Merseyside LCC rejected "large scale expulsions", commenting that

A theory of organisational conspiracy, however, has limited explanatory power. Militant has very deep roots in the Liverpool party, and has gained considerable respect for its commitment and its association with ridding the party of the discredited right-wing machine. Furthermore, its workerist, bureaucratic but anti-capitalist policies have a great appeal among many party members in the city. Many members see them as left – militant with a little 'm' rather than Militant with a big 'M'. This false image is naturally cultivated carefully by their organisation.

More recently it has been strengthened by alliances made with local authority activists, mainly in the manual unions, for whom their top-down socialism has immediate appeal and material benefits in terms of jobs and conditions.

These alliances with the working class of Liverpool, based on support for Militant's policies, prevented any action against the Liverpool District Labour Party until 1986. By 1986 there was a decreasing tolerance of Militant in the ranks of the Labour Party and some forty expulsions had taken place.

Peak in influence

Michael Crick, political journalist and author of The March of Militant, contends that, "For a number of reasons the years 1982 and 1983 probably saw Militant at its peak in terms of influence within the Labour Party. Until then Militant was always able to count on the support of most of the broad coalition on the left of the party, though privately many left-wingers were very critical of Militant's tactics and politics. Members or supporters of different tendencies within the Labour Party, such as the Tribune group and other far left groups, were publicly critical of Militant's politics and its tactics, as all tendencies within the Labour Party defined their different views, but were united against witchhunts.

However, as Crick points out, while Militant continued to dominate the agenda of the Labour Party's National Executive meetings, expulsions spread around the constituencies,

...among them Stevenage, Rhondda, Sheffield Attercliffe, Gillingham, Faversham, Cardiff South, Warley West, Newcastle-under-lyme, Newcastle East, Wrekin, Mansfield, Ipswich, Chorley, Cannock and Burntwood, Eddisbury, Knowsley South, Bromsgrove, Wrexham, Llanelli and Havant... What is especially interesting is that many of these constituency parties could not be described as particularly right-wing... by far the majority of them voted for Tony Benn, Eric Heffer and Dennis Skinner in the annual elections to the National Executive.

Militant kept growing at least until 1986, when it reached 8,100 plus, according to Crick, who adds that this figure may be exaggerated. Militant's public fund raising peaked in 1986. In 1964, it set a target of £500 in funds. In 1980 it raised £94,000. In 1985 and 1986 its Fighting Fund, together with two special appeals raised a total of £281,528 and £283,818 respectively. In the years 1987 to 1989 the figure was around £200,000, and in 1990, £182,677, in 1991, £154,801.

The Militant's public events continued to grow even after its membership and fund raising had peaked. It's largest indoor event was a rally in the Alexandra Palace in 1988 attended by almost 8,000. Irish poet Kevin Higgins, a former member of the organisation, examines the life of a young Militant supporter in his poem,'My Militant Tendency' in his 2008 book 'Time Gentlemen, Please'

Neil Kinnock and the Liverpool Council

But while Michael Foot made no significant progress in removing the bulk of Militant supporters from the Labour Party, his successor Neil Kinnock carried on with more vigour. Many of those around Kinnock had held on to control of the National Organisation of Labour Students in the 1970s, whilst the Militant tendency had gained increasing support in the Labour Party Young Socialists. The group around Kinnock did not accept Militant tendency's claim to be no more or less well organised than any other grouping within the Labour Party.

The tactical decision of the leadership of Liverpool City Council to issue redundancy notices to all their workforce backfired and handed a propaganda gift to a Labour leader who had made no secret of his contempt for Trotskyism. The tactic was opposed by the city council shop stewards - despite the committee being strongly influenced by the Militant tendency - "after a long and bitter debate" on 7 September 1985, by 51 votes to 48.

However, no member of staff was made redundant. The national leadership of the Militant tendency distanced itself from this tactic, whilst acknowledging the enormous pressure Derek Hatton and non-Militant Tony Byrne were under at the time, and whilst condemning what it called the hypocrisy of the attacks on the Liverpool leadership, since, it said, real cuts and genuine redundancies were being forced on councils and council workers all over the country.

In what many people have since come to see as a crucial stage in the move to the creation of New Labour, Kinnock then made a speech to the Labour Party Conference in 1985 that attacked the Militant tendency, although he did not name the tendency directly, and their record in the leadership of Liverpool City Council:

I'll tell you what happens with impossible promises. You start with a far-fetched series of resolutions, and these are then pickled into a rigid dogma, a code, and you go through the years sticking to that, misplaced, outdated, irrelevant to the real needs, and you end in the grotesque chaos of a Labour council, a Labour council, hiring taxis to scuttle round the city handing out redundancy notices to its own workers. I tell you - and you'll listen - you can't play politics with people's jobs and people's homes and people's services.

The speech split the conference. The reaction from sections of the conference was close to ecstatic while other delegates booed, Eric Heffer walked off the platform and Derek Hatton repeatedly shouted "liar" at Kinnock from the floor. His speech caused fury on the left, who felt Kinnock was attacking a Labour Council and should have supported Liverpool City Council, using his authority to make clear the tactical aims of the council in issuing the redundancy notices. Since Kinnock also ruled out compensation for the miners after their year long strike, some miners and miners' Women's Support Group members were in tears.

Few trade union leaders had ever had much sympathy with the Militant tendency and the supposed threat, whether a mistaken tactic or real, to sack every employee in the city had given real sense of legitimacy to those trade union leaders who opposed the Liverpool council's strategy.

Kinnock's speech was played repeatedly all over the media, and spurred on by the positive media response, Kinnock subsequently suspended the operation of Liverpool District Labour Party and appointed Peter Kilfoyle as an organiser with a specific remit to remove Militant tendency supporters from the Labour Party.

Kinnock's speech was used in the Labour Party's 1987 election broadcast, but Labour gained its second worst election defeat since the Second World War. The Labour Party gained 20 seats in the 1987 General Election, but still lost the election by a Conservative landslide of more than 100 seats.

The two MPs associated with the Militant who were elected in 1983, Dave Nellist and Terry Fields, both increased their majorities, whilst long-standing Militant member Pat Wall was elected as a Labour MP in Bradford. Labour also did particularly well in Liverpool, leading the Militant tendency to again deny Neil Kinnock's claim that the Militant tendency's policies were unpopular. The Militant's general secretary, Peter Taaffe subsequently wrote:

Without the attack on the Liverpool Militant supporters, and a subsequent witch-hunt against others on the left, the right wing leadership would not have been able to carry through a massive revision in party policy in the period 1985-7. The attack on Liverpool paved the way for the defeat of Labour in the 1987 general election.

This opinion was not restricted to the Militant tendency. Others were vocal in their opposition to the attacks on the Militant. Michael Meacher MP, then strongly aligned with Tony Benn, had written in the Labour Party's Labour Weekly (18 February 1983) that John Golding, one of those prominent in pursuing the expulsions of Militant supporters, was "bleeding the party's election prospects to death".

Over the following years the Labour Party machinery continued to expel supporters of the Militant tendency such as the MP Terry Fields, often to the acclaim of the national media and many mainstream politicians seeking to regain control of the party apparatus from the entryist faction. After the closure of the Liverpool Labour Party, a broad left coalition began to stand independent "labour" candidates in Liverpool, which put pressure on the Militant tendency to do the same. After much debate, Militant supporters in Liverpool stood Lesley Mahmood as a "Real Labour" candidate against Kilfoyle in the Liverpool Walton by-election, 1991, its first steps outside the Labour Party electorally, giving the Labour Party further grounds to continue with its expulsions.

The Poll Tax

In 1988, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher began preparations for a Community Charge to replace the council rates. Instead of one payment per household based on rateable value of the property, the poll tax was to be paid by all people who were 18 or over. Many working class families faced bills four or more times larger than their rates bills, where young adults had not yet been able to leave home, or where the household contained extended families, or where elderly relatives resident in their homes were cared for. The rates bills themselves had been subject to significant increases, (such as the 50% increase in Liverpool cited above) and were already popularly considered to be too high. In addition, many people objected in principle to the regressive nature of the poll tax.

During this period, the Militant was extremely active in the Coventry Labour Party. It was from here that Dave Nellist was elected as one of the first two Labour MPs from the Militant Tendency. The Labour-run Coventry City Council decided to hold a referendum on implementing the poll tax in the city. It gave two alternatives - to cut services or pay the poll tax. The Militant actively organised a major opposition to this within the city, calling for a boycott of the referendum, and for a socialist alternative to the poll tax. It organised public meetings, distributed leaflets and won a significant victory when, in some wards, less than 1% of voters turned out. This forced the Labour Council to back away from implementing the poll tax in the city and was a key defeat for Thatcher's poll tax campaign.

The Militant tendency held meetings to argue for a strategy of non-payment, and began organising Anti-Poll tax Unions, beginning in Scotland. The anti-poll tax unions grew rapidly in 1989, and soon regional and national bodies were set up, which Militant organised and led. Militant supporter, Liverpool MP Terry Fields was sent to jail for 60 days for refusing to pay. In Glasgow Tommy Sheridan the leader of the Scottish Anti-Poll Tax Federation was jailed for 6 months for being present at, and helping to prevent, a Warrant Sale (public sale of a debtor's possessions by Sheriff Officers) after a court order had been issued prohibiting his attendance. Sheridan was elected to Glasgow City Council as a District Councillor from his cell in Saughton Prison, Edinburgh.

The All-Britain Anti-Poll Tax Federation, led by the Militant tendency, called a demonstration in London on 31 March 1990. It was one of the largest demonstrations London had seen that century, which led to a significant riot in Trafalgar Square. Non-payment rose to 17.5 million people in serious arrears, and central government began to consider the community charge unworkable. The poll tax was swiftly abandoned by the newly elected Prime Minister John Major.

Thatcher called the victory of the 14 million strong, anti-Poll Tax movement led by the Militant:

...one of the greatest victories for these people ever conceded by a Conservative Government

In her autobiography, Thatcher appears to blame the anti-poll tax movement for unnerving her peers in government, causing her downfall. Thatcher, who called the poll tax legislation her "flagship" policy, would give no ground and refused to repeal the poll tax legislation. As a result she was forced to resign as leader of the Conservative Party by her own MPs. In her autobiography, Thatcher says she was told that "Most people were worried about the community charge...I intervened to say I could not pull rabbits out of a hat...I could not now credibly promise a radical overhaul of the community charge, no matter how convenient it seemed.

The Militant tendency's entire campaign had been conducted outside of the Labour Party structures, where no significant support could be won to the idea of an illegal non-payment campaign, and was conducted against Labour Party policy, and in the face of both the threat of expulsions and actual expulsions. Militant MP Terry Fields was removed as a Labour MP for not paying his poll tax, less than two weeks after being released from jail after serving sixty days for the same crime. Labour Leader Neil Kinnock said "Mr Fields has chosen to break the law and he must take the consequences." Most Militant members drew the conclusion that the way forward was blocked in the Labour Party.

The 'Open Turn'

In April 1991 the Militant tendency decided to support the setting up of Scottish Militant Labour, an independent organisation in Scotland, which was to see the election of Tommy Sheridan, the leader of the Anti-Poll Tax Unions in Scotland, from his jail cell where he was serving six months for obstructing the collection of the Poll Tax in 1992. He won the Pollok ward on Glasgow City Council. He also caused a "minor earthquake" by taking second place in the Pollok constituency at the 1992 General Election, finishing ahead of both the Conservatives and the Scottish National Party with 6,287 votes.

At the same time, the Militant tendency decided to support independent Broad Left candidates in Liverpool standing against the official Labour Party. All five Broad Left candidates (not Militant tendency members) won in the May 1991 local elections. Eric Heffer, MP for Walton died in May 1991, and the Broad Left decided to stand Militant supporter Lesley Mahmood as the candidate of "Real Labour". Militant endorsed the decision with Ted Grant and Rob Sewell on the Militant executive opposing.

Majority and Minority resolutions were presented to the Militant National Editorial Board meeting of 14-16 July 1991 on the question of this "open turn", and a faction formed around Ted Grant's Minority position. (The National Editorial Board comprised representatives from all regions and areas of work of the Militant tendency, and functioned as a National Executive Committee.) The Majority resolution, in support of the open work, was agreed by 46 votes to 3, whilst the Minority one was defeated 3 to 43 at the 14-16 July 1991 meeting. Documents from each faction were subsequently circulated. This began the debate about an "Open Turn", first called the "Scottish Turn". The documents of the Majority and Minority are at Marxism and the British Labour Party - the 'Open Turn' debate

The Minority argued that this turn from work in the Labour Party was a "threat to 40 years work", and that "only about 250" supporters had been expelled, out of a membership which in the late 1980s had numbered 8000. They argued that it was irresponsible to endanger this work in view of an anticipated swing to the left in the Labour Party. "The classical conditions for entrism will undoubtedly arise during the next epoch - two, three, five or even ten years — as the crisis of world capitalism, and especially British capitalism, unfolds.

The Majority did not dispute the numbers expelled. It argued "we face a profoundly changed situation". The right wing's policies and methods, particularly those of Neil Kinnock, "have led to a severe decline in the level of activity within the party...Marxists are tolerated within the party only where they do not pose a threat at the moment." The Labour Party Young socialists had been closed.

In the early to mid-eighties, we had fifty to seventy delegates to the Labour Party annual conference, and we dominated many of the key debates. By 1987-88, this had been reduced to between thirty and forty delegates, and is currently down to a small handful. This has not come about because of any deliberate withdrawal from work within the constituencies. It reflects the decline in activity within the CLPs and the witch-hunt against our comrades.

At a special conference of the Militant tendency in October 1991, after a lengthy period of debate and discussion, 93% of delegates voted to support the "Scottish turn". They supported the view that because there was "a blockage within the Labour Party, created by the right-wing Kinnock leadership at the present time, we have to continue to develop independent work and not allow our distinct political identity to be submerged through fear of expulsions." In Scotland, it supported "a bold, open detour in order to strengthen our forces.

Thus in 1991 the Militant tendency effectively abandoned the Labour Party, and changed its name to Militant Labour. The minority, who claim to have been expelled, led by Ted Grant and Alan Woods, are now organised around the magazine Socialist Appeal edited by Mick Brooks. The Group are affiliated to the International Marxist Tendency, which has sections in over 30 countries.

In 1997, Militant Labour changed its name to the Socialist Party of England and Wales. Between 1998 and January 2001 the Scottish section of the Committee for a Workers' International (CWI), Scottish Militant Labour, proposed the formation of the Scottish Socialist Party with a number of other groups, together with a change in the political character of the Scottish section In 2001 they broke with the CWI with only a small minority in Scotland remaining.

In popular culture

The Militant often punched above its weight in media coverage. One of the first and most noticable mentions of the newspapers exitence was on the 1970's BBC tv comedy series Til Death Do Us Part in the hands of the radical minded character played by Anthony Booth, who was often seen reading the Militant. In one episode right-wing character Alf Garnet was seen ripping the paper out of Booth's hands and reading headlines from it in a condescending manner.

One of the tendency's most well known figures, Derek Hatton has claimed that he was the inspiration for the character of Michael Murray (Robert Lindsay) in the acclaimed Alan Bleasdale television drama G.B.H., broadcast by Channel 4 in 1991.

Coverage of the Militants role in the Miners Strike, anti Poll Tax campaigns and School Strikes during the 1980's were also numerous.

Notes and references

External links

• The History of British Trotskyism By Ted Grant
• The Rise of Militant - the official history
• Militant - official Militant tendency website
• The Socialist Party's Homepage
• In Defence of Marxism - homepage of the Minority
• How the Militant was Built – and How it was Destroyed
• Liverpool, A City That Dared To Fight - Book by Peter Taaffe & Tony Mulhearn on Militant & the Liverpool City Council
• News report of the suspension of the Liverpool Labour Party
• Liverpool 47: Socialism on Trial website of the Liverpool 47 councillors, the 47 councillors who formed the left-wing block on the Liverpool City Council.
• [http://www.myspace.com/liverpool47 Liverpool47s myspace