Ernie Tate

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Ernest Tate, known as Ernie Tate, is a long-standing supporter of the reunified Fourth International, based in Canada.

Born in Northern Ireland, Tate was recruited by Ross Dowson into the Canadian section of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International. In the late 1960s, he went from North America to Great Britain to work with supporters of USFI to solidify the young International Marxist Group, of which he became a leader. Ernie and fellow Canadian Pat Brain worked side by side with Bertrand Russell in the Russell Tribunal set up to investigate US war crimes in Vietnam.

The famous beating of Ernie Tate in 1966 by supporters of Gerry Healy was a cause célèbre within the world Trotskyist movement. One of his recruits to the IMG was Tariq Ali.

Ernie Tate was one of two members of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign organising committee for the demonstration against the Vietnam war in London in October 1968 who successfully opposed a proposal to halt the march in Whitehall, which would have caused unnecessary confrontation with the police and a degeneration into violence. He was thus instrumental in ensuring that the 200,000 participants passed through London peacefully, despite dire prognostications in the press and on television (who reported the march but also gave undue coverage to a simultaneous 5,000-strong violent counter-protest by Maoists attacking the United States Embassy). As a result, opposition to the war grew enormously in Britain at the same time as in the United States.

Tate was a founder of the Leninist Trotskyist Tendency of the USFI in 1973. He subsequently returned to Canada.