Ted Grant - Later Labour Party Responses

Later Labour Party Responses

Neil Kinnock was determined to remove the Militant tendency presence from the party. Kinnock's closest advisers were often from the ranks of the Labour Party's student organisation NOLS led by the Clause Four or associated with the Labour Co-ordinating Committee.

The resulting confrontation saw many leading Militant tendency members expelled from the Labour Party and created a dynamic within the organisation that led many to question the policy of entryism. They argued that the Militant tendency 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 only a handful of leading Militant tendency members were expelled, and most of the organisation's thousands of members and their three Labour-elected Members of Parliament could not be expelled.

In 1986 the Labour Party comprehensively over hauled its rule book, at the same as expelling leading Militant tendency members in Merseyside, with a view to making it possible to systematically remove members of entryist parties such as the Militant.