The Militant Tendency¶
Core Argument¶
This chapter chronicles the international trajectory of the Militant Tendency, arguing that its theoretical rigour and principled positions were vindicated by events, even as its organisational discipline sometimes proved brittle. The narrative centres on Ted Grant’s strategic foresight and the application of Marxist method to concrete national situations. Founded in 1974, the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI) prioritised Spain as the Franco regime disintegrated. Grant correctly predicted the 1974-75 recession and the eruption of revolutionary movements in southern Europe, identifying a mounting crisis from rising strike figures. The Spanish section grew from six to 350 members in eighteen months, becoming the CWI’s second-largest. The author relocated to Madrid in January 1976 to build the organisation underground, while the Spanish Young Socialists Defence Campaign linked international work to British trade unionism.
On Ireland, the Tendency maintained an uncompromising class position. It was the only British left group to oppose sending British troops to Northern Ireland in 1969, correctly arguing they would defend imperial interests. Grant condemned the Provisional IRA’s bombing campaign as individual terror, counter-productive in a region with a Protestant majority. He argued that thirty years of armed struggle had achieved nothing, deepened sectarian division, and ended with the sell-out Good Friday Agreement. In Sri Lanka, Grant argued that the Lanka Sama Samaja Party’s entry into a popular front government in 1964 was a disastrous consequence of the Fourth International leadership’s opportunism. The United Secretariat expelled the entire party rather than winning its rank and file. The Tendency later won over a left opposition, forming the Nava Sama Samaja Party with around 700 members, though this was later wrecked by one of its leaders. Grant was arrested and deported after denouncing the President. The chapter criticises Bahu, a Sri Lankan leader, for defending Indian military intervention by developing a theory that the Indian bourgeoisie was a progressive “industrial” bourgeoisie while the Sri Lankan bourgeoisie was compradore. Despite democratic debates, the section was ultimately destroyed by its failure to correct mistakes.
In Pakistan, Lal Khan, a Marxist who fled the Zia-ul-Haq dictatorship, sought out Grant in 1980. Grant advised him to work within the Pakistan People’s Party, a perspective confirmed by the mass welcome for Benazir Bhutto in 1986. Before Khan returned in 1987, Grant urged him to build with a new generation not scarred by past defeats; Khan subsequently built a revolutionary organisation numbering thousands. Finally, the chapter profiles Pat Wall, the ablest of Militant’s three MPs, elected for Bradford North in 1987. An outstanding cadre with a gift for expressing complex ideas simply, Wall was sidelined within the Tendency for being too independent and a faithful comrade of Grant, receiving less recognition than the other two MPs. He died in 1990.