ABSTRACT
Cultic leadership in politics has attracted relatively little attention. I have chosen this as a case for several reasons. Firstly, and in defi ance of the irrelevance that normally attaches, limpet like, to fratricidal far-left groups, the Militant Tendency acquired signifi cant infl uence in the 1980s and early 1990s. It was also known as the Committee for a Workers International (CWI), a term that I will use in the rest of this chapter for the sake of brevity. The CWI led a major local authority in Liverpool, from which position it launched a prolonged struggle against the then Tory Government. CWI members controlled the mainstream Labour Party’s youth section, the Young Socialists. Three Labour Members of Parliament were well known CWI activists. It helped split the Labour Party asunder for much of the 1980s. It therefore arguably made an important contribution to ensuring that the Conservative Party remained in power for 17 years. At its peak, the organization had around 8,000 members and over 200 full time workers – more than the Labour Party employed. It occupied a spacious international headquarters in London and published a 16-page weekly newspaper, Militant , from which it derived the name by which it was best known. In short, the CWI became probably the most successful Trotskyist organization in the world since the 1930s. In addition, it played a leading role in the mass movements against a proposed government tax (the ‘Poll Tax’) in the early 1990s and therefore had an important role in the growing unpopularity of Prime Minister Margret Thatcher, who eventually resigned. Whether this balances out helping to sustain her in power for so long in the fi rst place is a matter for political scientists and activists to debate. While the CWI may be destined to be a footnote in British political history, it is a rather large one. This alone makes it an important object for study.
