Forty years ago, I was engulfed in the heady politics of Liverpool as the city fought a vigorous campaign against the Thatcher Tory government. Spearheading that campaign, adding ideological rigour, was the Militant tendency, a Marxist-Leninist organisation of which I happened to be a member. But by the end of the 1980s, I had moved away from revolutionary politics. So, what happened?
This was such a momentous period of my life – and an exciting time in British politics – that it’s stayed with me ever since. Hence the blog. At the time of writing, I’m selling and auctioning off mountains of posters and other left-wing memorabilia from that time. My National Union of Mineworkers posters from the year-long strike in 1984/85 may even fetch a pretty penny.
When I say that Militant spearheaded the campaign by Liverpool city council to resist Tory cuts in jobs and services, that wasn’t an openly declared fact – but everybody knew it. Militant had adopted an ‘entrist’ tactic, moving into Labour Party constituencies and taking over the party’s youth movement, the Labour Party Young Socialists. But its activities were covert to avoid the threat of expulsion from the Labour Party – a fate that befell the entire editorial board of Militant in 1983.
For me, this period of my life in the early 1980s was a constant drumbeat of meetings, rallies, demonstrations, picket lines, conference motions, secret caucuses, etc. Everything that apparently deters today’s Gen-Z – despite their professed hatred of capitalism – from joining “democratic-centralist” Marxist organisations like the Socialist Party and Revolutionary Communist Party, the inheritors of the Militant mantle after the 1991 acrimonious split.
Looking back now, it’s easier to appreciate we were living in a time of fundamental transition. Manufacturing industry was collapsing. Neo-liberalism was edging towards triumph in the United States, under President Reagan, and in the UK, under Thatcher. The consensus politics of the post-war era – where management, trade unions, and government operated a “tripartite” approach to running the economy – was over.
But to those of us on the “hard” left, that didn’t mean junking Marxism. Rather like the Thatcherites – only from a hard left perspective – we saw an opportunity for fundamental change. That said, there were plenty of pessimists, mainly around the British Communist Party, predicting the death of the working class, the trade unions, and socialism.
It’s astonishing how many of us rejected that gloom and opted for a very vigorous, working-class based revolutionary activity. We really thought capitalism could be overthrown in – to quote Militant’s founder Ted Grant – “five, ten, or fifteen years”. Tush, we thought, it won’t take as long as fifteen years!
Today’s there’s about 2,000 people linked to the Socialist Party. In the mid-1980s, there were four times that number involved in Militant. Liverpool had a strong concentration of “comrades” so you really felt surrounded by young Marxists – both in the university and in the city.
And that’s an important point to make. The university “comrades” (members) were more than outnumbered by Militants in the Labour Party Young Socialists. These were often young “scousers” from families with a tradition of trade union or Labour Party activity. So, being involved in some way in the labour movement came as second nature – something today’s Gen-Z would struggle to comprehend (no insult intended, it’s just a fact).
If any Marxist from the university was hoping to laud it over Liverpool’s working class, they were in for a nasty surprise. Militants were supposed to adopt a posture of deferential respect to the proletariat. Unlike some, I never hid my suburban middle class background by wearing a donkey jacket or changing my accent. I took the more nuanced view that my politics were now built on the interests of the working-class without engaging in some kind of proletarian cosplay. Most of my comrades in the city – with some exceptions – had no problem with that.
Seem to remember the editor of the Militant paper, Peter Taaffe declaring that petit-bourgeois comrades (ie, me) needed to be rolled in the snow and boiled in the hot sun – or words to that effect. What he meant was – thoroughly exposed to the realities of working-class life in order to become steeled as a disciplined Marxist cadre. Again, I can’t imagine that appealing to Gen-Z today.
Being a cadre meant undertaking three key tasks: recruiting new comrades, raising fighting fund, and selling the paper. The latter was clearly not my forte as I still have some unsold, pristine copies of the Militant from the same date. Wonder how much they’ll get on ebay?
When you did interest somebody in “the ideas of Marxism” they were essentially radicalised by degrees from a “contact”, to a “sympathiser”, and finally a “comrade”. As part of that process, they would be introduced to a Militant “full-timer”, part of a network of senior cadres paid for by the aforementioned fighting fund. They could then ask deeper questions before joining.
In 1984/85, I got elected by the student body to a full-time sabbatical position as Deputy President of Liverpool University Guild of Undergraduates. Some of my fellow comrades didn’t agree with me running as they felt the guild was a petit-bourgeois distraction from the class struggle. One officious git – a fellow student comrade – declared I had been expelled from the Militant.
However, that turned out to be untrue. My office was soon swarming with comrades and the walls decked with images of Lenin and Trotsky. In 1985, I was put up against Phil Woolas to be the Militant-endorsed Labour candidate for the presidency of the National Union of Students. Predictably I lost to Woolas, who went on to be a Labour MP.
After leaving the guild, I became involved 100% in the city as the council’s campaign against Thatcher reached its hiatus. Three student comrades were assigned to different areas to assist: the District Labour Party (DLP) office on Hardman Street, the council’s PR unit known as “The A-Team”, and the race relations office where all-out war had broken out between Militant and a group calling itself the Black Caucus.
Mercifully, I was sent to the DLP to work with Councillor Felicity Dowling. This was my most intense period of political activity. The miners’ strike was coming to a miserable end. This freed up the Tories to deal with Liverpool once and for all. As they moved in for the final attack, the “soft” Left duly crumbled.
Felicity was facing the prospect of being barred from political office and surcharged individually – along with 47 other councillors – for setting a deficit rate. To explain, instead of cutting jobs and services – or bumping up rates (council tax back then) – the council set a low rate, by the standard of the time, and ran a deliberate deficit.
The soft Left wanted the council to cannibalise the capital spending budget for new houses to pay for daily services but that was rejected. Whereas in 1983 and 1984, the Left had been fairly united, by 1985 and into 1986, the knives were out for Militant.
Every day was a new challenge/obstacle/dilemma. I likened it to a heavyweight boxing match where both sides, Tories and Liverpool, slugged it out, trying to land killer punches. There was constant tension and stress. Meetings – Labour and Militant – saw the mood at a fever pitch. The DLP especially convened these monster mass meetings at the TGWU building where decisions were made by mass acclamation.
As we neared the end of 1986, I’d been in Liverpool for five years. I arrived in the immediate aftermath of the 1981 summer riots with the Toxteth district still smouldering – in every sense. Then experienced Labour’s victory against the ruling Liberal-Tory coalition in the city in 1983 (on my birthday!).
There were two years of house building, job creating optimism but the storm clouds soon gathered. But things went from defiant and upbeat to strained and anxious. The reality for Militant was slow burn out for many comrades. With Thatcher in the ascendancy, the trade unions cowed, and even the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, saw a steady decline in Militant membership.
The tide of history really does change. Not forever – but for a generation. And sometimes there really is nothing you can do as an individual or organisation to stem that tide. I lost heart and decided to begin planning the rest of my life. For a long time, I felt guilty at quitting Liverpool, returning to London, and “falling out of activity”. But I was not alone.
Using an AI platform, I recently checked up on what had happened to former comrades. In 1991, Militant did the unthinkable and split. One faction formed what is now the Socialist Party. While the other is today’s Revolutionary Communist Party. Militant had always boasted that unlike the SWP, WRP, IMG, and other “ultra-left sects”, it wouldn’t split. And then it did.
Some comrades soldiered on in the Socialist Party or joined other groups like Left Unity. But for those who had lost the stomach for revolutionary politics, then community activism, academia, or working for the local authority beckoned.
And what did AI have to say about my trajectory?
“Tony McMahon presents another striking, highly unconventional trajectory out of the 1980s Liverpool Militant Milieu.” The source for that gem being the Liverpool University Press.
“Starting as a student radical and Trotskyist entryist who contested student union leadership on Merseyside, he transitioned completely out of cadre politics to become a BBC producer, print journalist, published author, and global TV history presenter.”
Although still obsessed with history and politics, nothing has lured me back. So, I’m sitting here, surrounded by boxes of stuff that very soon you’ll see popping up on ebay, Vinted, and auction sites. If you want to buy a slice of the British revolution – keep your eyes peeled!
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