The 1991-2 split in the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI) brought about the demise of Militant, the CWI’s British section, and gave birth to the two main organisations that came out of it – the Socialist Party under Peter Taaffe, and Socialist Appeal under Ted Grant, Alan Woods and Rob Sewell. When I was in the sect, we replayed the trauma of this episode again and again. There was serious personal bitterness between Woods and Sewell on the one hand, and Taaffe and his clique on the other. Peter Taaffe was a hate figure on the same level as Trotsky was to Stalinists, or James Burnham was to American Trotskyists. We never missed an opportunity to ridicule or demonise the SP and its leaders, and to laugh at every misfortune that befell the group. When the CWI split again back in 2019, we did not miss the opportunity to rejoice at their expense. In this case, it involved Taaffe and a minority of his supporters expelling the majority of the organisation for daring to oppose them. (Yes, the minority ‘expelled’ the majority. You couldn’t make it up.) At the World School of 2019, an entire session was dedicated to laughing at the CWI for their recent split, with leading members of the organisation coming on stage to testify as to the corruption they experienced at Taaffe’s hands, and his ham-fisted attempts to get him on their side. It was like the two-minute hate from George Orwell’s 1984, but this time it went on for something like an hour.
When I was in the sect, we favourably compared ourselves to Taaffe’s sect, boasting of our open and democratic internal regime. Only with time did I learn that we were no different from the SP or any other Trotskyist sect, and that we were a cult revolving around a guru and a leadership obsessed with its own power and prestige. There are a few articles on the IMT website going into detail about the 1991-2 split, which provide a lot of useful insight into the internal regime of Militant in the years running up to its collapse. Unfortunately, Woods, Grant and Sewell took the lessons they had learned from Militant, and immediately forgot about them, building an organisation which replicated all of the worst features of what they had just escaped. It is truly incredible when you think about it.
The split came about as a result of a running battle between a group under Grant and Woods on the one hand, and Taaffe and the majority of the organisation on the other. Grant and Woods alleged a clique under Taaffe and his allies, which was making major decisions behind the backs of the elected bodies of the organisation. Taaffe and his supporters denied the existence of a clique. There were also serious political differences that had existed for some years. It all came to a head when, after a stage-managed ‘internal debate’, Woods, Grant and co were (they claim) all expelled from the organisation. (Taaffe and co allege that they ‘left’. The actual details are irrelevant to anyone familiar with how petty and pathetic these people are.)
Rob Sewell recounts the experience of those heady months of 1991-2:
In the last big conflict in 1991-1992, we experienced first hand the bullying, intrigues and underhanded methods of Peter Taaffe and his bureaucratic regime. This also involved such “democratic” niceties as slander, character assassination, harassment of young female oppositionists, expulsion, non-payment of wages, and many other hooligan and gangster methods. Such methods are from the school of Stalinism.
Sounds like the methods used by Alan Woods in his own battle with his internal rebels in 2010!
If Sewell is to be believed, Taaffe’s actions were motivated by none other than the desire for power and prestige. We are told that he was envious of Grant’s ability and desired to be acknowledged as the sole head of Militant. This, it is said, was behind his gradual undermining of Grant behind his back.
Of course, Taaffe and his followers have a very different account on their website:
For a Marxist, serious divisions within an organisation do not drop from the sky. Personal factors can play a role but where it involves substantial forces these are of a secondary character. Sewell, Grant and Woods elevate the personal and other incidental factors to the main causes of the split of 1991. We on the other hand, from the beginning sought to explain the political roots of the divergent tendencies within Militant.
In fairness to the Taaffeites, it should be said that they do a better job of shedding light on the political differences leading up to the split than the IMT’s account, which focuses on the beastliness of Peter Taaffe, and the personal grievances of individual members of the Grant-Woods-Sewell sect. These include the cluelessness demonstrated by Grant on issues like the USSR, to name one. Both accounts suggests that there had in fact been serious disagreements for some time, but that there was paranoia about open discussion of differences, causing people to give up and leave the organisation rather than use the ‘democratic channels’ (which were utterly phony) to do so. One of the essential aspects of a cult is the obsession with preserving homogeneity, or the illusion of it, and this was as true for Militant as for any Trotskyist cult.
The main focus of this post will be the cultish tactics used by Taaffe to maintain total control over the organisation. Sewell describes an emergency CC meeting in July of 1992, convened specially to condemn Woods and Grant for challenging Taaffe:
At the time I was the National Organiser of the tendency, but I supported Alan’s and Ted’s allegations, describing the situation in the British organisation as an “unhealthy regime”. At the CC meeting, called to rubber-stamp the Taaffe leadership, members were pressured to fall into line. They voted to dismiss the allegations of a clique, with the only votes against being Ted and Alan, and myself abstaining.
This near-unanimous vote is indistinguishable from the way in which the IMT and all Trot cults behave. The pressure to ‘unanimously’ vote through things helps to isolate anyone who thinks differently, and force them out of the organisation. The peer pressure is incredible. Moreover, anyone brave enough to speak against the herd will simply be expelled.
Things worsened when the Grant-Woods-Sewell faction objected to plans to stand a separate candidate against the Labour Party in the Walton by-election of that year. Taaffe and his allies were displeased, and denounced Rob Sewell, Militant’s National Organiser, for his temporary absence from political activity as a result of family issues. He was subjected to abysmal Stalinist slander at the CC meeting of July. A campaign was now underway against the entire opposition.
At that point, the organisation in Britain had some 200 full timers, 100 at the National Centre. They were fully mobilised to “defend the organisation against attack” and to rout the Opposition. A few had the courage to refuse to play this dirty game. There were a handful of Oppositionists at the Centre, one of whom was on maternity leave. We were immediately isolated, with few prepared to speak to us or even say “hello”. Even the newest full-timer was trained to howl with the rest of them, as a way of earning their spurs.
This disgusting shunning of the opposition when they walked into the Centre is indistinguishable from classic, cult practice. It is what happened to me when I left the organisation, and what happens to all dissidents in these organisations. Funnily enough, a few years ago I met a man at one of our front group meetings who said he was a friend of Mick Brooks, a former leading member of Socialist Appeal, who had left over political differences. He told me that as a result of Brooks’ dissent from the party line, he was shunned by the Centre, where his comrades would not even greet him when he entered the building. Partly as a result of this obnoxious behaviour, he resigned. I dare any IMTer or any Trotskyist to tell me that their organisations are perfectly normal, like any other political group, after reading such horror stories.
The Opposition full-time comrades were harassed whenever possible. Those who fought back were brought before the EC to explain themselves and threatened with disciplinary measures. We were stripped of any responsibilities, as we were told we could no longer be trusted. Then – unsurprisingly – accused of not carrying out our responsibilities! All this crap was spread around the organisation. Votes of no confidence were regularly passed against us at the EC and CC, where we were in a small minority. Such things became a ritual. Even individual departments, such as the Finance and Print/Production departments, passed motions of “censure” unanimously against me, without me being present. Ironically, this was at a time when we were demanding natural justice from the Labour Party.
That was not the be-all and end-all of the cultish atmosphere:
This poisonous atmosphere was systematically cultivated by Taaffe and his leading circle. Opposition full-timers were even taken off the night duty as we were considered a “security risk”. “Majority” full-timers were encouraged to spy on Oppositionists and report on their activities. The conversations of Opposition comrades were monitored through the central call-logger and computer printouts studied for information of who we were talking to. A printout of Ted’s calls was discovered on the top of the desk of Peter Taaffe’s secretary. Of course, all this was kept from the knowledge of the membership, who would have been deeply shocked to hear of these methods. They were kept completely in the dark.
The spying on and denunciation of fellow members is another classic tool of cult control. It is all part of what Lifton called the ‘demand for purity’, as well as the ‘cult of confession’. The conformist members prove their loyalty and dedication by rooting out the impure heretics within their ranks, and are rewarded with praise and promotion from the leadership. I, too, was the victim of such behaviour when I was a member of Socialist Appeal. Even confidential stuff I had written about my mental health to another comrade was used against me when I was deemed a political enemy. Pretty disgusting.
The same Stalinist methods were replicated in the regions, where Opposition branches were closed and “merged”. Hit lists were drawn up of suspected faction sympathisers, who were constantly fed the lies and gossip about the Opposition leaders, if not to convince them, then to demoralise them. Opposition supporters were worn down by constant “discussions”. One comrade in Birmingham counted 17 hours of individual “discussion” with CC members. A layer, alienated by such behaviour, resigned from the organisation in disgust.
The ‘struggle sessions’ launched against Opposition members are reminiscent of my own experiences in the IMT, and other horror stories I have read from people about their experiences with Trotskyist cults.
The victory of Taaffe was not a victory of ideas, but a victory of the apparatus. There was no “democratic” debate, but only an attempt to crush the Opposition. In the past, our tendency had a clean banner and completely rejected such methods. Now they had become common practise under the Taaffe regime. When a comrade from Paisley personally asked Taaffe at the September Scottish Aggregate meeting if there was any solution to this crisis, he was told that “the only solution was for the Minority leaders to repudiate publicly and in writing the allegations that they have made.”
Note the ‘cult of confession’ involved in the pressure put upon the opposition to recant their criticisms. Irony of ironies, during the IMT’s split back in 2010, Woods and Sewell made an identical demand for their dissidents to withdraw their criticisms! We should be sceptical of Sewell’s claim that prior to the split, the tendency had a ‘clean banner’. After all, as Dennis Tourish found to his cost in the Irish section back in 1985, previous attempts at challenging the leadership had ended in similar circumstances. There is every reason to believe that the corruption of the internal regime had been apparent for years, but that Grant and his cohorts turned a blind eye to it until it affected them. Their subsequent behaviour in the new organisation they created shows that they just wanted their own clique in charge rather than Taaffe’s. The late Mick Brooks, John Pickard and countless others could all testify to this.
John Throne, a full-timer in the Irish section, is slandered by Sewell in the following paragraph:
For the record, the most fanatical and vicious of the witch-hunters was an Irishman by the name of John Throne. Nowadays he denies it (don’t they all?), but his hypocritical denials will cut no ice with anybody who was around at that time. Later “the man with the cemetery smile”, as he was known in Opposition circles, got a taste of his own medicine when Taaffe, having utilised his services to hound, attack and expel Ted Grant and his supporters, turned against him and kicked him out. That was one expulsion that was richly deserved.
In the interests of fairness, here is Throne’s statement of defence before his death in 2019. Throne was one of the most courageous critics of Trotskyist sects over the years, reflecting on his own experience in Militant, and honestly admitting his own mistakes as well as pointing to those of others. He refused to be a stooge of either Taaffe or Grant, which is why Sewell is now slandering him, as he was slandered by Taaffe.
The Taaffeite campaign against the minority culminated in a blatantly rigged vote, in which the delegates, hand-picked for loyalty to Taaffe, voted overwhelmingly against the Minority, who were shortly thereafter expelled, or, depending on who you believe, left and founded their own groupuscule.
It is deeply ironic that Woods and Sewell can see so clearly what was wrong with Militant, but cannot see how their own organisation has replicated it. Indeed, reading their account, you would think they bore no personal responsibility for the disaster, even though they had been leading members for years. No sooner had they split from Taaffe than they threw themselves into building a new organisation, without taking the time to think about what they were doing or whether their tactics were correct. Not even a basic reappraisal of Trotskyist doctrine was attempted. They simply assumed that they could build Militant 2.0. This also required the comforting myth that the ‘degeneration’ of the old organisation began with the evil Taaffe and his clique, rather than being more deep-rooted in nature. Anyone who wanted a more critical approach was shunned and hounded out with the same intolerance as was shown to them by Taaffe. The terrible truth is that the corruption of the organisation has its roots in Trotskyist methods of sect-building, which can be traced back to the Third International and the cultish organisational structures introduced by Zinoviev, with Lenin and Trotsky’s blessing. Trotsky and James P. Cannon then borrowed these organisational methods from the Comintern when they founded the Fourth International. Until these counter-productive, authoritarian organisational methods are abandoned, all Trotskyist cults will degenerate in the way that Militant did and the IMT has more recently. Anyone who reads the account given by the 2010 rebels of the split in the IMT that took place then will recognise that the same cultish tactics were used by Woods and Sewell against them as were once used by Peter Taaffe against Ted Grant and his faction. It seems that in the world of Trotskyism, nothing ever changes.