Notes
2 From the Ted Grant Archive.
3 Young Brendan Behan had taken part in a failed bombing campaign at the Liverpool docks and was sent down to Borstal jail for youth offenders for three years. In 1942, he returned to Dublin an IRA political hero but developed a serious drinking problem and often landed in jail for being drunk and disorderly. After one such episode he was court-martialled by the IRA for “bringing the movement into disrepute”. He was sentenced to death and told to show up for his execution. Apparently he was notified of the sentence in a pub, to which Behan replied, “You tried me in my absence. You can shoot me in my absence”. He later became a famous writer.
4 See Ted Grant’s Writings, Vol. 1 for all documents of this dispute.
5 See, Reply to comrades Cooper and Stuart, in Ted Grant, Writings, Vol. 2, pp. 396-412.
6 Commonwealth was founded in July 1942, by the alliance of two left wing groups, the 1941 Committee – a think tank brought together by writers J.B. Priestley and Tom Wintringham – and the neo-Christian Forward March movement led by Liberal MP Richard Acland, along with independents and former Liberals.
7 See previous chapter. “Reply to comrades Cooper and Stuart” and “Open letter to SWP members”, in Ted Grant, Writings, Vol. 2.
8 “The New Imperialist Peace and the Building of the Parties of the Fourth International”, Resolution adopted by the Second International Conference of the Fourth International, Paris, April 1946.
9 Poujadism was a reactionary movement founded by Pierre Poujade in the 1950s. Demagogically attacking the state and government using the tax issue, it appealed mainly to the “small man”, the petty-bourgeois, shopkeepers etc. After De Gaulle came to power in 1958, it largely faded away.
10 Executive, Central, District and Branch committees