1. Peter James Taaffe was a British Trotskyist political activist.
15 Facts About Peter Taaffe
1. 2.
Peter Taaffe was born in Birkenhead, Cheshire on 7 April 1942.
3.
Peter Taaffe became involved in leftist politics as a teenager, joining the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in the late 1950s.
4.
Peter Taaffe rose through the ranks of the Walton branch of the Labour Party Young Socialists, the youth wing of the Labour Party, and began to write for Socialist Fight, a newspaper that served as the forerunner of Militant.
5.
Peter Taaffe was one of the co-founders of Militant, a Trotskyist newspaper that served as a platform for Marxist politics within the Labour Party.
6.
In what he later described as "a major tactical error", Peter Taaffe encouraged the council to issue ninety-day redundancy notices to council employees as a stalling tactic.
7.
Peter Taaffe blamed Kinnock for "initiating a vicious witch-hunt against Militant" and laying the ground for the party's rightwards shift under Tony Blair.
8.
Peter Taaffe campaigned for the abolition of the poll tax, an unpopular system of flat taxation introduced by Thatcher in 1988.
9.
In contrast to Kinnock, who ruled out a non-payment campaign at the 1988 Labour Party Conference, Peter Taaffe encouraged members of the public to refuse to pay the poll tax.
10.
The public's mobilisation against the poll tax, of which Peter Taaffe played a major role in organising, has been cited as a pivotal moment in the collapse of Thatcher's premiership in 1990.
11.
Peter Taaffe's faction accused members of the Irish Socialist Party of capitulating to identity politics at the expense of forming links with trade unions and members of the working class.
12.
Peter Taaffe remained on the executive committee as Political Secretary until his death.
13.
Peter Taaffe was staunchly opposed to the election of Keir Starmer as Labour Leader.
14.
On 23 April 2025, Peter Taaffe died aged 83 after an extended period of poor health.
15.
Peter Taaffe worked as a primary school teacher, and was heavily involved in a Trotskyist faction of the National Union of Teachers.