[[Image:Alanwoodsconhugochavez.jpg?|thumb|left|250px|Alan Woods and Hugo Chávez in one of their many meetings together.]]

Early life

He was born into a working-class family with a strong Communist tradition. At the age of 16 he joined the Young Socialists and became a Marxist joining the Militant tendency within the Labour Party. He studied Russian at Sussex University and later in Sofia (Bulgaria) and at the Moscow State University (MGU). 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 Francisco Franco dictatorship. Woods speaks several languages, including Italian, English, Spanish, French, German and Russian.

The split in the Militant

In the early 1990s Woods and his mentor, Ted Grant, were expelled from 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 Labour. 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.

Recent activities

He was the editor for some years of the Marxist journal Socialist Appeal, published in London, which is now edited by Mick Brooks. Alongside Lal Khan, he is currently a leading theoretician in the International Marxist Tendency and editor of the website In Defence of Marxism.

His writings on the current revolution in Venezuela and the tasks to be carried out by revolutionaries elsewhere are followed around the world.

At the political level he has had meetings with Hugo Chávez repeatedly and defends the idea that the Bolivarian Revolution is the germ of the World Revolution, and he also travels and supports other revolutionary processes in Pakistan, Bolivia and Cuba.

Woods is a close friend of Trotsky's grandson Vsievolod Platonovich "Esteban" Volkov, who regards Woods' work as closest to Trotsky's theories.