3. Making Our Mark¶
Core Argument¶
Founded in March 1944 from a fusion of factions, the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) took its name in deliberate contrast to the Stalinist Communist Party. At its founding conference, positions on proletarian military policy, entrism, and industrial strategy were carried, opposed only by the ‘Left’ faction, which soon split. The Trotskyist Opposition dissolved, claiming no political differences, yet that same night Sherry Mangan held a secret faction meeting with Healy, Lawrence, Goffe, and Cooper, acting in concert with Cannon to plan the removal of the Haston-Grant leadership. Haston became general secretary, Grant political secretary; five-sixths of members were working class.
The RCP immediately intervened in major industrial struggles. In March 1944, 100,000 miners struck, followed by an apprentices’ strike on Tyneside against the Bevin ballot scheme. The RCP helped spread the strike nationally. The government used the 1927 Trades Disputes Act for the first time, raiding RCP branches and arresting leaders including Tearse, Lee, Keen, and Haston. The RCP established an Anti-Labour Laws Defence Committee, gaining support from ILP and Labour left MPs like Maxton and Bevan. The campaign raised thousands of pounds and extended the RCP’s trade union base. The arrested comrades were tried in camera; the jury found them guilty on only two counts. At the assizes, the single charge had multiplied to thirteen counts, including conspiracy. Haston received six months, Roy Tearse and Heaton Lee a year each, and Ann Keen was released after thirteen days. The convictions were quashed on appeal because the jury’s verdict was contradictory. While imprisoned, Haston studied law and argued that one could not act in furtherance of a strike before it had begun; the Appeal Court accepted this point, ruling the jury had been misdirected and dismissing the charges.
Following this victory, the RCP contested the Neath by-election in early 1945. The campaign built on support from miners’ lodges, using a programme to end the Coalition and advance a revolutionary alternative. Meetings grew from small gatherings to audiences of several hundred. The Communist Party’s slanders, including ‘A Vote for Haston is a Vote for Hitler’, failed. The RCP recruited around thirty new members, mostly young miners, and established a branch. A public debate with the CP organiser Alun Morgan saw the hall packed with 2,000 workers, and Haston decisively defeated him. The RCP polled 1,781 votes, a significant achievement for a revolutionary internationalist programme during wartime, especially given that polling day fell shortly after Victory in Europe Day. The campaign distributed over 100,000 leaflets, held 70 indoor meetings, and established branches in Neath, G-C-G, and Pontypridd, composed mainly of miners and steel workers. The party’s non-sectarian, mass-work approach contrasted with earlier Trotskyist groups.
The text argues that the Red Army’s defeat of Germany proved the superiority of a nationalised planned economy, claiming British and American forces were mere onlookers until the Red Army’s advance forced the 1944 invasion of France. Churchill’s cynical deal with Stalin divided Eastern Europe into spheres of influence, enabling British troops to suppress the Greek revolution in December 1944. The 1945 Labour landslide, with 48% of the vote, reflected a radicalised working class. The RCP’s Second Conference in August 1945 recognised this as the first wave of mass radicalisation. The party’s perspective of a post-war revolutionary wave, based on Trotsky’s prognosis, was falsified by events.
After 1945, the Trotskyist movement faced unforeseen developments: a post-war boom underwritten by the US Marshall Plan, not the predicted economic crisis. The RCP recognised this and revised its perspectives accordingly. The Fourth International’s leadership, however, refused to accept the war was over, denied the economic recovery, insisted Europe would see only military dictatorships, and wrongly claimed the USSR had emerged weakened. The RCP argued the opposite on each point. The International suppressed, distorted, or ignored the RCP’s positions. Cannon, Pablo, Frank, and Mandel are accused of lacking Trotsky’