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By Ted Grant in 1968
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In August 1968 Ted Grant drew a balance sheet
of the revolutionary crisis ignited in France with the May events. In this
important article he carefully analysed the main problems facing the
revolution, exposing the treacherous policies of the Stalinist CP leaders, who
gave De Gaulle the possibility to recover from his earlier paralysis, and the
sectarian mistakes of the leaders of the "revolutionary left".
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By Ted Grant in 1939
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In the summer of 1939, the Tientsin incident unleashed a
nationalistic outburst in defence of British prerogatives over China. Labour
and Stalinist leaders advocated for a "firm" defence of British interests and China against Japan. Ted Grant vehemently
rejected their chauvinism and warned "We cannot trust the British capitalists
to carry out any act in the interests of the workers of Britain and the
world."
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By Ted Grant in 1940
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After the first few months of war in March 1940,
preparations for an even worse scenario of slaughter were being undertaken by
all imperialist powers by mobilizing the masses of each country against the
"enemy". The labour and Stalinist leaders' bankrupt policies left the workers
unarmed. Here Ted Grant makes a balance-sheet of the first months of War.
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By Ted Grant in 1970
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In
this short article Ted Grant looked at the events unfolding in the Dutch Labour
Party during the first months of 1970 and drew some conclusions for the British
Marxists.
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By Ted Grant in 1939
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With preparations for war in full swing the
small Workers' International League gathered around Ralph Lee and Ted Grant was
the only voice that stood out defending a real internationalist position. Here
we provide our readers with the lead article of the August 1939 edition of Youth
For Socialism, signed by Ted Grant.
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By Ted Grant in 1945
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In early 1945 the radical mood within the British
working class was preparing a landslide victory for the Labour Party. In this
context the I.L.P. leadership raised the idea of re-affiliation to the L.P.,
but gave no explanation for its 13 years of independent existence. Here Ted
Grant provided a sober-minded Marxist approach to the question of the Labour
Party and the mass organizations of the working class in general.
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By Ted Grant in 1944
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Ted
Grant in 1944 defends an internationalist approach towards the German workers
as opposed to the utter nationalist degeneration of the Trade Union, Labour and
C.P. leaders who enthusiastically joined the bandwagon of those blaming the
German workers for the crimes of the Nazi regime, when in fact they were its
first victims.
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By Ted Grant in 1964
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A key historical document that analyses the important question of
"proletarian bonapartism", i.e. Stalinism, in the former colonial
countries. Previously it was available in an edited version. Here we
reproduce the full text. It explains the roots of the Chinese
revolution and why the Maoist regime came into conflict with the Soviet
Union, and also the nature of several similar regimes that came into
being in that period. It was also the basis for the expulsion of Ted
Grant and his followers from Mandel's so-called Unified Secretariat of
the Fourth International.
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By Ted Grant in 1942
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In 1942 a slanderous campaign against the Socialist Appeal waged by the Communist
Party leaders was backed up by the Sunday
Dispatch, infamous for its early enthusiastic support of Hitler, Mosley and
the Blackshirts. They shamelessly joined forces to accuse the Trotskyists of
being Hitler's agents! Here is Ted Grant's reply to these slanders.
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By Ted Grant in 1972
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In
1972 Nixon, the US
president, visited China
for talks, the contents of which were kept secret. Ted Grant exposed the
shameless behaviour of Stalinist China and Russia who engaged in power
politics with imperialism and at the same time launching bitter attacks against
each other. What a change in comparison to the approach to diplomacy defended
by Lenin and Trotsky.
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By Ted Grant in 1963
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In 1963 there were indications that a crisis was brewing in the USSR. Ted Grant
showed how the twists and turns of Kruschev's policies were empirical attempts
on the part of the Russian bureaucracy to reform the system in order to avoid
the possibility of a political revolution developing along the lines of Hungary 1956.
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By Ted Grant in 1962
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In 1962 Krushchev announced the introduction of
a new Constitution in the Soviet Union. Ted
Grant explained the real significance of this change and why the attempt to put
a check on the corruption of the bureaucratic caste without restoring real
workers' democracy was doomed to failure.
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By Ted Grant in 1971
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War
between Pakistan and India was eventually to be sparked off by the
Pakistani air attack of December 3, 1971, after escalating tension and India's interference in the West Pakistani
suppression of East Bengal (now Bangladesh).
On the verge of war, Ted Grant analysed the class interests of the different
parties involved in this article in the Militant.
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By Ted Grant in 1967
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In 1967 a conference of European Communist parties was held. A comment by Ted Grant was published by the Militant where he exposed the British Communist party leaders’ utter reformist and nationalist degeneration.
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By Ted Grant in 1966
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In 1966 an economic crisis
forced Yugoslav leader Tito to announce a plan of reforms in order to
decentralise power. Bureaucratic corruption and mismanagement were exposed for
the first time in the Yugoslav press. Ted Grant explained how self-reform on
part of the bureaucracy would not solve the problem and why workers' democracy
and internationalism would be the only way forward.
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By Ted Grant in 1965
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At
the peak of the economic growth of the USSR, in 1965, cracks
appeared in
the planned economy revealing that the burden of the privileged caste
and
bureaucratic mismanagement was becoming more and more unbearable. Ted
Grant
explained the reasons for this crisis and the futility of the attempts
to solve
it without restoring workers’ democracy.
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By Ted Grant in 1965
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In 1965 tensions rose between Pakistan and India around the issue of Kashmir. A provocation by Pakistani dictator Ayub Khan led to open conflict and a victory for the Indian bourgeoisie. In this article, published in October 1965, Ted Grant showed how the war was reactionary on both sides.
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By Ted Grant in 1941
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As part of a general attempt to slander
revolutionary ideas as pro-Nazi, the Labour Party's newspaper, Daily Herald, ‘accidentally' included
the report on the trial of the Minneapolis General Drivers' Union, also leaders
of the Socialist Workers' Party (Fourth International), into a report of the
trial of 33 German spies. Here is the vibrant protest of the Workers'
International League, by Ted Grant.
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By Ted Grant in 1941
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In June 1941, Nazi Germany attacked the USSR. The treacherous policies of Stalin enforced in the non-aggression pact with Hitler of August 1939 were wiped away and the Soviet bureaucracy was thrown into panic. Overnight the Communist International changed its policy from one of opposition to imperialist war to one of collaboration with the democratic nations in the war against fascism. Ted Grant explains the Marxist position back in July 1941.
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By Ted Grant in 1944
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At the end of the war, the tremendous psychological shock occasioned by the events of the war, the collaboration of the bourgeoisie of the defeated countries with the Nazi invaders, had undermined the former habitual acceptance of bourgeois domination over the nation. As Ted Grant wrote in 1944, "The problem of the German revolution cannot be separated from the problem of the revolution in all Europe. The war has tied the fate of all the European countries together. Events in one will have immediate repercussions in all the others."
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By Ted Grant in 1942
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In 1942, Mr. Hall, President of the Yorkshire Miners' Association viciously attacked the Socialist Appeal. In his attack, Mr. Hall claimed that "subversive influences outside the miners' association" were responsible for the unrest in the mines, and that these forces were "pro-Nazi". Ted Grant responded to these slanders point by point, explaining the real reasons for unrest on the coalfields.
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By Ted Grant
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In 1942 the Socialist Appeal, organ of the Workers' International League, came under a sever attack launched by the mouthpiece of the
coal-owners, The Daily Telegraph, and echoed by the entire national and
provincial press, the Tories, the Communist Party, the Liberals and the
Yorkshire miners’ TU leaders. The aim was to get the Socialist Appeal
suppressed. Why? Because the SA was giving a voice to the anger of the Yorkshire miners as they came into conflict with both the
bosses and their own strike-breaking trade union leaders.
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By Ted Grant
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In an attempt to discredit the Trotskyists once again, the CP attempted to disorient and confuse the working class by spreading out-and-out lies on the Chinese Revolution. Ted Grant replies to these points in a effort to set the record straight and expose the methods of the Stalinists.
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By Ted Grant in 1942
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In 1942 the British Stalinists launched a vicious campaign of slander and lies against Trotskyism. Ted Grant, in the best traditions of Marxism, used the weapon of truth to reply to the Stalinists, whose methods were without honour, truth and conscience.
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By Ted Grant in 1945
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The election of a majority Labour Government for the first time marked a definite turn in European, world and British history. In voting for the Labour Party, the mass of the British workers indicated that they wanted a complete change from the capitalist system. With such a decisive victory, the whole social structure of Britain and Europe could have been changed by a bold socialist programme on the part of the Labour leaders.
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By Ted Grant in 1945
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After the end of the Second World War, the Allies announced a savage and vengeful programme of enslavement of Germany and the German people. Of course, the responsibility for the crimes of the Nazis was not to be laid on their real backers, the German capitalists and bankers and the British and French capitalists. The burdens of dismemberment and defeat were to be thrown onto the backs of the thrice oppressed and enslaved German workers and peasants, the first victims of Hitlerism.
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By Ted Grant in 1945
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After the Crimea conference, the British Communist Party leaders came
out with a position advocating a National unity government with the
Tories for the post-war period. This policy of class collaboration was
denounced by Ted Grant, who wrote in 1945
that, "to support Churchill is to support monopoly capitalism. To
support the capitalists, the interests of the working class must be
betrayed. It has taken the advanced British workers the experience of
50 years to realise that the Liberal and Tory Parties are parties of
capitalism."
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By Ted Grant in 1944
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In 1944 the Labour Party held its annual conference while British troops were being used to crush the Greek workers. The Labour leaders scandalously supported British imperialist policy in Greece, but even worse was the fact that the Labour left had capitulated on this issue. Ted Grant put forward a revolutionary Marxist position on the question.
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By Ted Grant in 1943
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The Third International was created by Lenin and Trotsky as an instrument of world revolution. However, as Ted Grant wrote in 1943, the Comintern under Stalin quickly degenerated "into a kept whore of the Stalinist bureaucracy, applying its policy according to the changing moods of Kremlin policy. In reality the creation of the International was not a question of sentiment or convenience, but arose directly from the objective tasks posed in front of the international working class."
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By Ted Grant in 1944
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In July 1944 the Allies had their forces in France ready to
march eastwards towards Germany. In the British media there were calls for
punishment of all Germans, conveniently ignoring the fact that the
German workers had always been opposed to Hitler, whereas the British bourgeois
had welcomed his crushing of the German labour movement in 1933.
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By Ted Grant in 1941
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Against the background of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Ted
Grant wrote in 1941 that, "In spite of the ravages of the bureaucracy,
the basic conquests of the October Revolution still remain: the
capitalist class has never regained its possessions and private
ownership in the means of production has never been restored. It is this
that the masses, despite their aversion for the bureaucracy, have
rallied to defend, just as the British workers would rally to the
defence of their Trade Unions against capitalist attack, in spite of
their aversion for the Bevins and Citrines."
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By Ted Grant in 1944
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At the 1944 conference of the ILP there were
clear indications that a steady move to the right on the part of the leadership
was taking place. This posed the question of what the left wing of the party
should do. Here Ted Grant raises the need for the left to sharpen up its ideas
and take a firm stand.
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By Ted Grant
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As soon as Germany and Japan
had been knocked out of the war, the scramble for the markets of the world intensified among the Allied victors. Despite the official lies
about the reasons for Lend-Lease, it was only granted in the first place
by the Americans after they had stripped British imperialism of the
major part of her investments, markets and interests abroad. The sugary phrases about “co-operation” in the “great battle of
democracy” are shown to have been but a cover for the real interests
of imperialism.
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By Ted Grant in 1943
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In return for Stalin’s help in ensuring the continuation of capitalism in Europe, the Allies were prepared temporarily to make concessions to him. The real purpose of the Three Powers Talks in Moscow was to come to some arrangements for the post-war world.
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By Ted Grant
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The threatened invasion of India by Japanese imperialism in 1942 brought the question of India front and centre before the British working class. Rather than arm the
Indian people and risk India falling into the hands of the Indians,
the British imperialists would have prefered it to fall, temporarily, into
the hands of the Japanese.
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By Ted Grant in 1956
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With the death of Stalin, the Stalinist bureaucracy was not removed from the Soviet state. As Ted Grant explained in 1956: "The present leaders in the Kremlin claim that they are returning
to the methods of Lenin. But they are preserving the basic
gains and perquisites of the officialdom. If there has been a revulsion against the methods of Stalin,
that has been for two reasons, the growing pressure of the masses,
and the fear of the bureaucracy of a repetition of the personal and
arbitrary rule of Stalin."
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By In Defence of Marxism
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One year ago today the Marxist theoretician Ted Grant died after more
than seventy years of political activity. His death marked the end of
an era, but not the end of the struggle for the ideas he always
defended.
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By Ted Grant in 1942
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In 1942, a censure motion by the extreme right wing of the Tory Party was proposed in order to replace Churchill with a military general. The ruling class was playing with the idea of using the Royal Family as a cover for introducing some form of Bonapartist rule.
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By Ted Grant in 1942
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In the middle of the war the ILP was floundering. Not having
a fully worked out Marxist programme, it combined opportunism and sectarianism
at the same time. They could not understand the method as outlined by Ted Grant
at the time, which was not to issue mere denunciations of the Labour Party
leaders. It could “only be done by demonstrating to the masses, by their own
experience, that their leaders are incapable of representing their interests.”
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By Ted Grant in June 1943
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The Labour leaders were in the wartime coalition, but not as “equal
partners”. What the bosses wanted came first and the Labour leaders bowed down
to this pressure. But pressure was also building up from below to meet the
needs of the workers. Ted Grant looked at how all this was reflected in the
Labour Party conference.
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By Ted Grant, March 1943
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More than halfway into the Second World War the mood among the British workers was changing. The bourgeois could feel the changing mood and attempted to manoeuvre by making false promises. All this was putting pressure on the Labour Party, where the contradiction between the leaders in the coalition government and the workers in general was becoming ever more evident.
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By Ted Grant in June 1940
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Germany was
making rapid advances on all fronts, shocking the British and Americans. On
this basis Mussolini decided to back what he thought was going to be the
winning horse. This forced the USA to speed up its decision to actively
participate in the war and also to woo Russia into the Allied camp. As Ted
Grant predicted “Armageddon is upon us. Millions will be crushed under the
advancing tanks and warplanes.”
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By Ted Grant in May 1942
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While every effort was being made by the Labour (and
Communist) leaders to uphold the national government, the mood among the masses
was changing. A series of local elections in May 1942 revealed that radical
left mood was developing of opposition to the government and where left
candidates stood they got good results.
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By Ted Grant in April 1940
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In the early
stages of the war Germany
wished to maintain nominal neutrality among the other nations in Europe, especially among those with whom she shared a
common frontier. Britain, in
order to strike at Germany,
tried to spread the war as widely as possible, neither being in the least
concerned with the ‘rights of small nations’. As Ted Grant wrote, “The people of Europe can look forward to a few months more or less of the
present deadlock, then the sanguinary slaughter – there is no other prospect.”
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By Ted Grant in February 1940
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As the war dragged on Ted Grant highlighted the real
reason for the war, the conflict between German and British imperialism for
domination of Europe. The war was presented as
one against Nazi dictatorship, but at the same time the British had a liking
for Franco and were also courting Mussolini, revealing the fact that their
opposition to “dictatorship” was pure hypocrisy.
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By Ted Grant
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In October 1944 the Communist Party of Great
Britain held a national conference where the leadership did everything possible
to disguise in revolutionary sounding language their support for the Tories,
for Churchill, for the Atlantic Alliance and so on. Some dared to criticise
from the ranks but these were soon silenced. Ted Grant exposed the
contradictions in the position presented by the leadership of the party.
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By Ted Grant in 1942
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Stalin’s attitude towards the
German people zig-zagged as his relations with his imperialist allies changed.
At one point he distinguished between the Nazis and the German workers at other
times he blamed the German people as a whole for Nazism. Throughout, however,
he never raised a genuine internationalist position. His perspective was not
the struggle for world socialism, but merely defence of Russia’s
borders.
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By Ted Grant in 1941
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As Hitler's armies
advanced into the Soviet Union, Ted Grant
explained that it was the abandonment of genuine workers' democracy and
internationalism and its replacement by a dictatorial national bureaucratic
regime that weakened the ability of the country to stop the Nazis. In spite of
this the duty of British workers was to defend the land of October
with all means possible.
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By Ted Grant in September 1939
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As the world stood on the brink of world war Ted Grant wrote,
“If world capitalism has no solution for its problems excepting new and more
horrible slaughter of whole nations, it is time this insane system were ended…
The sole way out for the youth lies in the overthrow of capitalism and workers’
power and socialism. Our path lies in building up the revolutionary socialist
youth which alone can lead us away from the nightmare of war which hangs over
us.” Read the article on tedgrant.org.
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By Ted Grant in March 1939
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As armaments were piled up in preparation for the Second
World War Ted Grant explained that, “This war machine is for the defence of the
trading interests and the colonial loot of British imperialism, for what is
making for war is the intensified and sharpened struggle for markets between
the different countries of the world.”
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By Ted Grant, 1945
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At the end of
the Second World War the Labour Party was elected into office, a clear
rejection of Churchill and his anti-working class policies. But the statements
of the Labour leaders revealed that they intended to continue with capitalism.
The British ruling class understood they could use these leaders, discredit
them and then bring back the Tories. Ted Grant warned the Labour leaders that
this is what would happen.
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By Ted Grant, November 1943
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In 1943 a revolt of the Lebanese erupted against French imperialism. While oppressing their own colonies, the British cynically supported the Lebanese as a means of weakening De Gaulle and French imperialism. De Gaulle drowned the rebellion in blood refusing to accept the position of puppet of Anglo-American imperialism. See Ted Grant's article (November 1943).
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By Ted Grant, March 1944
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Contrary to the official mythology about Churchill, by 1944 he was already losing support among the people of Britain. This article by Ted Grant, written at the time and based on local election results, shows that the workers were becoming radicalised. This was to be confirmed in a dramatic way just after the war when Labour won a landslide victory.
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