International Marxist Group | |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1968 |
| Dissolved | 1982 |
| Preceded by | International Group |
| Succeeded by | International Socialist Group |
| Ideology | Trotskyism Socialist feminism |
| Political position | Far-left |
| International affiliation | Fourth International |
TheInternational Marxist Group (IMG) was aTrotskyist group in Britain between 1968 and 1982. It was the British Section of theFourth International. It had around 1,000 members and supporters in the late 1970s.[1] In 1980, it had 682 members;[2] by 1982, when it changed its name to the Socialist League, membership had fallen to 534.[3]
The IMG emerged from theInternational Group, a sympathising organisation of the International Secretariat of theFourth International (IS). Its founders,Pat Jordan andKen Coates, had broken with theCommunist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) in Nottingham in 1956. They were members of theRevolutionary Socialist League (RSL) in the late 1950s (which was later renamedMilitant), Jordan becoming organising secretary. In 1961, they split to form the Internationalist Group in support of the IS against the leadership of the RSL, its British section.
In 1963, the ISFI reunited with the majority of theInternational Committee of the Fourth International as the United Secretariat which advised the RSL and Internationalist Group to unite. A unity conference in September 1964, brokered partly byPierre Frank andJimmy Deane, voted for unity but the fusion was not accepted: RSL memberPeter Taaffe recalls that he "led a walk-out of the Liverpool delegation, with the majority in Liverpool in support".[4] Very soon the former Internationalist Group members left to form a new organisation, the International Group, together with some former members of theSocialist Labour League (SLL) who had opposed that organisation's refusal to take part in the 1963 reunification of the majorities of the Fourth International, includingCharlie van Gelderen. The Group played a major role in raising Vietnam solidarity at the 1965Labour Party conference.
The 1965 World Congress of the International demoted the RSL to a "sympathising" group: the International Group was granted the same status. In the words of the RSL's Peter Taaffe, "We decided that the time had arrived when we must turn our backs on this organisation."[4] The RSL left the FI, and ultimately became the Militant Tendency, or just Militant.
The International Group continued the production of acyclostyled bulletin known asThe Week. As it was engaged inentryism inside the Labour Party, this journal gained various sponsors includingBertrand Russell, whoseRussell Tribunal employed two members of the Canadian section of the FI seconded to the British section,Ernie Tate and Pat Brain.
In early 1968, the International Group renamed itself as the International Marxist Group.
The IMG's activists publishedInternational, which was launched in May 1968 with IMG secretary Pat Jordan as editor and incorporatedThe Week. It was published with varying formats and frequencies throughout the organisation's life.Socialist Woman magazine was published from 1969 to 1980.
The evolving orientations taken by the IMG were reflected in the sequence of newspapers it supported:The Black Dwarf;Red Mole;Red Weekly;Socialist Challenge; andSocialist Action.
The Black Dwarf was launched in June 1968 underTariq Ali's editorship, with several other IMG members on its editorial board. Its creative and pluralist nature attracted a number of new activists to the group:John Lennon was friendly to the organisation.
While IMG members largely remained in the Labour Party, including Charlie van Gelderen,International marked a break from 'deep entrism'. Its first issue claimed that "The Week was brought out in the expectation that a mass left would arise in the Labour party once labour was in power. [Its] main function was that of an organiser and co-ordinator [...] but this will be a by-product of the main function ofInternational: the creation of a firm marxist core in the labour movement." Its campaigning was focussed on broader initiatives such as theVietnam Solidarity Campaign and the Russell Tribunal, in which Ernie Tate was prominent and in which the RSL andSocialist Labour League did not work, theInstitute for Workers' Control and theRevolutionary Socialist Students Front, in whichPeter Gowan and Murray Smith were active. The agitational work ofThe Week was carried on inThe Black Dwarf and inSocialist Woman, launched in 1969. The Group gained some public prominence when Tariq Ali, who had joined in April 1968, was widely publicised in the media as a leader of protests against theVietnam War.
After the IMG became the British section of theFourth International in May 1969,International started to be formally presented as the publication of the IMG. The group began to focus on work in the student movement and trade unions. It abandoned its earlier systematic entryist work within the Labour Party, although the IMG continuously operated a "fraction" to organise its members within the Party. This turn out from the party led to a small number of members, includingAl Richardson, being marginalised: they went on to form theRevolutionary Communist League, better known as the Chartists.
The IMG was quickly noted for its energetic support for international solidarity campaigns concerning Vietnam, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, South Africa, and its support for socialists facing repression in France, Bolivia and Mexico, support for which was organised through theBlack Dwarf.International's May 1969 famous headline "Permanent Revolution Reaches UK" reflected its support for armed self-defence against the British state's forces in Northern Ireland in theRed Weekly and in its propaganda activity. It also supported, in orthodox Trotskyist fashion, the Communist-influenced struggles of theMPLA inAngola,FRELIMO inMozambique and theANC inSouth Africa despite the complete contempt of the Communist parties for Trotskyists: some opponents nicknamed them 'MIGs', after the Soviet militaryMiG.
In domestic politics, the early 1970s saw the IMG completely reject parliamentary politics. In 1970, the group used the general election as an opportunity to make revolutionary propaganda rather than canvassing for the return of a Labour government.
In March 1970,The Black Dwarf's editorial board split over questions ofLeninism, the felt lack of internal programmatic debate, especially around the support for anti-colonial revolutionary movements by the breakaway faction.[5] A second newspaper was established,Red Mole, which Tariq Ali edited alongside an editorial board with an IMG majority.Red Mole was a "revolutionary internationalist" paper that carried a broad range of left-wing opinion in its pages, including a famous interview with John Lennon.[6]Chenhanho Chimutengwende, aZimbabwe exile who later served as a minister underRobert Mugabe, was one of the non-IMG members on the editorial board.[7] IMG members also took part inNew Left Review: Tariq Ali,Robin Blackburn, and Quintin Hoare were on its editorial board for much of the 1970s and subsequently.
BecauseRed Mole was used by the IMG as its main organ, articles were sometimes mistakenly thought to indicate the positions of the IMG. For example, there was confusion after Robin Blackburn had written an April 1970 article entitled "Let it bleed" forRed Mole, in which he argued that Marxists should disrupt the campaigns of the Labour andConservative parties in the 1970 General Election. IMG secretary Pat Jordan replied a month later to explain why the IMG favoured a Labour victory. The group's general orientation at that time was summarised by Ali's bookThe Coming British Revolution (ISBN 0-224-00630-4).
By September 1970, Red Circles had been set up to organise activists who supported the paper. Many went on to join the IMG. The IMG radicalised as it grew: Pat Jordan's leadership gave way to that of John Ross, who anticipated that the rising tide of class struggle could lead to a pre-revolutionary crisis in Britain. In August 1972, the IMG formally assumed control of theRed Mole and prepared to relaunch it as a weekly newspaper.[citation needed]
The IMG strongly supported theIRA, adopting the slogan "Victory for the IRA".[8] After the events ofBloody SundayJohn Lennon andYoko Ono attended a protest in London while displaying a Red Mole newspaper with the headline "For the IRA, Against British Imperialism".[9]
In May 1973, the fortnightlyRed Mole was replaced byRed Weekly.International's editors and editorial board included many of the organisation's leaders, including Tariq Ali, Patrick Camiller, Ann Clafferty, Gus Fagan, Peter Gowan, Quintin Hoare, Michelle Lee, Bob Pennington,John Ross, Tony Whelan and Judith White.
During the 1970s the organisation developed a number of fluid, competing factions and tendencies. The IMG's leadership included Alan Jones (John Ross), Brian Grogan, Bob Pennington, Brian Heron and others. A notable minority tendency includedPat Jordan, Tariq Ali, Phil Hearse and many of the IMG's supporters on theNew Left Review editorial board. A smaller tendency supported the positions of the AmericanSocialist Workers Party. Other tendencies included a small group that eventually left to join theWorkers' Socialist League ofAlan Thornett, and a Left Opposition Tendency, some of whose members left and formed a new group, the Revolutionary Marxist Current, which later joinedBig Flame.[10] The United Secretariat prepared theses on the situation in Britain and the tasks of the IMG in 1973, and again in 1976, to help orient the organisation. In 1974, its members started to publishSouth Asia Marxist Review.
The IMG came to the public attention in 1974 duringLord Justice Scarman's Public Judicial Inquiry into the violent disturbances known as theRed Lion Square disorders, which led to the death ofKevin Gately, aUniversity of Warwick student who was not an IMG member. Scarman found that the IMG had made a "vicious, violent and unprovoked attack on the Police" who were guardingConway Hall to try to prevent access to the hall by theNational Front who had booked it for a meeting to protest against the Labour Government's decision to grant an amnesty to illegal immigrants. According to a BBC documentary, the IMG was the only socialist group to play a role in thesquatting movement.[11]
However, by the time of the 1976 USFI World Congress, internal disputes overLatin America were becoming more difficult to reconcile as divisions became entrenched between supporters of the International Majority Tendency, led byErnest Mandel, and the Leninist Trotskyist Faction, which was led by the American Socialist Workers Party. Despite a 'truce' reflected by the establishment ofSocialist Challenge, these divisions would result in the permanent splintering of the IMG's successor organisation, the Socialist League.
This vigorous internal life did not impede its growth among students and workers. The IMG's growth was reflected when it established Red Books as its publishing house and bookshop. By 1977, when the leadership team around Tariq Ali had started the organisation on the road towardsSocialist Challenge, bothInternational andSocialist Woman were well-produced quarterly journals. During this period, the smallMarxist Worker group also joined the IMG.
In June 1977,Socialist Challenge replacedRed Weekly. It raised two slogans.
Around this time IMG members also published several issues of a magazine calledBlack Liberation and Socialism.[12] By 1979 the IMG grew to its highpoint of 758 members in good standing, and a total of 1,000 supporters.
In 1980,Tony Benn's campaign led the IMG to increase its focus on the Labour Party. It developed a 'combination tactic' in which its fraction of members in the Labour Party was boosted. By 1981, the IMG-organised youth organisation called Revolution Youth, which organised its magazineRevolution, had entered theLabour Party Young Socialists in order to build it and win activists to the IMG's politics. The IMG was soon to send a second wave of members into the Labour Party, leading it to merge in 1982 with theLeague for Socialist Action, a small group ofFourth International supporters that had been engaged in entrism in the Labour party for at least five years.
Initially, IMG members in the Labour Party continued to sellSocialist Challenge. They used it to argue that the Bennite left needed to organise together with the trade union left. IMG members, often describing themselves as 'Socialist Challenge supporters', supported the formation of Bennite organisations such asLabour Briefing and the Labour Committee on Ireland.
In mid-1982 its central committee started to discuss whether to announce that the IMG was dissolved in order to better facilitate its entry.
In December 1982, the IMG renamed itself theSocialist League, while continuing to refer to itself as the IMG in internal documents.[13] The group had fully entered theLabour Party and in 1983 began publishing theSocialist Action newspaper, by which name the League was often known.
Despite initial successes,Socialist Action was established at a time when the Bennite movement had started to suffer defeats. In 1983, the group's membership fell to around 500. Different tendencies developed in the organisation over how to relate to the political evolution of figures likeKen Livingstone andArthur Scargill. At the same time, the Socialist Workers Party in the US, which influenced many of the group's members, started to withdraw from the International. This opened up the most bitter internal political struggle in the group's history. Under the pressures of the defeat of the1984–1985 miners' strike, the group fragmented into three organisations.
Some of its many pamphlets are listed below.
| Preceded by | British Section of theFourth International 1965–1982 | Succeeded by |
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
