Trotskyism Lays Roots in Wales¶
Core Argument¶
In this report from Socialist Appeal (Vol. 7, No. 6), the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) presents the Neath by-election result as a landmark for revolutionary socialism in Britain. The core argument is that the 1,781 votes cast for the RCP candidate, J. Haston, represent a conscious break by an advanced section of the Welsh working class from reformism and class collaboration, and a demand for a fighting, revolutionary policy against capital. The vote is framed as a historic achievement, especially given the context of a “bitterest and most hysterical slander campaign” waged against the party.
The chapter draws a direct comparison with earlier left-wing electoral performances: Harry Pollitt’s 1,151 votes in Seaham Harbour in 1929 and 996 in Silvertown in 1940. Against these benchmarks, the Neath result is presented as an “encouragement and inspiration.” The full result—Labour 30,847, Plaid Cymru 6,290, RCP 1,781—is given without commentary on the Labour majority, the point being the qualitative significance of the revolutionary vote, not its size.
The narrative situates the campaign within the historical tradition of Keir Hardie, who two generations earlier had mobilised Welsh miners to break from capitalist politics and form an independent class party. The RCP claims to have re-enacted that mission on a “very much higher political plane,” arguing that Hardie’s party has since been captured by “careerists and job seekers” who have led the working class back into the arms of capitalism. The task of the RCP in Neath was to tear workers from Churchill’s embrace and reassert the class mission: the destruction of capitalism and the creation of communism.
Key principled issues raised in the campaign are listed: the war’s character as a war for profits, not democracy; the treachery of Labour leaders in entering a coalition government with the class enemy; unconditional independence for colonial peoples; and internationalist solidarity with the German working class, including German anti-fascists, in the face of a “tremendous press and newsreel campaign of race hatred.” The RCP’s polemic is directed simultaneously against the capitalist class, the Labour and Stalinist movements, and the chauvinist war propaganda that sought to suppress class solidarity across enemy lines. The chapter concludes that only the working class, having taken power, could wage a progressive war and make a peace in the interests of the world’s workers.