Militant tendency
The Militant tendency, or Militant, was a Trotskyist group in the British Labour Party, organised around the Militant newspaper, which launched in 1964.
In 1975, there was widespread press coverage of a Labour Party report on the infiltration tactics of Militant. Between 1975 and 1980, attempts by Reg Underhill and others in the leadership of the Labour Party to expel Militant were rejected by its National Executive Committee, which appointed a Militant member to the position of National Youth Organiser in 1976 after Militant had won control of the party's youth section, the Labour Party Young Socialists.
After the Liverpool Labour Party adopted Militant's strategy to set an illegal deficit budget in 1982, a Labour Party commission found Militant in contravention of clause II, section 3 of the party's constitution which made political groups with their own "Programme, Principles and Policy for Separate and Distinctive Propaganda" ineligible for affiliation. Militant was proscribed by the Labour Party's National Executive Committee in December 1982 and the following year five members of the editorial board of the Militant newspaper were expelled from the Labour Party. At this point, the group claimed to have 4,300 members. Further expulsions of Militant activists followed. Militant policies dominated Liverpool City Council between 1983 and 1987 and the council organised mass opposition to government cuts to the rate support grant. Forty-seven councillors were banned and surcharged. The conduct of the Liverpool council led Neil Kinnock, Labour's leader, to denounce Militant at the 1985 Party Conference. Eventually, Militant's two remaining Labour MPs were deselected as Labour candidates at the 1992 general election.
Between 1989 and 1991, Militant led the All Britain Anti-Poll Tax Federation's non-payment campaign against the poll tax. In 1991, Militant decided by a large majority to abandon entryism in the Labour Party. Ted Grant, formerly the group's highest political authority, opposed this decision. Along with his supporters, he founded Socialist Appeal, which in 2024 developed into the Revolutionary Communist Party. The remaining majority changed its name to Militant Labour and then in 1997 to the Socialist Party.
Early years
Origins
Militant's Trotskyist roots stretched back to the Workers International League in the 1930s and the post-war Revolutionary Communist Party.The Revolutionary Socialist League was organised in 1957 around the newspaper Socialist Fight. About 40 strong, they were Labour Party members, mainly based in Liverpool, with small forces in London and in South Wales. The Militant newspaper was founded in 1964 after the National Secretary Jimmy Deane, together with Grant, Keith Dickenson, Ellis Hillman and others on the executive of the RSL, decided to wind up Socialist Fight and start another newspaper, initially as a four-page monthly. Peter Taaffe was appointed the first editor, and in 1965 became national secretary.
The name of the paper was the same as the American SWP publication The Militant, 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." Some Trotskyists referred to the new group, still known internally as the Revolutionary Socialist League, as the Grantites after their leading theoretician Ted Grant.
The founders of Militant had roots in labour and trade union organisations, especially in the Merseyside area. Jimmy Deane, the first national secretary of Militant, was an electrician and shop convenor at Cammell Laird in Birkenhead who joined the Labour Party in 1937 and was one of the pioneers of Trotskyism in Merseyside. 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." Taaffe, together with Ted Mooney and other founding Militant supporters, participated in an apprentices' strike, leading apprentices in English Electric on Merseyside's East Lancashire Road.
Early editions of ''Militant''
"Drive Out the Tories" was the headline of the first issue of Militant, published just before the general election of 1964 with an article written by the business editor, S. Mani. Below the Militant logo were the words "For Youth and Labour". Inside, above the editorial, was printed: "Militant. Editor: Peter Taaffe. All correspondence to the business manager: S. Mani". The addition of the "Walton Young Socialists" indicated the significance with which Taaffe and Militant viewed the young socialists, and began the practice of Militant members identifying themselves with their local Labour Party or trade union. With Taaffe in Liverpool, Roger Protz, Keith Dickinson, Ted Grant and others did most of the work on the first few issues.In the editorial of the first issue of the Militant in October 1964, Taaffe made the strategy of entryism clear:
Following the 1964 general election, which the Labour Party won with a majority of four seats, Militant called for "No retreat by Labour" from its 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 increased spending on nuclear weapons and their retention by the Labour Party, contrary to its commitment to nuclear disarmament. The paper supported the trade union struggle against the Labour government's incomes policy. Militant argued that the only long-term solution to the problems facing working-class people was to end capitalism through a socialist transformation of society, nationally and internationally. In 1965, it demanded: "Nationalise the 400 Monopolies". In the meantime, Roger Protz had severed his connection with the group. A letter from Protz, written around this time, was leaked to The Observer newspaper a decade later. It recalls his experiences at an early Militant editorial board meeting:
In 1969, the Labour government came into conflict with the trade unions over its In Place of Strife white paper which was later withdrawn. Militant's national secretary 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" in the first issue of the Militant International Review, Militant's quarterly theoretical journal. 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".
Militant argued that the struggle between the Labour Party leadership and the trade unions 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."
In 1965, highly critical of the policies agreed at the Eighth World Congress of the Fourth International, the Militant tendency abandoned attempts to remain a section of this grouping. According to an internal document by Grant, the International considered Militant to have "a poorly functioning organization" and aligned itself instead with the International Marxist Group. By 1969, Militant had ceased to use the name Revolutionary Socialist League internally. In 1974, Militant founded the Committee for a Workers' International.
1970s
Growth and influence
In 1970, Militant bought premises belonging to the old Independent Labour Party. 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.By 1972, Militant supporters in the Labour Party Young Socialists had won a clear majority on its National Committee. 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, Militant had claimed 100 members, and in 1979 1,621. In 1973, the Labour Party abolished the 'proscribed list' of organisations which could affiliate to the Labour Party.
At the 1972 Labour Party Conference, a resolution moved and seconded by Militant 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". Pat Wall, later an MP, asserted: "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 conference agreed to call on the Labour Party executive:
The Militant newspaper commented "This is an answer to those who argue for a slow, gradual, almost imperceptible progress towards nationalisation."
Labour Party and press responses to entryism
The Observer ran the first article on Militant, "Trot conspirators inside Labour Party", at the end of August 1975. Its author, Nora Beloff, wrote that Militant was a "party within a party".Militant asserted the consonance of its policies with the decisions of the Labour Party conference, which, it said, demonstrated its legitimacy as a current in the Labour Party. "It is significant that all these attacks, particularly that of The Observer, do not deal with the ideas of Militant, openly expressed, which have a great tradition in the labour movement and are the continuation of the ideas of the pioneers of the labour movement and of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky," it commented in response at the beginning of September 1975.
The report of National Agent Reg Underhill into the activities of Militant was completed in November 1975, and was soon leaked. By a majority of 16 to 12, the Labour Party's National Executive Committee decided to take no action. Many on the NEC, then with a left-wing majority, were "determined not to allow a return to what they saw as the 'McCarthyism' of the past". The proscribed list had fallen into disuse and Ron Hayward, Labour Party General Secretary from 1972, claimed he burned the Labour Party central office files on left-wingers. In 1975 Eric Heffer, a member of the NEC, remarked "There have been Trotskyists in the Labour Party for thirty years". Tony Benn, frequently nicknamed 'Kerensky' by the leadership of Militant, defended the group. In a television interview, Benn drew a parallel with the forged Zinoviev letter, and claimed the documents published by Underhill had come from the "intelligence service or wherever".
At the same time in late 1975, cabinet minister Reg Prentice, later a Conservative minister, was deselected by his Constituency Labour Party in Newham North East. Labour Party leader and Prime Minister Harold Wilson declared that "small and certainly not necessarily representative groups" had "secured a degree of power within a constituency", but according to journalist Andy McSmith it was "manifestly untrue" that Prentice's problems were caused by Militant, who had only a small presence in his constituency party. Prentice ultimately defected to the Conservative Party in 1977. Meanwhile, in December 1975, Militant suffered a setback when they lost control of the National Organisation of Labour Students to the mainstream left Clause Four Group.
After James Callaghan had taken over as Labour Party's Prime Minister in September 1976, two trade unionists on the right of the party, and Ron Hayward, the General Secretary, on Hayward's casting vote, decided to appoint Militant supporter Andy Bevan as the Labour Party's Young Socialist Youth Officer. Bevan had been a member of Reg Prentice's constituency and played a part in his removal. In December, the Labour Party National Executive Committee decided by a 15 to 12 majority to uphold the appointment, but with Callaghan's open disapproval. Forty members of the Parliamentary Labour Party condemned Bevan's appointment.
The Daily Express commented: "Just five men have Labour on the Trot... Express dossier of the unknowns behind the Red challenge to Jim." The Times carried three articles in early December 1976 and an editorial about the danger of the Militant tendency, which it exposed as wanting to "establish a group of MPs". Ted Grant, writing in Militant, was optimistic at the time: "This witch hunt will fail, among other reasons, because of the justified hatred and distrust of the Labour Party for the capitalist press and their day to day poisonous propaganda against the labour movement." Andy Bevan faced a demonstration from his Labour colleagues outside Transport House when he finally began his job in January 1977.
Militant general secretary Taaffe was interviewed by Michael Davie, a journalist for The Observer, for an article published on 19 December 1976: