30-04-2025
Peter Taaffe obituary: old-school Labour agitator
Peter Taaffe believed that Margaret Thatcher was the best thing that ever happened to socialism.
Thrusting forward and glaring out from thick-lensed spectacles, the co-founder and leader of the Trotskyite Militant Tendency predicted in 1986 that her dismantling of one-nation Toryism would 'lay bare the realities of the class society' and prompt a 'purist workers' revolution'.
When Thatcher announced plans to introduce a poll tax of British adults, the Birkenhead-born revolutionary thought his time had come. He called for nationwide non-payment of the tax, organised workers' 'bill strikes' and was a key agitator of the poll tax riots in May 1990 that contributed to her downfall as prime minister five months later and the replacement of the poll tax with council tax. Taaffe declared: 'With
