When I was in the IMT, we boasted endlessly of our democratic credentials. We compared ourselves favourably with Peter Taaffe’s organisation, which hounded out dissidents mercilessly. We replayed the trauma of the 1991-2 split over and over again. We convinced ourselves that we had much higher standards for our organisation. Little did I know that … Read more
When I joined the IMT, I found myself in this strange environment with which I was both personally, and, as it would turn out, politically incompatible. It was inevitable that it would all end in tears and that, as with so many other times in my largely depressing life, separation, ostracism and anger all round … Read more
Life in a cult leaves you bruised and battered. When I left the IMT in March 2020, I knew I had a road both long and thorny to travel before I could recover. I may never recover fully from the experience, but that does not mean that I am not going to try. In recent … Read more
To whom it may concern, I am writing to you to declare my intention of resigning from the Labour Party. My three years of membership have been tumultuous. When I look back on it in hindsight, I realise that I was the victim of an utter scam. I joined the party in October 2017, at … Read more
Introduction A central feature of Marxism (and indeed, Trotskyism) is dialectical materialism. Marx developed his theory of dialectical materialism from his re-interpretation of Hegel’s philosophy. Hegel borrowed the concept from Heraclitus, an ancient Greek thinker, who famously argued that the world was in flux and contained contradictions. On this basis, he stated that ‘No one … Read more
Background Socialist Appeal is the British section of the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), founded in 1992 by Ted Grant and Alan Woods after their split with Peter Taaffe and their comrades in Militant (since renamed the Socialist Party). The actual circumstances of the split are shrouded in assertion, counter-assertion, slander, counter-slander and the elaborate falsification … Read more
I am embarrassed to say that I had the personal acquaintance of Canadian members of the International Marxist Tendency, whose section is known as Fightback/La Riposte. I was, after all, part of a large, global network of IMT members on Facebook. The Canadian comrades were among the loudest and most entertaining. Needless to say, any … Read more
As a member of the IMT from October 2017 to March 2020, I was also part of the Marxist Student Federation (MSF). This was advertised as the youth and student wing of Socialist Appeal. From what I learned when I joined the organisation, it was originally designed to be one of the organisation’s many front … Read more
Dennis Tourish, Professor of Leadership and Organisation Studies at the University of Sussex, has written at length about cults. Like many cult experts, he was in one – he worked as a full-timer for the Militant Tendency in Northern Ireland in the 1980s. In 1998, he wrote a paper entitled ‘Ideological Intransigence, Democratic Centralism and … Read more