21.03.1996

Militant’s origins

Ian Mahoney reviews 'The rise of Militant' by Peter Taaffe (Militant Publications, pp558, £9.99)

This is an interesting book, although there are problems with its structure. Originally intended as a small publication bringing together a few representative articles to celebrate Militant’s 30th anniversary in October 1994, the project grew in scope when Taaffe came to look at it in more detail. Thus what we have are snapshots of the last 30 odd years or so of politics in Britain and internationally, linked in a narrative thread through extracts from Militant newspaper.

However, the overall effect is unfortunately disjointed and a little insubstantial, despite the book’s length. According to the cover blurb, there have been five previous books about Militant, but this is the first “authentic account” of the rise of the organisation. I have read some of the others and they are certainly pretty bad. This book at least has the merit of being written by an informed insider. It therefore avoids the type of crass assumptions and causal ignorance that normally litter bourgeois academic writing about the ‘far left’.

For that alone, it should be recommended reading for all our comrades. Apart from anything else, its quite systematic chronological order makes it a useful reference book on the positions taken by Militant over the years. It is far from complete, however.

Any serious discussion of Militant must examine its genuine origins. The Militant Tendency historically has attempted to present itself as an organic product of the British Labour Party (see discussion of Militant’s What we stand for in Which Road?, pp201-234). Taaffe’s new work does not quite say this, but Militant’s true antecedents are glossed over. We are told hazily that Militant was not

“the first Marxist journal to appear in Britain. The history of the labour movement, and of the Marxist movement in particular, is littered with ill-fated attempts to form newspapers and organisations. Indeed, some of the founders of Militant had themselves been involved in such attempts in the post-1945 period” (p15).

Which is an awful lot of history to cover in just 40-odd words. Clearly, today’s Militant Labour is just as keen to distance itself from its real origins in the fractious Trotskyite movement of the early 1930s, through its continuation in one of the fragments of the shattered Revolutionary Communist Party in 1951, through the International Socialists to the Revolutionary Socialist League.

Why is this? After all, Militant as a faction of Labour was denying its past in order to refute the “legend” that “Marxists” (ie, themselves) had “infiltrated” the party (What we stand for, June 1990, p29). Why be so coy now it has split?

Possibly for two reasons, I think.

First, although the organisation has broken from Grant, it has not broken from Grantism. Ted Grant, the founder and political leader of RSL/Militant Tendency for many years, had a world view characterised by rigid mechanical schema in which every development - whatever it was - could only objectively hasten the day of victory of the Militant Tendency, the inevitable turn of millions of workers to its banners.

Today’s ML retains much of this mechanistic method, even if it is rather more modest as an organisation. This is evidenced for example in its approach to the nature of the SLP. It tends to view the ‘pre-determined form’ of British working class political organisations as affiliated, federal bodies like the early Labour Party. In conversation once, Peter Taaffe asked me what I would like to see come out of the process around the launch of the SLP. “A reforged Communist Party,” I said. “Ah, but you won’t get it,” he told me with the certainty of a man who knows history has already decided the question in his favour. And that was that.

A genuine examination of the roots of ML in the murky world of early 1930s British Trotskyism and subsequently would show that there was nothing inevitable about its rise. It emerged out of the Burgess Shale of this tiny milieu through a combination of factors, not least of which was good fortune.

The second reason ML is not open about its origins is more important for us because it tells us something about the political trajectory ML may be on today.

ML is an impressive organisation. In contrast to its immediate rival, the Socialist Workers Party, it has actually led important mass struggles. It has not been frightened of developing genuine working class cadre/leaders in the movement and has - alone of all the extra-Communist Party left - been able to sink roots in the working class.

Comrades in and around the Communist Party have started to work with ML supporters in the Socialist Alliances during this recent period. There is - without a doubt - a left minority and a right majority within the organisation. In many senses, this group reminds me of the Communist Party of the 1970s - something which I assure ML comrades should not be taken as a compliment.

The left we have encountered tends to be characterised by its theoretical and organisational incoherence. Nevertheless, these comrades regard themselves as Bolsheviks and will tend to argue in a way they judge to be consistent with a Marxist programme and Trotskyite orthodoxy.

The right - the majority - is far more Labourite and impatient of this type of approach. These comrades tend to have a more ‘activist’ outlook and are often quite contemptuous of political theory and what they regard as self-indulgent political chatter between political organisations.

A history of the true early years of Militant/RSL in the Trotskyist movement, with its theoretical hair-splitting, its savage argument over apparent nuance, would not be for them. Taaffe’s book is therefore a political history for the right majority, perhaps indicative of the fact that the leadership wishes to pull the organisation further along the ‘activist’ road. It is still a worthwhile and in some places quite an inspiring read, despite that.

The ML left still has to produce a rounded history, and critique, of its own organisation. Perhaps it never will, but then nothing in politics - as Ted Grant would never have said - is inevitable.

Ian Mahoney