http://libcom.org/forums/news/were-m...hobic-31012006 I'm a critical supporter of the CWI, and I'm interested in seeing how CWI and Socialist Party members would respond to this.
As with many other urban myths about the CWI, this one raises its head occasionally. The issue was not about homophobia - it was about the antics of the gay rights movement of the late 1970's/early 1980's. Ted Grant was most certainly dismissive of the gay rights movement at this time - and yes - he did briefly come out with some off the wall 'theoretical' arguments that no one in the Militant took a blind bit of notice of. I think the issue really stemmed from the 1983 Bermondsey by-election. At the time the Militant Tendency controlled the Bermondsey Constituency Labour Party. Instead of selecting a Militant member to run as the candidate in the by-election, the Militant backed Thatchell. Thatchell was subjected to one of the most vile and vicious homophobic election campaigns ever seen in Britain - most of it stemming from the Liberal candidate Simon Hughes (who was elected and then outed by the Sun in 2006). But the mistake in backing Thatchell was not because of his sexual orientation - but the fact that he made an absolute bags of the campaign. He caved into the LP leadership (going so far as to dump all the election literature that had been printed in the Militants offices under orders from Foot and Healey) and initially tried to hide any mention of his sexuality. Then when it became an issue he allowed it to completely take over the campaign and facilitated the involvement of a new and previously uninvolved layer of middle-class yuppie gay rights activists who adopted a tunnel vision on what the campaign should have been about. This allowed the Tories, Liberals and the renegade LP candidates to focus solely on the issue Thatchell's sexuality and ignore the real issues in the by-election. Grant, and a lot of other people involved in the Militant at the time, were more than a little annoyed at how Thatchell and the gay rights movement at the time (who are absolutely nothing like the LGBT groups today) handed the election victory to Hughes and the Liberals (and in reality the Tories). Thatchell then went on to claim that the Militant only had a handful of members in Bermondsey. The LP shut down Bermondsey LP which facilitated Hughes holding the seat in the subsequent general election. Yet in 1987 the LP candidate was a member of Militant, John Bryan, who almost won back the seat with a swing of 5% from the 1983 general election and received double the vote Thatchell got. In the same 1987 election Militants Pat Wall won in Bradford North with a 12% swing, Dave Nellist retained his seat in Coventry South-East with a swing of over 6% and Terry Fields retained in Liverpool Broadgreen with a swing of 8%.This was Thatcher's third win and the four Militant candidates (and those from Liverpool where the Militant controlled the council) polled among the highest swings to the LP in the entire country - results if they had been replicated elsewhere would have seen Thatcher unceremoniously dumped out on her rear end.
yer i've been wondering about this too mate thanks for clearing this up
