Socialist Appeal (Britain)
Socialist Appeal | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Founded | 1992 |
| Preceded by | Militant tendency |
| Newspaper | Socialist Appeal |
| Youth wing | Marxist Student Federation |
| Membership | 1100+ |
| Ideology | |
| International affiliation | |
| Website | |
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socialist | |
Socialist Appeal is the British section of the International Marxist Tendency. It describes itself as a "Marxist organisation which stands for the socialist transformation of society." Its stated aim is to build a revolutionary leadership capable of leading the working class in a struggle against capitalism.
It was founded by supporters of Ted Grant and Alan Woods after they were expelled from the Militant tendency in the early 1990s.
Socialist Appeal is a fortnightly newspaper published by the group. Socialist Appeal also produces books, pamphlets, magazines and other Marxist educational material, sold through the Wellred Books Britain bookstore, which it operates.
Socialist Appeal describes its politics as descending from Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky.
In 2013, Socialist Appeal officially launched its youth wing, the Marxist Student Federation (MSF), to provide a "national platform for Marxist ideas in the student movement." As of 2022, the MSF claims a presence at over 50 campuses across Britain. The youth wing of Socialist Appeal focuses on political discussions at university Marxist societies, as well as campaigning within the labour movement.
History
In the 1970s and 1980s, Socialist Appeal's predecessor, the Militant tendency, had been a significant force within the British Labour Party. At the height of its influence in the mid-to-late 1980s, Militant had three Labour MPs, control of Liverpool City Council and later initiated the campaign that they claim forced the abandonment of the Poll tax. Grant had been one of the founders and the theoretical leader of the Militant group, but he was expelled with other supporters after the 1991 debate on the Open Turn.
A special conference decision to endorse the Open Turn by 93% to 7% entailed Militant supporters abandoning the entryist strategy of working within the Labour Party and leaving to form an independent organisation. The new party was initially known as Militant Labour, changing its name in 1997 to the Socialist Party in England and Wales while in Scotland Scottish Militant Labour instigated the formation of the Scottish Socialist Party.
The split was caused by the Militant tendency's majority adoption of the Open Turn, Grant's continued support for the tactic of entryism within the Labour Party and what Grant and Woods claimed was the bureaucratic centralist degeneration of Militant's internal regime.
Socialist Appeal began publishing their own journal in 1992. In 2000, the group was estimated to have around 250 supporters.
In 2013, the tendency in Britain made a turn towards the student movement by launching the Marxist Student Federation.
Following the Scottish independence referendum in which Scots voted to retain the union with the rest of the United Kingdom, the International Marxist Tendency launched a separate Scottish periodical called Revolution, which analyses events in Scotland, and puts forward a Marxist position in relation to the Scottish independence movement. Revolution's masthead carries the slogan "For a Scottish workers' republic and world socialist revolution!".
In June 2017, Socialist Appeal editor Rob Sewell claimed that "the movement in the direction of revolution is being reflected on the political plane" in Britain and that "the events in Britain have a striking resemblance to the situation that existed in 1931, which Trotsky described as a pre-revolutionary situation".
In July 2021, the Labour Party's National Executive Committee banned Socialist Appeal and ruled that its members could be automatically expelled from the Labour Party.
In April 2023, Socialist Appeal launched the nationwide "Are you a Communist?" recruitment campaign, in an attempt to reach 1,000 members in Britain.
In November 2023, at Socialist Appeal's annual Revolution Festival, it was announced that it had exceeded 1,100 members in Britain. It was also announced that in 2024, Socialist Appeal would be refounded as the Revolutionary Communist Party, and that the newspaper would be renamed The Communist.
Economy
Socialist Appeal is in broad agreement with the classical Marxist view that capitalism inherently results in "boom and bust" cycles as a result of overproduction and thus attempts to prevent this through monetarism or Keynesianism are not possible. Therefore, they believe the only solution to this is the introduction of democratic socialism, based on a planned and nationalised economy as well as on the socialisation of its "commanding heights" (i.e. the top 150–200 financial institutions and companies). They argue that a planned economy is able to replace production on the basis of profit with production on the basis of need.
Publications
Socialist Appeal refers to the fortnightly newspaper of the same name. In September 2009, the publication Socialist Appeal changed from a magazine journal format to a full colour tabloid.
The group also produce and publish a number of pamphlets and books through their Wellred Books publishing arm.
Socialist Appeal was also the name of two British Trotskyist newspapers associated with Ted Grant in the 1940s: one was the newspaper of the Workers International League and immediately following that of the Revolutionary Communist Party.
It was also the name of the paper of the Trotskyist Workers Party of the United States during its period of entryism in the Socialist Party of America in 1936–1938.
International Marxist Tendency
The international group to which Socialist Appeal is affiliated is known as the International Marxist Tendency. In Latin America it has supported Hugo Chavez’s Bolivarian Revolution and the IMT instigated the formation of the Hands Off Venezuela campaign group to support Chávez.
The IMT has published a number of books by Trotsky, Grant and Woods and runs the multilingual website In Defence of Marxism.
Supporters of Socialist Appeal value the importance of theory highly and dedicate a large amount of space in their paper and website to theoretical articles. Socialist Appeal's editors argue that a thorough understanding of Marxism, history, economics and politics is necessary to understand the world today. They also argue that the neglect of theory in the late 1980s led to the Militant tendency turning in an ultraleft direction.