Socialist Appeal declares itself a party. Entrism has failed!

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The good folks at Cultist Appeal announced recently that they have reached 1000 members and that they will be rebranding themselves as a party for the year 2024. This seems to me to be an admission in all but name that their entrism scheme has failed miserably.

When I was a member, we always said that there was no question of setting ourselves up as a party unless we had the support of tens of thousands of ordinary working-class people. In Ted Grant’s schema, the Labour Party was the traditional party of the working-class, and setting up an opposition to it was hopeless. The only sensible strategy was to practice deep entrism over a long period within the Labour Party and the trade unions and fight for a hegemonic position within the mass organisations. When the masses ‘began to move’, the argument was that they would become progressively more radical and turn to us for leadership when they had exhausted all other options. It was hoped that this would culminate in a split in the Labour Party which would see us carry a good chunk of the left with us and win them over to Marxism.

This was never anything more than a pipe dream, and something tells me that even the leaders of the organisation didn’t fully believe that this would happen. Now that the Labour Party has kicked them out, reality has dawned upon these Lilliputian Leninists, who now find themselves out in the cold and in need of a new source of publicity now that everyone has forgotten that this nuisance sect ever existed or had a presence in the Labour Party. What better way to do this than proclaim themselves a party? The very thing that they vowed they would not do unless they had genuine support among the working-class?

In typically Stalinist fashion, the organisation’s leaders will twist the truth and sell this change in strategy to the membership not as evidence that their old approach was a failure, but as proof that they are adhering to dialectical materialism and changing in line with events. They can never admit that they were wrong about anything. The illusion of omniscience must be maintained at all costs. This re-branding is the latest desperate effort to get people into their ranks by any means necessary. Now that the fight is all but over in the Labour Party, and entrism has exhausted its potential, they have no choice but to come out openly under their own banner. They have set themselves a new target for the end of 2024 – to have gotten to 2000 members.

Fat chance of that happening.

9 thoughts on “Socialist Appeal declares itself a party. Entrism has failed!”

  1. Just FYI – there’s a lengthy write-up on the IMT, in German, published a couple weeks ago on a radical left platform in Switzerland:

    https://barrikade.info/article/6252

    It contains some basic info & stats on the Swiss section and compiles links / quotes of most of the available reports of former members and related sources.

    Might be useful for German-language readers or as a template for anyone else.

  2. Hi Ex-Trot,

    I’m in the process of writing a critical research paper about the IMT, and was hoping you would be a good person to talk to as an ex-member (I am also an ex-member, of the same branch which you were a member of, albeit a later recruit). I represent the Heterodoxy Research Unit, an upstart organization at the University of Warwick, and our first research paper will broach the theme of political cults through my own engagement with the IMT, as well as the experiences of willing ex-members. I would be enthused to have your input on the subject matter, as I realize that you have spent a lot of time recovering from being a member and written many texts about the topic.

    Best,
    -a person from the HRU (Heterodoxy Research Unit)

  3. Hello, Ex-Trot,

    Just wanted to say that I discovered this blog two days ago by chance, and I have been reading your many articles with immense pleasure! Your commentary on the non-sensicality of dialectics is particularly appreciated! Keep up the good work, mate!

    Max.

  4. So if entrism has been junked what, exactly, is the difference between Socialist Appeal and the Socialist Party, aside from the personalities involved? Incidentally, the Canadian section, Fightback, all but left the NDP several years ago despite not being expelled. I believe they are still nominal members but they no longer call for “NDP to power” or do any work within the party – so the IMT’s turn has been underway for several years.

    • There is literally no difference between them now. They are utter hypocrites who are now doing precisely what they condemned Taaffe for but presenting it as some bold new strategy emanating from the genius of Alan Woods and Rob Sewell. Like the SP, they will go down to painful and humiliating failure.

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