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:''See also the International Marxist Group (Germany) . The International Marxist Group (IMG) was a Trotskyist Political Party in Britain between 1964 and 1987 . It was the British Section of the USFI . ORIGINS The IMG emerged from the International Group, a sympathising organisation of the International Secretariat of the Fourth International (IS). Its founders, Pat Jordan and Ken Coates , had broken with the CPGB in Nottingham in 1956. They were briefly members of the Revolutionary Socialist League in the late 1950s: Jordan became organising secretary of the RSL. Eventually Jordan and his comrades founded the Internationalist Group which (like the RSL) affiliated to the IS. After the ISFI became part of the , including Charlie Van Gelderen . The Group played a major role in raising Vietnam solidarity at the 1965 Labour party conference. The 1965 World Congress of the USFI demoted the RSL to a "sympathising" group: the International Group was granted the same status. In the words of the RSL's Peter Taaffe "We decided that the time had arrived when we must turn our backs on this organisation." The RSL left the FI and continued on the road to becoming well known as the Militant Tendency . The International Group started the production of a cyclostyled bulletin known as ''The Week''. As it was engaged in Entrism inside the Labour Party, this journal gathered a mixed bag of sponsors including Bertrand Russell , whose Russell Tribunal employed two imported Canadian supporters of the FI, Ernie Tate and Pat Brain. In early 1968 , the International Group renamed itself as the International Marxist Group. INTERNATIONAL MARXIST GROUP The IMG's activists published ''International'', which was launched in May 1968 with IMG secretary Pat Jordan as editor and incorporated ''The Week''. The successive tactics taken by the IMG were reflected in the series of newspapers it supported: '' The Black Dwarf ''; ''Red Mole'', ''Red Weekly'', ''Socialist Challenge'' and ''Socialist Action''. The Black Dwarf ''The Black Dwarf'' was launched in May 1968 under was friendly to the organisation. While IMG members largely remained in the Labour party, including and Russell Tribunal , in which Ernie Tate was prominent and in which the RSL and Socialist Labour League did not work, the Institute For Workers' Control and the Revolutionary Socialist Students Front , in which Peter Gowan and Murray Smith were active. The agitational work of The Week was carried on in the ''The Black Dwarf'' and in ''Socialist Woman'', launched in 1969. The Group gained some public prominence when Tariq Ali, who had joined in April 1968, was widely publicised in the media as a leader of protests against the Vietnam War . After IMG became the British section of the , better known as the Chartists. The IMG was quickly noted for its energetic support for international solidarity campaigns concerning Vietnam, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, South Africa, and its support for socialists facing repression in France, Boliva and Mexico, support for which was organised through the ''Black Dwarf''. ''International'''s May 1969 famous headline ". In domestic politics the early 1970s saw the IMG completely reject parliamentary politics. In 1970, the group used the general election as an opportunity to make revolutionary propaganda rather than canvassing for the return of a Labour government. Red Mole In March 1970, ''The Black Dwarf'''s editorial board split over questions of , and Quintin Hoare were on its editorial board for much of the 1970s and subsequently. Because ''Red Mole'' was used by the IMG as its main organ, articles were sometimes mistakenly though to indicate the positions of the IMG. For example, there was confusion after Robin Blackburn had written an April 1970 article titled "Let it bleed" for ''Red Mole'', in which he argued that marxists should disrupt the campaigns of the Labour and Tory parties in the 1970 General Election. IMG secretary Pat Jordan replied a month later to explain why the IMG favoured a Labour vistory. The group's general orientation at that time was summarised by Ali's book, ''The Coming British Revolution'' (ISBN 0-2240-0630-4). By September 1970, Red Circles had been set up to organise activists who supported the paper. Many went on to join the IMG. The IMG radicalised as it grew: Pat Jordan's leadership gave way to that of John Ross, who anticipated that the rising tide of class struggle could lead to a pre-revolutionary crisis in Britain. In August 1972, the IMG formally assumed control of the ''Red Mole'' and prepared to relaunch it as a weekly newspaper. Red Weekly In May 1973, the fortnighly '' Red Mole '' was replaced by ''Red Weekly''. ''International'''s editors and editorial board included many of the organisation's leaders, including Tariq Ali, Patrick Camiller, Ann Clafferty, Gus Fagan, Peter Gowan, Quintin Hoare, Michelle Lee, Bob Pennington, John Ross , Tony Whelan and Judith White. During the 1970s the organisation developed a number of fluid, competing factions and tendencies. The United Secretariat prepared theses on the situation in Britain and the tasks of the IMG in 1973, and again in 1976, to help orient the organisation. The IMG to the public attention in 1974 during Lord Justice Scarman's Public Judicial Inquiry into the violent disturbances at Conway Hall , in London's Red Lion Square , which led to a fatality. Scarman found that the IMG had made a "vicious, violent and unprovoked attack on the Police" who were guarding Conway Hall to try and prevent access to the hall by the National Front who had booked it for a meeting to protest against the Labour Government's decision to grant an amnesty to illegal immigrants. However by the time of the 1976 USFI World Congress internal disputes were becoming more difficult to reconcile as divisions became entrenched between supporters of the International Majority Tendency, led by Ernest Mandel , and the Leninist Trotskyist Faction, which was led by the Socialist Workers Party (US) . Despite a 'truce' reflected by the establishment of ''Socialist Challenge'', these divisions would result in the permanent splintering of the IMG's successor organisation, the Socialist League. During this period, the small Marxist Worker group also joined the IMG. This vigorous internal life did not impede its growth among students and workers. The IMG's grow was reflected when it established Red Books as its publishing house and bookshop. By 1977, when a new leadership team around Tariq Ali had started the organisation on the road towards ''Socialist Challenge'', both ''International'' and ''Socialist Woman'' were well-produced quarterly journals. Socialist Challenge In June 1977, ''Socialist Challenge'' replaced ''Red Weekly''. It raised two slogans.
In the 1979 the IMG grew to its highpoint of 758 members in good standing, and a total of 1,000 supporters. In 1980, Tony Benn 's campaign led the IMG to increase its focus on the Labour party. It developed a 'combination tactic' in which its fraction of members in the Labour party was boosted. By 1981 the IMG-organised youth organisation called Revolution Youth, organised its magazine ''Revolution'', had entered the Labour Party Young Socialists in order to build it and won it to the IMG's politics. The IMG was soon to send a second wave of members into the Labour party, leading it to merge in 1982 with the League For Socialist Action , a small group of USFI members that had been engaged in entrism in the Labour party for at least five years. Initially, IMG members in the Labour party continued to sell ''Socalist Challenge''. They used it to argue that the Bennite left needed to organise together with the trade union left. IMG members supported the formation of Bennite organisations such as Labour Briefing and the Labour Committee on Ireland. In mid-1982 started to discuss whether to announce that the IMG was dissolved in order to better facilitate its entry. Socialist Action In December 1982 , the IMG renamed itself as the Socialist League . The group had fully entered the Labour Party and began publishing the '' Socialist Action '' newspaper, by which name the League was often known. Despite initial successes, Socialist Action was established at a time when the Bennite movement has started to suffer defeats. In 1983, the group's membership fell to around 700. Different tendencies developed in the organisation over how to relate to the political evolution of figures like Ken Livingstone and Arthur Scargill . At the same time, the Socialist Workers Party in the US, which influenced many of the group's members, started to withdraw from the International. This opened up the most bitter internal political struggle in the group's history. Under the pressures of the defeat of the 1984-1985 miners strike, the group fragmented into three organisations.
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