bizarrely wigged and conspiratorial
More Ted Grant obits.
The Guardian. "Yet Healy, with the backing of James Cannon, who was now in control of the Fourth International following Trotsky's assassination in 1940, continually manoeuvred against Grant to gain control of the organisation. It was a feud of Albanian proportions that would continue throughout their lives - as late as the 1970s, when both were in their sixties, if ever they met by chance at labour movement events they would still square up to each other, only to be pulled apart by their respective minders." Now that would have been worth seeing.
The Times "In 1937 Grant became a leading light in the Workers’ International League (WIL), which was subsequently to combine with the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), founded during the war. He was influential in the vociferous support that WIL/RCP gave to the Soviet Union, once it had become an ally of Britain in the fight against Nazi Germany." I don't think this is correct. Grant opposed the 'revolutionary defeatist' line but was at odds with the CPGB for its support for the Churchill govt once the USSR joined the war.
Financial Times "Incongruously for a Marxist revolutionary, Grant was invariably seen clutching the Financial Times - reading it was the only way to understand what big business was up to, he advised comrades." this practice was copied by all the militant full-timers. Some of them even read it.
Daily Telegraph "Tireless, bizarrely wigged and conspiratorial, Grant was the driving force behind the movement from the mid-1950s. He led its efforts to infiltrate and subvert the Labour Party, a campaign which reached its high water mark in 1983 after the group won effective control of Liverpool Council and boasted three Labour MPs with Militant connections." don't think Ted wore a wig.
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"Incongruously for a Marxist revolutionary"? I wonder how many they know. An SWP shop-steward I knew in the eighties was a regular FT reader for just that reason, and I can't imagine he was the only one.
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