Socialist Party

and the 'Militant' tradition

Socialism 2007 (the other thing that happened this weekend)

Socialism 2007, the Socialist Party's weekend of discussion and debate, took place on 17-18 November and attracted around 900 members. The weekend was organised into three sessions of two hour debates or talks and a rally on the Saturday and Sunday. Having worked with Socialist Students in Oxford before recently joining the AWL I had bought a ticket some time ago. Furthermore, having never been at one of these events before I had no idea what to expect. In each session there were eleven or twelve different debates, discussions or forums to go to; the choice was an incredibly wide one spread...

Is Cuba Socialist?

This book is a pseudo-debate between Peter Taaffe of the Socialist Party and CWI (formerly Militant) in Britain and Doug Lorimer of the Australian Democratic Socialist Party (DSP). It is also, I guess, an attempt to check the recent rash of Castro-worship in the Scottish Socialist Party, with whom Taaffe maintains a strained relationship. The DSP, following the lead of the American SWP, rejects Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution, preferring Lenin’s blurred and outmoded formula of a “democratic dictatorship of workers and peasants” as the programme for revolutions in countries of less...

New witch hunts

Dave Prentis clearly signalled in his conference speech that organised left activists were in his sights. The Unison local government conference saw an attack on Socialist Party comrades from four branches who had tried to raise the issue of why Standing Orders Committee had ruled out of order so many motions. The leaflet they produced had used the “three wise monkeys” as a symbol of how their questioning of the decisions had been ignored. This was laughably deemed to be racist and an investigation is underway. Three leading SWP activists are also under fire from their employers, the union or...

Socialist Party backs Brown!

The Socialist Party has backed Gordon Brown for Labour leader! Unbelievable? Can't be true? No, it's true. Of course the Socialist Party's paper, or its members whom you meet on the street, do not support Brown. Indeed, they will tell you that all the goings-on in the Labour Party are an irrelevance, and they didn't even support John McDonnell's leadership campaign. Anything in the Labour Party is too right-wing for them. But what do the Socialist Party do where what they say makes a difference? Where they occupy strong positions within the powerful unions affiliated to the Labour Party? In...

Ted Grant and Marxism as "Prediction"

“The only true prophets are those who carve out the future they announce.” James Connolly Ted Grant, the last survivor from the leading figures of the Trotskyist movement of the 1940s died last July. Ted Grant defined Marxism, in my hearing, as the “science of prediction”. Grant made many “Marxist” predictions, about the Stalinist states, the, so-to-speak, predetermined evolution of the Labour Party and many other things. He got almost everything spectacularly wrong.The only prediction of his that came true was his often-repeated assertion that he would outlive all his contemporaries, all his...

An open letter to the Socialist Party - Do you support McDonnell?

Dear comrades, Do you support John McDonnell’s campaign against Gordon Brown for the Labour Party leadership? When John McDonnell declared himself a candidate for Labour leader to succeed Tony Blair, you wrote: “McDonnell is the Labour MP with the most consistent record of voting against New Labour’s anti-working class policies. Potentially a McDonnell leadership challenge could play a role in raising the profile of socialist ideas amongst sections of working-class people”. (Hannah Sell, The Socialist, 27/07/06). Seven months on, there can be no doubt that the “potential” has become a reality...

The tragic fiasco of Liverpool City Council under Militant-Socialist Party leadership

It is over twenty years since the final collapse of the left-wing Liverpool Labour council of 1983-6. Through that council, the avowedly Marxist “Militant Tendency” had the leadership of a mass workers’ movement which could have shaken or defeated the government. Arguably it marked the highest point ever (so far) of active mass influence for would-be revolutionary Marxists in Britain, higher than anything achieved by the Communist Party when it was a revolutionary party in the 1920s. Yet the battle ended in fiasco. The importance of learning the lessons is as huge as were the opportunities...

Events timeline of Liverpool City Council under Militant-Socialist Party leadership

May 83 Labour makes gains in elections for one-third of Liverpool City Council’s seats and wins the Council from the Liberals (who have controlled it since 1973). Militant supporters are central in the new council Labour group. November 83 20,000 people join a march to support the Labour council’s demand for the return of grant money withdrawn over the years by the Tory government. 29 March 84 Budget day for the council. Despite a one day strike by council workers and a big demonstration at the Town Hall, Labour’s ‘unbalanced’ no-cuts budaet is defeated by three Labour right-wingers voting...

Militant -Socialist Party on Ireland

This article deals with the views argued on Ireland in the 1970s and 80s by Militant, forerunner of the Socialist Party and Socialist Appeal. The Militant tendency argues that bread-and-butter trade union unity and a drive to for a Labour Party in Northern Ireland show the way to a socialist united Ireland. Why are they wrong? From a working class point of view the basic problem about the Six County state is that in that state framework, working class unity, developed on a trade union level, has always shattered at any political test. So long as the 'constitutional question' remains at the...

A new workers’ party?

By Rhodri Evans The Socialist Party has launched a “Campaign for a New Workers’ Party”. It has put out a statement which says many true things about the badness of the Blair-Brown Labour Party and the need to restore an independent workers’ voice in politics ( http://tinyurl.com/btaq9 ). Unfortunately, it is hard to see how this campaign can achieve more than a few extra sympathisers or members for the Socialist Party. It will divert from, rather than contribute to, the necessary battles to mobilise the broad labour movement for the cause of independent working-class political representation...

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