How Militant Was Destroyed¶
Core Argument¶
The revolutionary upsurge of the 1970s was defeated not by fascism but by the betrayals of Socialist and Communist leaders in Portugal, Spain, Greece and Italy, where power had been within the working class's grasp. This democratic counter-revolution demoralised advanced workers and allowed capitalism to recover, ushering in the era of Reagan and Thatcher. In Britain, Thatcher's election as Conservative leader marked a shift from aristocratic Tory grandees to middle-class parvenus who waged all-out war on the working class, decimating the miners and print unions. Michael Foot was replaced as Labour leader by Neil Kinnock, an ex-Left turned right-winger who declared war on the Labour Left and the Militant Tendency. Kinnock's witch-hunt demoralised activists, split Labour, and lost support, fatally weakening the party and preparing the way for Tony Blair.
Militant's success in Liverpool, where it controlled the council from 1983 and led a mass struggle forcing concessions from the Tories, alarmed the ruling class. Kinnock, having hypocritically offered "trainloads of sympathy", launched an all-out assault on Liverpool at the 1985 Labour Party Conference. Some tactical mistakes were made—notably issuing redundancy notices to the council workforce as a bluff—but the witch-hunt would have occurred regardless, driven by the ruling class. Despite the expulsions, the witch-hunt boosted Militant's growth from 1,000 registered members in 1980 to 4,500 by end of 1983.
The anti-Poll Tax campaign, led by Militant, brought down Thatcher, with 14 million refusing payment. However, this success caused degeneration: the leadership became "dizzy with success," prioritising activism over Marxist education, overstretching the organisation, and dissolving branches into the campaign. Ted Grant warned this was like the Charge of the Light Brigade. Tensions grew between Grant and Peter Taaffe, who privately undermined Grant's authority while a layer of young, ambitious full-timers, contemptuous of theory, pushed for shortcuts and sought to sideline him.
A clique formed outside the Tendency's structures, operating through backstage criticism and manoeuvres aimed at isolating Grant. This process destroyed his authority and, with it, Militant. Taaffe wanted Grant to take a back seat and hand over to the "Young Guard", but Grant refused. The author failed to see the process because the notion that a comrade could put personal prestige before class interests seemed alien. Grant argued that a bureaucracy could be based on personal prestige, backstabbing, and intrigue, not just material privileges.
In April 1991, Taaffe's group launched a "new turn" in Scotland and fought the Walton by-election behind the organisation's back, breaking with Labour Party tactics. The result was 2,613 votes against Labour's 21,317. Grant's minority resolution argued that dressing up a setback as a victory was the worst kind of deception, and that standing a candidate broke with forty years of theory and method, jeopardising the Tendency's greatest gain: being perceived as a component part of the labour movement. The adventurism destroyed forty years of work in Liverpool, leading to expulsions and collapse. The Scottish turn involved setting up Scottish Militant Labour as an independent party to counter rising Scottish nationalism; this later became the Scottish Socialist Party, which briefly won six Scottish MPs in 2003 before imploding by 2007. The majority faction rigged internal debate, spread rumours that Grant was senile, and expelled the minority in January 1992 after producing a 93% Stalinist-style majority.