Alun Thomas’ case¶
Core Argument¶
Digest: Alun Thomas’ Case
Alun Thomas, speaking for the Communist Party, opens with a revealing concession: the CP does not normally debate Trotskyists, but the “politically backward” workers of Neath have been swayed by Jock Haston’s “demagogy,” forcing an exception. This framing immediately positions the debate not as a contest of equals but as a remedial intervention. Thomas’ core argument is that Trotskyism is indistinguishable from fascism, a claim he anchors in the Moscow Trials, which he insists “demonstrated conclusively” that Trotskyists are fascists. He notes the trials were attended by the international press, implying their verdicts were transparent and legitimate. Haston’s counter-claim that the trials were a frame-up is dismissed by association: “That was Hitler’s story; that was Rothermere’s story; and that is Haston’s story.”
Thomas draws on evidence from the Minneapolis trials, specifically James P. Cannon’s testimony, to ‘prove’ the Trotskyist position is anti-Soviet. He cites Cannon’s distinction between a political revolution in the USSR (which Trotskyists advocate) and a social revolution (which would change property forms). For Thomas, any call for political revolution in the Soviet Union is treasonous, especially during wartime.
The war dominates Thomas’ polemic. He contrasts the CP’s line—that the conflict is a “people’s war for liberation”—with Haston’s insistence that it remains an imperialist war. Thomas invokes the Red Army’s destruction of the fascist army under Marshal Stalin as proof of the war’s progressive character. Haston’s alleged attempts to call miners out on strike during invasion preparations are equated with Oswald Mosley’s policy: “both parts of one and the same policy.” Haston’s opposition to unconditional surrender and his claim that German workers are potential allies are met with scorn: “Hitler has created a nation of nincompoops and murderers.”
Thomas accuses Haston of looking at 1945 “through the glasses of 1918”—that is, mechanically applying Lenin’s wartime defeatism to a fundamentally different conjuncture. Marxism, Thomas insists, “is not a dogma”; policy must change with the facts. Fascism, he argues, has been destroyed in Europe; the immediate task is unity of all progressive forces, not premature socialist agitation. “Any talk about socialism is sheer tommy-rot” until fascism is crushed.
The closing polemic is brutal: Haston has “never said Hitler was wrong.” In Russia, fascism was defeated because “they shot all the Trotskyists and the fifth column scum.” Thomas adds, with chilling frankness: “if we had our way, these people on this platform would be shot.” The election, he concludes, offers workers a chance to “strike a blow at the fifth column” by voting for DJ Williams. The argument is not theoretical but punitive: Trotskyism is not a political tendency to be refuted but a malignancy to be eliminated.