Alan Woods

Alan Woods (born 23 October 1944) is a Trotskyist political theorist and author. He is one of the leading members of the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), as well as its British affiliate group Socialist Appeal. He is political editor of the IMT's In Defence of Marxism website. Woods was a leading supporter within the Militant tendency within the UK Labour Party and its parent group the Committee for a Workers' International until the early 1990s. A series of disagreements on tactics and theory led to the expulsion of Woods and Ted Grant from the tendency, who founded the Committee for a Marxist International (soon renamed International Marxist Tendency) in 1992. They continued with the policy of entryism into the Labour Party. Woods has been particularly vocal in his support for the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela, and repeatedly met with the socialist Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, leading to speculation he was a close political adviser.