Comrade Haston’s case¶
Core Argument¶
Here, Comrade Haston seizes the platform not as a guest of the Communist Party, but as its antagonist, having forced the debate through the exposure of Stalinist bankruptcy. The core argument is that the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) has abandoned Marxism for a counter-revolutionary Stalinist programme, and that only the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) represents the genuine interests of the working class. Haston’s speech is a polemical demolition of the CPGB’s record, using its own history and leaders’ statements as evidence.
Haston’s key claims are structured around three betrayals. First, the Moscow Trials: he highlights the CPGB’s refusal to allow independent socialist lawyers to defend the accused, implying the trials were a judicial farce, not a defence of socialism. Second, the CPGB’s zigzagging on fascism: he quotes William Gallacher’s demand for peace with Hitler during the Nazi-Soviet Pact period and recalls the Stalinist “Third Period” when the CPGB denounced Labour and trade unions as “fascist organisations” while forming a united front with Hitler against the German Social Democrats in the 1931 Prussian referendum. This is contrasted with the Trotskyists’ expulsion from the CPGB in 1932 for advocating a united front against fascism. Third, the degeneration of the Soviet Union: Haston cites Lenin’s warning in Soviets at Work that high salaries for managers were a “concession to capitalism,” and contrasts this with Stalin’s vast wage differentials—a Red Army soldier on 17.5 roubles a month versus a general on 2,000. He then quotes Ilya Ehrenburg’s chilling statement that German workers who overthrew Hitler would be “the first people we would shoot,” proving the Stalinist regime’s hostility to international working-class revolution.
The historical context is the Second World War and the run-up to the 1945 general election. Haston is arguing against the CPGB’s support for the Churchill coalition and its abandonment of class struggle. The polemic is directed squarely at the CPGB’s Alun Thomas and the Stalinist leadership, accusing them of slander rather than political argument. The chapter’s narrative thrust is a relentless indictment: the CPGB is not a communist party but a tool of the Soviet bureaucracy, and the RCP alone offers a revolutionary, internationalist alternative. The election is framed as a choice between capitulation to capital and genuine workers’ unity across national boundaries.