The predecessor of the Revolutionary Communist International became a household name in Britain when its supporters won a majority in the local government in Liverpool, from 1983 to 1987.
The Militant Tendency—named after its influential weekly communist paper—grew from 1,000 members in 1975 to over 8,000 by the late 1980s. It had a staff of 200 full-timers— more than the Labour Party—over 50 city council officials, and three members of parliament.
In the early 1980s, Marxists organized around The Militant won majority influence in the Liverpool District Labour Party (DLP). The Liverpool DLP not only led the local Labour Party, but also coordinated workers’ strikes and strike support in the city. In 1983, the Liverpool Labour Party, under Marxist leadership, gained a majority on the city council and took it in a bold, new direction.
The Marxist council inherited a cash-strapped city budget from the liberals who were in the process of laying off 1,200 public workers. As soon as they got into office, the new council canceled the layoffs, added 1,000 new jobs, and shortened the workweek to 35 hours. It launched a crash program of public works and built 5,000 new homes, complete with gardens, all under public ownership. They lowered rents, starting in the poorest neighborhoods, and built various recreational community centers and sports facilities, in a crash program to tackle the housing crisis—an extremely important issue for Liverpool’s working class. All of these victories were backed up by mass struggles, demonstrations, and strikes.
To pay for this, they pointed out that the central government, led by arch-reactionary Margaret Thatcher and the Tory Party, had cut funding for the local government, and demanded that the £30 million in stolen funds be restored. By bourgeois legal standards, the council had passed an illegal deficit budget to pay for the reforms, but they hit back against this framing of the issue with the slogan, “Better to break the law, than break the poor!” Rather than raise taxes on workers, they demanded that the central government make up the shortfall, and appealed to other Labour councils nationally to join in their militant fight against austerity, coupled with calls to nationalize Britain’s banks and monopolies.
By leading these fights, the Marxists won overwhelming support from Liverpool’s workers, and increased their vote share by 40% in the next elections. Despite vicious attacks in the media, their vote continued to increase each year, winning 33 out of 34 contested seats, and flipping seven Tory Party seats to Labour. Every elected Marxist councilor accepted only the average wage of a worker, and donated the rest to the movement. This included the three members of the national parliament, who ran as “a workers’ MP on a workers’ wage.”
Militant’s influence peaked in the late 1980s when it launched a struggle against Thatcher’s regressive anti-worker tax policy, known as the Poll Tax. This culminated in mass demonstrations of 250,000 in London and 50,000 in Glasgow, calling for mass defiance of the tax. In the end, 18 million people refused to pay the Poll Tax, forcing Thatcher to resign, and the policy was scrapped by her successor.
The Marxists gained mass popularity, and as they could not be defeated by capitalist candidates, the British ruling class used legal maneuvers to remove them without an election, citing their “illegal budget.” Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock—a loyal servant of the bourgeoisie—bureaucratically disbanded the entire Liverpool District Labour Party, knowing he could not defeat the Marxists in fair internal party elections. So much for democracy!
[Check out Rob Sewell’s article “How the Militant was Built – and How it was Destroyed” to learn more about the lessons of the Militant Tendency!]