A blast from the past

“Militant” is a book by Michael Crick, originally published in 1984, with an enlarged edition in 1986. This is the 2016 edition, incorporating the text of the 1986 edition plus some additional material. The book deals with the Militant Tendency, a Trotskyist organization in Britain which infiltrated the Labour Party, not without some success. Its central leaders were Ted Grant and Peter Taaffe, with Derek Hatton as the most well known public spokesman during the mid-1980's.

Militant was a strong group during the 1970's and 1980's, controlling the Labour Party Young Socialists (LPYS) and wielding influence in some Constituency Labour Parties and unions. Two Labour MPs were Militant supporters: Terry Fields and Dave Nellist. For a number of years, Militant also controlled the Liverpool local government. When Margaret Thatcher was forced to resign in 1990, Militant credited the resignation to their nation-wide campaign against the unpopular poll tax introduced by the Tory government. Perhaps ironically, this was the high tide of Militant. The tendency suffered a split in 1991 and lost most of its support after withdrawing from the Labour Party. Today known as the Socialist Party, Militant is a shadow of its former self. A split off, Socialist Appeal, achieved brief notoriety about ten years ago when its leader Alan Woods visited Venezuela for regular talks with Hugo Chavez.

Several things stand out in Crick's narrative. One is that Militant numerically speaking was a rather small group, with only 8,000 members at its peak. At the time, Britain had a population of 56 million! Despite this, Militant nevertheless made considerable political impact. There were two main reasons. First, Militant was tightly organized around Leninist lines, with considerable discipline and internal cohesion. They also had access to substantial sums of money, since the members contributed large portions of their incomes to the organization. Militant's tight discipline made it possible to take over local branches of the labour movement. Militant also published a 16-page weekly paper which was widely distributed. Second, Militant was initially tolerated by the broader Labour left, which – despite reservations about the tendency's program and tactics – opposed any attempts to expel its activists from the Labour Party. The Labour right-wing therefore had considerable problems getting rid of Militant. A peculiar fact mentioned by Crick is that Militant had access to sensitive internal information: the LPYS was guaranteed a seat at the Labour Party National Executive Committee, and since the LPYS was controlled by Militant, their representative on the NEC was in effect spying on the party leadership!

Another thing obvious from Crick's book is that Militant really were a dogmatic Marxist and Trotskyist organization, operating as a “party within the party”, a tactic known as entryism (officially, they were “just a weekly paper” arguing for more left-wing Labour politics). The real name of the Militant tendency was the Revolutionary Socialist League (RSL). RSL's central leader Ted Grant had played a prominent role within the British Trotskyist movement already before the RSL's foundation. The goal of Militant was a socialist revolution in Britain, not simply a more reform-minded Labour government. The RSL also established an international network, the CWI, which infiltrated Social Democratic parties in other countries, including Sweden.

What's less clear from the book is why Militant ultimately failed. In Liverpool, their local strongman Derek Hatton managed to alienate pretty much everyone, including unions and the Black community (which supported Labour). By all accounts, Hatton was a flamboyant, corrupted and slightly erratic leader. It's not clear why Grant and Taaffe didn't discipline him. Eventually, Militant also alienated the broader Labour left, perhaps due to their dogmatism and sectarianism. Even then, however, the Labour right-wing didn't manage to expel all of Militant's supporters. It's therefore curious that the Militant tendency withdrew from the Labour Party to form their own “open” organization, a tactic known as “the Scottish turn” (since it was first implemented in Scotland). Due to the British election system, this effectively rendered them politically irrelevant. Had Militant stayed in the party, they might have reaped some benefits of the unexpected rise of Jeremy Corbyn to the position of Labour leader. Instead, they drone on as a small sect at the outskirts of the labour movement…

Today, a book like “Militant” may seem weirdly esoteric, but those interested in the Thatcher years, or the history of the British Labour Party, will definitely find this material interesting and illuminating. I therefore give Michael Crick's book five stars.