Breaking News: Militant applies to rejoin Labour

As if the Labour Party did not have enough problems to contend with at the moment it appears that 75 members of the old Militant Tendency, now organised as the Socialist Party have submitted a joint application to the Labour Party National Executive.

These include Peter Taffe, the General Secretary of the Socialist Party and Dave Nellist a former Labour MP who organised a group of Militant councillors in Coventry for several years (under the banner of Socialist Alternative) until they were all wiped out in the local elections.



There was a hard long battle to remove these parasites from Labour back in the eighties when Militant was a much larger and stronger organisation than it is today. They became infamous for bankrupting Liverpool Council and using taxi's to send out redundancy notices to workers.

Since those days the group has split asunder with the Scottish Militants going there own way to electoral oblivion under Tommy Sheridan. The founder of Militant Ted Grant split with around 200 or so members to form Socialist Appeal which remains buried and semi-hidden in the Labour Party.

  

The Socialist Party is believed to be around 2,000 strong and currently has the controlling influence over the largest of the civil service unions PCS, though the unions size and influence has declined somewhat under their tenure.

The organisation has been in alliance with the Socialist Workers Party and RMT union in trying to build an electoral alternative called the Trade Unionist & Socialist Coalition which has proved a road to nowhere.



The Socialist Party is affiliated to the Trotskyist Communist Workers International (CWI) whilst its rivals in Socialist Appeal run the International Marxist Tendency (IMT).

With the rise of Corbynism it is hardly surprising that the old Militant Tendency would wish to return but Labour members should be aware it is a distinct, separate political party with it's own structures policies and international affiliations and is thus it's members automatically ineligible for membership.