Character of the election meetings¶
Core Argument¶
The chapter examines the contrasting character of election meetings during the by-election campaign, using the disparity in attendance, composition, and conduct to illustrate the political gulf between the reformist and revolutionary left. Despite the Labour Party deploying a parade of prominent figures — Jim Griffiths, D. Grenfell, Edith Summerskill, Ness Edwards, Arthur Horner, and others — their meetings were poorly attended and drew principally older workers. Questions were restricted and discussion forbidden. The Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), by contrast, held better-attended meetings, particularly in Neath and the mining villages of the Swansea Valley, where the overwhelming majority of those present were young workers. The RCP permitted lively questioning, interjections, and invited opponents onto the platform to argue their case, a confident and democratic procedure that stood in sharp contrast to the bureaucratic handling of Labour and Communist Party meetings.
At open-air meetings in Neath, hundreds gathered nightly, with discussions continuing into the small hours. Comrade Haston, the RCP candidate, was the only candidate who mixed freely among the workers, answering questions and expounding policy, which made a deep impression. Committee rooms were packed after each meeting with workers seeking information. At the pits, meetings with a loudspeaker van drew attentive audiences, and the campaign was discussed underground; at Cefn Coed pit, tubs came up chalked with “Up with Haston”. The chapter also recounts a polemical encounter at Pontardawe Cross, where Welsh Nationalist Kitchener Davies took the microphone to argue that Welsh workers did hard labour for low pay while English workers enjoyed higher wages. Haston countered by demonstrating that English workers suffered identical conditions, and drew a historical parallel with De Valera’s Irish nationalism, which had won worker and peasant support only to preside over catastrophic declines in living standards and mass emigration to Britain. Welsh nationalism, Haston argued, could find its true expression only in a socialist Britain.
The chapter’s core argument is that the RCP’s open, democratic, and youth-oriented meetings exposed the bureaucratic and sterile character of the Labour and Stalinist campaigns, winning genuine working-class engagement and respect. The evidence is drawn from direct observation of meeting sizes, audience composition, and the quality of political exchange. The polemic targets both Labour’s star-studded but lifeless campaigning and the Welsh Nationalists’ divisive, anti-English framing, counterposing a class-based internationalist alternative.