Ted Grant
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Edward (Ted) Grant (July 9, 1913 – July 20, 2006) was a British Trotskyist politician.
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[edit] Main ideas
Ted Grant described himself as a Marxist, a Leninist and a Trotskyist. In his ideas, one can recognize a strong emphasis on the following issues:
- So-called "Socialist" states born after World War II are defined by Grant as "deformed workers' states", ie "proletarian Bonapartist" regimes. Thus he denies a qualitative difference between Stalin's USSR and such countries. In particular, Grant deepened Trotsky's theory on proletarian Bonapartism: he foresaw the likelihood, in the 1945-1991 world situation, of the establishment of new bureaucratised "workers' states" in backward countries, also on the basis of left-wing military coups and peasant guerrilla wars. According to Grant, variants between such regimes have a minor importance and the clashes counterposing their leaderships are just instrumental in supporting the interests of conflicting bureaucracies. Differently from most Trotskyist groups, Ted Grant believed that also Burma and Syria, though their leaders were not delivering Communistic speeches, were to be included in that same category when they had a planned economy. For all these countries, he supported a classic Trotsky's demand: a workers' "political revolution" aimed at restoring or establishing "workers' democracy" while preserving economic planning, as asked by the workers' wing of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.
- Heavily stressed was the importance of the "united front" tactics worked out by the Third International in the 20's and a renewed version of the entrist tactics which Trotsky advised some of his followers to adopt in the 30's. According to Grant, Trotskyist groups joining large left-wing parties and the most important unions was a practical implementation of the united front in those difficult conditions Trotskyists had to face after 1945, when the Fourth International was far from being a gathering banner for most workers and leftist youth. In particular since the late 50's, Ted Grant developed an original concept of entrism (which he described as being a different concept than the classic entryism and also an opposing vision to Michel Pablo's "deep entrism" or "entrism sui generis"): the revolutionists should have worked "inside, outside and around the mass organisations" for "workers begin to move through their own traditional mass organisations" and therefore "outside the workers' movement, there's nothing". This stance resulted in the Grantist groups on a world scale distancing from most organisations of Fourth-Internationalist traditions, since they are usually considered as having degenerated into sects under the influence of the ideas of the petty bourgeoisie (guerrillaism, left-wing nationalism, studentism, third-worldism, feminism etc.).
[edit] Early political life
Grant was born Isaac Blank in Germiston, South Africa where his father had settled after fleeing Tsarist Russia in the ninetheenth century. His parents divorced when he was young and he was brought up by his French-born mother who took in lodgers to supplement her income.
He was introduced to Trotskyism by one of these lodgers, Ralph Lee who discussed politics with Isaac and supplied him with copies of The Militant, the Trotskyist newspaper of the Communist League of America. In 1934, he helped Lee found the Bolshevik-Leninist League of South Africa, a small Trotskyist group which soon merged with other tendencies to form the Workers Party of South Africa. Later in the year, Grant, Lee and Max Basch decided to move to London where they believed there were better prospects for the movement.
[edit] Early career in Britain
On the journey he changed his name to Edward Grant - but he was always to be known as Ted - and stopped over in France to meet Trotsky's son, Leon Sedov. Once in Britain, he joined the Marxist Group, which at the time was working in the Independent Labour Party and took part in the Battle of Cable Street against fascists. But when Trotsky suggested the group should turn to working in the Labour Party, and their leadership disagreed, Grant was one of a small group who split to form the Bolshevik-Leninist Group, which soon became known as the Militant Group. The group grew, but in 1937, a dispute about the leadership's treatment of Ralph Lee led to the split of several members including Grant.
[edit] Formation of "Militant Tendency"
The former Revolutionary Socialist League members formed the Workers' International League, and Grant was to became its main theoretician after the return of Lee to South Africa and in partnership with Jock Haston. The group grew, and in 1941, he became editor of its paper. He continued his role in the fused Revolutionary Communist Party. Upon its break-up, Grant reluctantly joined Gerry Healy's faction, but was soon expelled. He formed a new, small tendency in the Labour Party, called the Revolutionary Socialist League which in 1957 was recognised at the official British section of the Fourth International and in 1964 founded the paper Militant.
From the first issue, Grant and all those who wrote for the Militant newspaper always openly identified themselves. Most stated the constituency Labour Party or Labour Party Young Socialist branch to which they belonged. They sold the Militant newspaper openly inside Labour Party ward and constituency meetings, and moved "Militant" resolutions at wards, constituencies, and national conference, with occasional success. [1]The group at first grew only very slowly, but by 1983 it had become a significant force in British politics, known as the Militant Tendency. "Internal" documents, those circulated only amoungst Militant members, traditionally hid the authors of its pieces under their initials, often reversed, but, like many other groups within the Labour Party at that time, both of the left and the right, its organisation and membership was an open secret.
Throughout this time Grant and his colleagues formally denied to the officialdom of the Labour Party that the Militant was organised in a way which was contrary to the rules of the Labour Party, instead claiming it was merely a group of supporters of the Militant newspaper. In the atmosphere of Labour's long shift to the left in the 1970s, in which constituency Labour Party General Management Committees (GMCs) were largely against expulsions, all attempts to take action against the Militant were successfully resisted. Under Labour Party leader Michael Foot the National Executive Committee (NEC) finally expelled the so-called "Editorial Board" of the Militant, namely the "Political Editor" Ted Grant, "Editor" Peter Taaffe, Keith Dickinson, Lynn Walsh, and Militant national treasurer Clare Doyle in 1983. This measure did not however stop the growth of the Militant.
[edit] Kinnock takes action
But by 1985 the atmosphere had changed - Militant were effectively running Liverpool City Council as well as having 3 MPs. The grouping was rapidly advancing within the Labour Party but also faced a new leader, Neil Kinnock who was determined to smash the Militant as a force within the party.
The resulting confrontation saw many leading Militant members expelled from Labour and created a dynamic within the organisation that led many to question Grant's commitment to entryism. They argued that Militant was able to grow outside Labour and that the Labour Party's position on the poll tax revealed it to be out of touch with working class opinion. At first, despite the purges organised by the Labour bureaucracy, only a handful of leading Militant members were expelled, and most of the organisation's thousands of members and their three Labour-elected Members of Parliament could not be expelled.
However, Militant MP Terry Fields was removed as a Labour MP for not paying his poll tax, less than two weeks after being released from jail after serving sixty days for the same crime. [2] Militant supporter Dave Nellist MP was suspended from Party membership around the same time, for a "sustained course of conduct bringing the party into disrepute" despite the fact that he had just been voted "Backbencher of the year" by the Spectator magazine. [3]
[edit] The split from Militant
At the end of the eighties the Militant Tendency had enjoyed considerable success in the anti-Poll Tax movement, and there was a feeling by some members that continued support for the Labour Party was impeding the growth of the tendency. A debate arose within Militant wherein Peter Taaffe and his supporters argued in favour of abandoning the entrism tactic, and instead standing candidates against the Labour Party in the Liverpool Walton by-election, 1991 and then in the 1992 UK general election in Liverpool and Scotland. Ted Grant opposed this, and after the ensuing lengthy internal debate and special national conference which confirmed the decision to leave the Labour Party, Grant split from the Militant together with Alan Woods in 1992 after a document allegedly written by their faction emerged in the mainstream media which stated that they intended to split Militant and the Committee for a Workers' International. It is not clear how this happened.
Following the split they started a new group, known by the name of its publication, Socialist Appeal. The split also left Grant and his supporters outside the Committee for a Workers' International, but he and Woods were able to found the Committee for a Marxist International with international supporters. He spent much of his time following the split on his writing until he suffered a stroke at the age of 90 while giving a speech. Ted Grant died in 2006.
[edit] Trivia
He is depicted as Jed Burroughs of the Burrowers League in Tariq Ali's satire Redemption (Chatto & Windus 1990 ISBN 0-7011-3394-5).
[edit] References
- ^ A Militant resolution calling for the nationalisation of the commanding heights of the economy was first passed at Labour Party national conference in 1972 by 3.5 million votes to less than 2.5 million.
- ^ "Mr Fields has chosen to break the law and he must take the consequences." - Labour Leader Neil Kinnock MP, quoted in the Militant issue 1050, July 19th, 1991
- ^ Pat Wall MP, the third Militant supporting MP, unfortunately died.
[edit] See also
- On the Edge: Political Cults Right and Left, Tim Wohlforth and Dennis Tourish, 2000
[edit] External links
- The Ted Grant Internet Archive
- Obituary by his close collaborator Alan Woods.
- Obituary and critical analysis of Grant's life and thought from the World Socialist Web Site
- Critical obituary by Peter Taaffe of the Committee for a Workers' International from which Ted Grant split in 1992
- Obituary from The Guardian
- Obituary by Ian Birchall in Socialist Worker.
- Obituary from The Daily Telegraph
- Obituary from The Times
- Obituary from Socialist Democracy
