Origins
The Militant tendency was a Trotskyist group with roots that stretched back to the Workers International League in the 1930s, and the post-war Revolutionary Communist Party.
Organised in a group called the Revolutionary Socialist League it was organised around a newspaper called Socialist Fight, and followed the ideas of Leon Trotsky. The RSL, about 40 strong, were Labour Party members mainly based in Liverpool, "with small forces in London and in South Wales". The Militant newspaper was founded after the Revolutionary Socialist League, decided in March 1964 to wind up Socialist Flight, and start another newspaper. National Secretary Jimmy Deane, together with Ted Grant, Keith Dickenson, Ellis Hillman and others on the executive of the RSL decided to launch the Militant newspaper, initially a four-page monthly. Peter Taaffe was appointed the first editor, and in 1965 became national secretary.
The name of the paper was the same as the American American SWP publication The Militant, and as a result "most of the pioneers of Militant were not enthralled by the choice of the name" writes Taaffe. But "Militant did stand for what its proponents intended: the aim of winning in the first instance, the most conscious, combative, fighting, i.e. militant, sections of the working class." Some Trotskyists referred to the new group, still known internally as the Revolutionary Socialist League, as the Grantites after their leading ideologue, Ted Grant.
Read more about this topic: Militant Tendency
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