Militant Tendency Research Articles

‘A different species’: the British Labour Party and the Militant ‘other’, 1979-1983

ABSTRACT This article assesses the efforts that were made within the British Labour Party to isolate and exclude the Militant Tendency, a Trotskyite entryist group, during the period 1979 to 1983. It argues that the battle over whether or not Militant should be expelled from Labour was, primarily, a battle of metaphor and semantics. More specifically, it suggests that these years witnessed the successful construction of Militant as Labour’s unwanted and malignant ‘other’. Five central discursive motifs (medical, subhumanal, emotional, ideological, and historical) for ‘othering’ are identified. These motifs were operationalised in a systematic and sustained manner by individuals and groups who were hostile to Militant, such as the Labour Solidarity Campaign. Over time, Labour leader Michael Foot, who had, initially, been reluctant to take action against Militant, also adopted the language of this active and purposive rhetorical strategy. In response, Militant’s main counter-discursive strategy, the ‘witch hunt’ narrative, failed to shape party opinion decisively and prevent the initiation of exclusionary processes. By 1983, the pattern of interrelated discursive motifs for ‘othering’ that would be applied to Militant throughout the decade had been established: a hegemonic narrative, concerning the tendency’s imminent ‘threat’ to Labour, had permeated all levels of the party.

‘A new and disturbing form of subversion’: Militant Tendency, MI5 and the threat of Trotskyism in Britain, 1937-1987

ABSTRACT This article examines how the rise of Militant Tendency transformed MI5’s perception of Trotskyism’s ability to pose a threat to the British state. Militant’s emergence in the 1970s as an entryist organisation within the Labour Party and its subsequent influence on Liverpool City Council in the early 1980s led security officials to consider it as an equal if not greater subversive threat than the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). Drawing on newly released files, the article adds to the understanding of counter-subversive investigations in Cold War Britain and assesses how, between the late 1970s and early 1980s, Militant became the first and, so far, only Trotskyist group to be considered by MI5 a significant subversive threat to British internal security.

Campaigning for the Labour Party but from the Outside and with Different Objectives: the Stance of the Socialist Party in the UK 2019 General Election

The UK 2019 general election was ultimately the one which brought Jeremy Corbyn’s downfall and a shift back from the radical to the soft left in the political line of the Labour Party. This election presents a singular character for one of the two oldest Trotskyist parties in the United-Kingdom: the Socialist Party. Indeed, the Trotskyist party, heir to the Militant Tendency of the 1980s, decided not to stand any candidates at this election and to officially support Jeremy Corbyn’s campaign. This paper will retrace the history linking the Socialist Party to the Labour Party. It will also explore the modalities of the Socialist Party’s support for the Labour Party in both its material and ideological aspects. From this, it will show how this campaign was ultimately more a campaign to serve revolutionary objectives, than a genuine campaign for the victory of the party led by Jeremy Corbyn. This paper will then proceed to examine the comparison often drawn by the media and the political opponents of Jeremy Corbyn between the elections of 1983 and 2019 by examining the role played by the Trotskyists then and Momentum now, the reasons of their support to Labour an the results obtained by each.

The Labour Party’s Inquiry into Liverpool District Labour Party and expulsion of nine members of the Militant Tendency, 1985–1986

ABSTRACTThis article explores the Labour Party’s Inquiry and subsequent expulsion hearings in Liverpool between 1985 and 1986. For Labour, the entrism and influence of the Militant Tendency within both Liverpool City Council and Liverpool District Labour Party led to a widespread inquiry into local procedures and practices which resulted in the expulsion of nine prominent members in 1986. This article argues that the Inquiry and expulsion hearings were key events in not only breaking the hold of Militant on Liverpool City Council, but also in the realignment of Labour’s left into ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ factions at a national level.

Book review: Tommy Sheridan: From Hero to Zero? A Political Biography, by Gregor Gall

Gregor Gall Tommy Sheridan: From Hero to Zero? A Pofitical Biography, Welsh Academic Press: Cardiff, 384 pp: 9781860571190, 25 [pounds sterling] (hbk) Tommy Sheridan was one of the best-known far-left political leaders of modern times, and for a period of about ten years, from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s, he was probably one of the most influential. Yet in the space of just a few years he moved from a seat in the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood to a cell in the Scottish prison at Barlinnie. Meanwhile, the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) that he had helped to create and develop underwent an acrimonious and enormously damaging split from which it has yet to recover. The story of Sheridan's rise and fall is therefore important for all those interested in the creation of a popular left-wing movement that can mobilise large-scale resistance against economic austerity. Because Sheridan is such a contentious figure in Scottish labour politics, any biography will be thoroughly dissected by his friends and enemies alike. Gregor Gall knew Sheridan through working with him in the SSP, and he was therefore able to interview him as well as members of his family and close friends. His book is based partly on these 28 interviews with key informants, often lasting as long as three hours, as well as on SSP documents and publications and a substantial number of newspaper and magazine articles. The events depicted in the book are therefore thoroughly documented and referenced in almost 70 pages of footnotes, within a text of 375 pages. Gall's own view is that the News of the Worm claims about Sheridan's sexual activities were largely accurate; that Sheridan's decision to sue the paper was reckless in the extreme; and that his subsequent conviction for perjury was sound. Nonetheless, he is scrupulous in presenting rival interpretations of key events, not least those from Sheridan himself and his key supporters. The book begins with the development of Sheridan's world view and its central focus on mobilising against injustice, particularly as it affected local people. He joined the Militant Tendency whilst a university student, declaring that he preferred to work with fellow socialists inside the Labour Party rather than standing outside like the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) or the Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP). He came to national prominence through his leading role in the Anti-Poll Tax Federation, an organisation that ran a highly successful campaign against a deeply unpopular tax. What Sheridan realised in the course of this campaign was that he was a highly effective and charismatic orator, capable of inspiring tremendous loyalty amongst his growing number of supporters. However the Federation's support for illegal tactics such as non-payment and its control by Militant were more than enough to antagonise the rightward moving leadership of the Labour Party. The expulsions of Militant activists that began in 1982 under Michael Foot's leadership escalated significantly under Neil Kinnock, and Sheridan was one of a growing number of Militant supporters expelled in the late-1980s. The comprehensive assault on Militant called into question its long-standing policy of deep entry into the Labour Party, and paved the way for the 1991 'open turn' into an independent political party, a policy first tried out in Scotland and firmly backed by Sheridan. …

A Reinterpretation of Michael Foot's Handling of the Militant Tendency

In modern-day politics, Michael Foot's period as leader of the Labour Party has frequently been seen as the exemplar of all that was wrong with so-called ‘Old’ Labour. His treatment of the Militant Tendency has often been held up as evidence of his haplessness. Whilst Foot was admittedly guilty of some errors, such analysis has often neglected the context, and the constraints, within which he worked. His party was deeply split horizontally and vertically beneath him. Consequently, Foot's actions have not merited such widespread condemnation. A qualified defence of his actions can certainly be offered.

Interview: Constantin Costa-Gavras: Politics and propaganda

Costa-Gavras is one of a select band who have made political cinema into big box-office and stayed independent on the way. Films like Z, Missing and Betrayed, each of which tackled a hot political issue of their day, would, he thinks, have some difficulty getting through the US studio system today. Z (1969), a powerful indictment of the rule of the Colonels in Greece, and banned for many years in that country, is shown regularly today in memory and warning. Missing (1982), a big budget, big star movie, brought the horror of the disappeared in 1970s Latin America to a huge US audience. Betrayed (1989), a fiction built round disturbing factual material supplied by an unsuspecting FBI, was, say commentators, prophetic of the rise and rise of America's right-wing militias. At a time when mainstream political cinema is all but dead in the USA, the Greek film-maker, who is as much at home in Paris as in the studios of Paramount or Gaumont, draws the lines between propaganda, politics and the militant tendency; and points to the current political horizon

Protestant Books in London in Mary Tudor's Reign

Inthe popular imagination the reign of Mary Tudor still conjures up the predominant images of martyrs burning at the stake and the intellectual development of militant tendency protestantism. For the vast majority of known protestant sympathisers who remained in England during the years 1553 to 1558 reality fell far short of these extre.mes. Of those people suspected of, or arrested for, protestant activity during Mary's reign only a minority ended their lives in martyrdom. Marian protestantism was ultimately dependent not on martyrs but on survivors: not on those who were consumed in the flames of persecution but on those who lived to tell the tale. When Latimer and Ridley lit the candle of protestant heroism at Oxford they knew that they were dependent on the efforts of the unsung heroes of the reformation to ensure that this candle should 'never be· put out'. Martyrs and survivors were united in the process of providing protestant literature for distribution in Marian London. Their combined efforts resulted in the printing, and often in the circulation, of a large number of tracts. The protestant literary effort, indeed, outstripped that of the catholics. If we count individual book titles, or the number of editions as opposed to the number of pages printed the protestants printed more vernacular polemical works than did the catholics. Taking the figures provided by Dr Baskerville's preliminary bibliography as a guide, the protestants produced 114 editions of propaganda works during Mary's reign, compared with 93 editions of catholic polemic material.1 In literary matters, the protestants had the upper hand. At the beginning of Mary's reign the providers of protestant literature apparently met with few problems. Unlicensed printing was prohibited? but printing continued in the capital, although the printer John Day made use of the pseudonym of Michael Wood.3 John Bradford, the future martyr, had works ready for the press, and only modesty prevented him from rushing more of his translations of Melanchthon's works into print.4 Two editions of Stephen Gardiner's De Vera Obedientia a book frequently quoted by protestant propagandists during Mary's reign were printed by John Day, probably in London, and another edition was produced abroad.5 One of these heavily-glossed editions of Gardiner's work came to the notice of a London chronicler around Christmas of 1553, and it was later cited in several trials.6 Alongside the new compositions, John Day resurrected a work by the Henrician martyr John Frith.? The ready availability of protestant material for the printing presses at the start of the reign was partly due to a continuation of the flood of polemical works which had been printed during the short reign of the young King Edward VI, and partly a direct reaction to the perceived threat of the accession of a monarch who was known to be hostile to the cause of reform. The protestant book trade also benefited from the failure of the Marian government to take immediate action against protestant literary activity. In October 1554 the Indian summer of protestant printing in London came to an end. The striking Michael Wood types were stored away, not be used again until the printing of John Day's publication of Thomas Elyot's Banket of sapience in 1557.8 Although a small number of people had been imprisoned for distributing seditious reading matter in London before the autumn of 1554,9 and although purely secular handbills expressing opposition to the new government had come to the notice of the imperial ambassador almost from the start of the reign,10 the October arrests were unequalled in their scope. Starting on 5 October a series of seizures was made which involved a large number of people who either possessed or had sold protestant books: nearly 60 were arrested within a fortnight according to John Foxe,11whilst the French ambassador resident in London at the time of the seizures reported over 150 arrests. The imprisoned London bookseller whom the French ambassador described as having been responsible for the printing of 'une infinite de livres'12 was identified by the diarist Henry Machyn as the printer John Day. Day was sent to the Tower with one of his printing colleagues and a priest.13 John Foxe and the imperial ambassador thought that the

Labour's Conscience: The Labour Left, 1945-51.

First published in 1988. The years 1945-51 were crucial to the Labour Party and the Left in Britain. This elegantly written book traces the gradual and painful disillusionment of the Labour Left with the Attlee governments and analyses the alternative, more militant, programme which the Labour Left devised. Never an organised bloc, the author argues that they are best understood as Labour’s conscience – a militant tendency is the true sense of the words. This title will be of interest to scholars and students of political history.

Imprint of the ‘militant tendency’ on the labour party

Most assessments of the ‘Militant Tendency’ fail to appreciate its dual character: the way it combines revolutionary ideology and reformist practice. By over‐stressing one or the other, its real influence in the Labour Party cannot be established. Its role is best seen in its questioning ‐ in outlook and practice ‐ the ‘belief in legality’ of Labourism. It is the fact that the Tendency has chosen to follow one of the strategic possibilities inherent in the movement which has raised controversy about its role in the party and more generally in politics.

Labour and the local state in Liverpool

Liverpool City Council led by members of the Militant Tendency took on both central government and ultimately the national Labour Party. Thompson and Allen show that Militant's model of a local state based on direct distribution to clients and political mobilisation excluded participation of the very groups whose interests they claimed to promote, especially council tenants, ethnic minorities and trade union, and contributed to both the failure of their political strategy and the failure to general broad political support.