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Core Argument¶
Chapter Digest: Letter from Jock Haston to the European Executive Committee (20 September 1945)¶
This chapter reproduces a letter from Jock Haston, General Secretary of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) in Britain, addressed to the European Executive Committee (EEC) of the Fourth International. Its core argument is a sustained defence of the RCP leadership against what Haston characterises as a factional, disruptive, and dishonest attack by Pierre Frank, a French Trotskyist émigré in Britain. The letter is a reply to a critical report Frank had sent to the EEC, which came into the RCP's possession accidentally via a courier.
Haston makes several key claims. First, he denies Frank's assertion that the RCP leadership withholds political documents from the membership, calling it a "plain and deliberate falsehood". He concedes that a factional report on France was withheld from publication, but justifies this on grounds of its falsity and factional spirit, and in the interests of French unification. Second, he refutes Frank's charge that the RCP's European resolution was a "veiled attack" on the EEC, demonstrating through dates of publication that the resolution was drafted and issued before the EEC's own resolution was available. This, Haston argues, exposes Frank's criticism as containing a "falsification". Third, he attacks Frank's political judgement, citing his earlier opposition to the slogan 'Labour to power!' and his advocacy of factory seizures during the fall of France, as well as his silence during the SWP discussion on the European question, where Frank "sat on the fence". Fourth, Haston raises a serious organisational complaint: Frank used a non-Trotskyist courier from the ILP, hostile to the RCP and the Fourth International, to transmit internal documents discussing RCP tactics in the ILP, risking exposure to "Trotsky-baiters".
The chapter draws on the immediate post-war context of the Fourth International's reconstruction, with the RCP having just held its National Conference and adopted resolutions on Europe. It references the EEC's January 1945 resolution, the SWP's internal debate on Europe (where Loris-Morrow's position was supported by the RCP majority), and the fusion in France. The polemic is directed squarely at Pierre Frank, but also implicitly at the EEC, whom Haston urges to judge Frank's conduct based on their own experience. Frank is portrayed as an "incorrigible organiser of factions on principle", whose methods belong to the past and threaten the building of the International. The letter concludes with a call for "healthy, honest and open collaboration" in the new period ahead.