Ted Grant - The Expulsion From Militant

The Expulsion 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 entryism tactic, and instead standing candidates against the Labour Party in the Liverpool Walton by-election, 1991 and then in the 1992 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 was expelled from the Militant tendency 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.

Following the expulsion they started a new group in the Labour Party, 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 (now called the International Marxist Tendency) with international supporters. He spent much of his time following the split on his writing until he suffered a stroke in 2003 at the age of 90, while he was giving a speech. Ted Grant died on the 20 July 2006, at the age of 93.

Trotsky's grandson Vsievolod Platonovich Volkov said in 1997 that Grant's "deep knowledge of Marxist theory, and particularly the thoughts and works of Leon Trotsky, leap from the written page. Such a knowledge is the fruit of a long life tenaciously dedicated to the meticulous study of Marxism both in theory and in everyday practice."