Socialist Appeal
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Socialist Appeal is the publication of a British Trotskyist organisation founded by Ted Grant and Alan Woods after they were expelled from the Militant Tendency. The organisation is popularly known as the Socialist Appeal group. It is the British section of the Committee for a Marxist International.
Ted Grant had been the founder and the major theoretical leader of the Militant Tendency but was expelled with other supporters in the course of their 1992 debate on the "Open Turn". The Open Turn entailed Militant supporters abandoning the entrist strategy of working within the Labour Party and leaving to form an independent party. The new party known as Militant Labour later changed its name to become the Socialist Party (in England and Wales). In Scotland, Scottish Militant Labour instigated the formation of the Scottish Socialist Party. The split was due to the Militant Tendency's majority adoption of the "Open Turn" and Grant's continued support for the tactic of entrism within the Labour Party. After the debate the split was finalised by the expulsion of Ted Grant along with Alan Woods from the Militant Tendency. The Socialist Appeal group claims that they focus on educating their members.
As Labour under Tony Blair has embraced the Third Way and moved away from its socialist roots, most Trotskyist tendencies in Britain that employed the tactic of entryism have left Labour and either run candidates under their own banner, such as the Socialist Party, or joined electoral coalitions such as the Scottish Socialist Party or the Socialist Alliance. Most supporters of Socialist Appeal have rejected this turn and they are the best known Trotskyist group in Britain to maintain the entrist tactic into the twenty-first century.
Although they remain relatively small in Britain, their tendency internationally International Marxist Tendency have grown significantly in number, especially in the Indian subcontinent and Latin America, where they are enthusiastic supporters of the Bolivarian Revolution and Hugo Chávez (they instigated the formation of the Hands Off Venezuela campaign group). As well as publishing their magazine Socialist Appeal, the group has also published a number of books by Leon Trotsky, Ted Grant and Alan Woods. The group has recently devoted much of their time to developing the multilingual website In Defence of Marxism.
[edit] Historical Publications of the Same Name
Socialist Appeal was also the name of the newspaper of the British Trotskyist Workers International League (in the World War II era), and (immediately following that) of the also Trotskyist Revolutionary Communist Party, the latter being no relation to the as of 2004 contemporary party of the same name.
