Peter Taaffe
| Peter Taaffe | |
|---|---|
 |
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| General Secretary of the Socialist Party | |
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Assumed office 1997 |
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| Deputy | Hannah Sell |
| General Secretary of Militant Labour | |
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In office 1992–1997 |
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| General Secretary of Militant | |
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In office 1964–1992 |
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| Preceded by | Position established |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 1942 (Age 72/73) Birkenhead, Cheshire, England |
| Political party | Socialist Party |
| Children | Nancy Taaffe |
Peter Taaffe (born April 1942) is a British political activist and journalist. He is the general secretary of the Socialist Party of England and Wales and member of the International Executive Committee of the Committee for a Workers' International (CWI), which claims sections in over 45 countries around the world.
Taaffe was the founding editor of the Trotskyist Militant newspaper in 1964, and became known as a leading member of the entryist Militant group. Taaffe was expelled from the Labour Party in 1983, along with four other members of Militant's editorial board
Taaffe was influential in the policy decisions of Liverpool City Council of 1983–87, according to the council's deputy leader Derek Hatton, in the formation of the Militant tendency's policy regarding the Poll Tax in 1988–1991, and the Militant tendency's 'open turn' from the Labour Party in the late 1980s, becoming general secretary of Militant's eventual successor, the Socialist Party in 1997.
Born in Birkenhead, Cheshire, one of six children of a sheet metal worker, Taaffe first joined the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, before joining the Labour Party where he was attracted to the radical element in the Liverpool Labour Party. In an interview for the BBC Radio 4 programme The Party's Over, Taaffe gave a few biographical details:
PT – "I come from a working-class background. It was an area of a high degree of poverty, and still is unfortunately.
"It is also a seaport with a very radical tradition. It has a distinct character. Marxism and Trotskyism, the Communist Party always had a strong base there.
"It was an area of low-paid workers, not a majority of really very high-paid like other areas. Manchester, for instance, in the north-west, was more high-paid.
"There was also a militant tradition, and I came into that tradition, first in my case, in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and then in the Labour Party. In the Labour Party I discovered radical, socialist, Marxist ideas and in the course of discussion and debate I accepted those ideas."
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