Peter Taaffe

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article or section may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.
Please help improve this article or replace this tag with a more specific message. This article has been tagged since November 2006. (help, talk)

Peter Taaffe is a Trotskyist political figure and general secretary of the Socialist Party of England and Wales. Taaffe is also a member of the International Executive Committee of the Committee for a Workers International (CWI) which has members in 40 countries around the world.

Taaffe joined what was then the Revolutionary Socialist League, led by Ted Grant, in the early 1960s and became the second editor (after Roger Protz) of its publication, Militant when it was launched in 1964. Eventually, the group became known by the name of the paper and was either referred to as Militant or the Militant Tendency. The Militant Tendency was, for a time in the 1980s, the largest Trotskyist organisation in Britain and, because of its practice of entryism in the Labour Party by far the best known.

The Labour Party under Michael Foot and especially Neil Kinnock moved to purge Militant from the party and the 'editorial board' (in fact the tendency's executive committee) of Militant, including Taaffe and Ted Grant were expelled. Grant had been the leading figure in the group since its inception but in the face of changed conditions in the Labour Party a dispute broke out within Militant on whether the group should take an "open turn" and found an independent political party outside of and in competition with Labour or whether it should continue with entryism. The dispute arose specifically around the status of the group in Scotland where it had become very prominent due to its leadership role in the struggle against the Poll Tax and where electoral prospects looked promising. Taaffe and the majority in Militant supported the Scottish turn and the creation of Scottish Militant Labour whilst Grant and the minority opposed it.[1] Scottish Militant Labour eventually became the Scottish Socialist Party which has several MSPs in the Scottish Parliament. However, in 2003 the leadership of the SSP broke away from the CWI leading to a major crisis in the Taaffe-led group.

The dispute between the Taaffe-led majority and the Grant-led minority continued within Militant for some time until the majority leadership published documents that it claimed made it clear that the minority was intending to split from Militant. Grant and his leading supporters were expelled and have reconstituted themselves as the Socialist Appeal tendency, after its paper. While the Taaffe-led majority left the Labour Party, the Grant-led Socialist Appeal continues to work within the Labour Party and the trade unions opposing the Labour leadership's embrace of the Third Way under Tony Blair. Taaffe had majority support in the British section of the CWI and also in the international organisation CWI: the opposers of the turn walked out and founded the Committee for a Marxist International and its In Defence of Marxism webpage.

Throughout the 90's, the international sections of the CWI were able to maintain their bases and develop new areas of support. Viable and active groups remain in Ireland (with Joe Higgins as an MP in the parliament), Britain, Germany (where CWI members carry out entryist work in the WASG), Sweden, Greece and Belgium. The biggest national sections in the colonial world are: the Nigerian, Pakistani and Sri Lankan groups. A small group subsists in France (in Rouen). There are CWI groups in 35 countries at present.

Militant went on to become Militant Labour and then the Socialist Party with Taaffe as general secretary. The Socialist Party currently holds several council seats, particularly in Coventry and London (the abandonment of work in the Labour Party led to the expulsion of the Marxist MPs elected through Militant's influence in the Labour Party). The group has suffered several splits, particularly in Scotland and Liverpool, and like all Marxist groups in Britain suffered from a decline in membership in the 1990s, despite the "open turn". Today it claims a recent growth to a membership of about 1500 people.

Taaffe has written several books including: