Ali, Tariq (1943– )

British political activist and writer. He was born in Lahore (then part of British India, now in Pakistan) and came to the UK in 1963 to study at Oxford University. A prominent revolutionary in the 1960s, Ali was particularly associated with the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign and student radicalism. He was a member of the (Trotskyist) International Marxist Group, editor of the radical publications Black Dwarf and Red Mole, and later joined the editorial board of New Left Review. His application for membership of the Labour Party was rejected in 1983.

His many publications include The Coming British Revolution (1972), Can Pakistan Survive? (1983), The Nehrus and the Gandhis (1985), and Street Fighting Years: An Autobiography of the Sixties (1987). Ali has also published novels and worked as a television producer, notably on Channel Four's Bandung File. In 1998 he wrote (and co-produced) Ugly Rumours, a play satirizing the Blair government.