Woods was born into a working-class family in Swansea, South Wales and grew up in the Townhill and Penlan areas of the city. His family were communists; his mother and grandfather were members of the Communist Party. At the age of 16 he joined the Young Socialists and became a Marxist, becoming a supporter of the Trotskyist Militant tendency within the Labour Party. He studied Russian at Sussex University and later in Sofia and Moscow State University. Woods's work in Brighton for the Militant tendency established an important base of support at the university and in the town. He later moved back to south Wales, becoming the first regional full timer for the organisation. He, his wife, and two small daughters moved to Spain in the early 1970s where his well-known political stance placed him amongst those struggling against the Francoist Spain, where he worked to establish the Spanish section of the Committee for a Workers' International. Woods speaks several languages, including Italian, English, Spanish, French, German and Russian.
Split in Militant
In the early 1990s Woods and his mentor, Ted Grant, left the Militant tendency and its parent organization, the Committee for a Workers' International, over what they considered to be the ultraleft turn of this organisation when it decided to split from the Labour Party. The minority group led by Ted Grant also argued that a decline in emphasis on political education, as well as the development of a bureaucratic clique around Peter Taaffe was damaging Militant. Grant and Woods and their supporters internationally formed the Committee for a Marxist International in 1992, which was later to be known as the International Marxist Tendency, and remained active in the Labour Party. The British section of the IMT is known as Socialist Appeal.
Recent activities
Woods was the editor for some years of the Marxist journal Socialist Appeal, published in London. He is currently a leading theoretician in the IMT and editor of its website In Defence of Marxism. He writes on the current political situation in Venezuela and the tasks to be carried out by revolutionaries elsewhere. Woods has had meetings with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, and defends the idea that the Bolivarian Revolution is the germ of the world revolution. Woods also travels and supports other revolutionary processes in Pakistan, Bolivia, the Middle East and Cuba. He is a close friend of Trotsky's grandson Vsievolod Platonovich "Esteban" Volkov, who regards Woods' work as closest to Trotsky's theories. President Chavez publicly stated in a TV broadcast that he was reading Woods' book Reformism or Revolution "in great detail", which encouraged speculation that Woods was an advisor to the President. In 2010, Woods was subject to severe criticism, firstly by some Venezuelan newspapers and political parties in opposition to Chávez, like Primero Justicia, then by international conservative factions of the media, for an article he wrote on the IMT website. He wrote it after the latest Venezuelan general elections advocating to further radicalize the Bolivarian Revolution towards "the expropriation of the commanding heights of the economy". His reply to these attacks was given widespread attention in the Venezuelan media. In November 2012, Woods went on a speaking tour in both the United States and Canada. In November 2015, Woods detected "embryonic seeds of revolutionary developments" in the election of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour Party leader.
