Jock Haston

From Ffaith

On the 15th May 1945 Jock Haston, general secretary of the Revolutionary Communist Party became the first Trotskyist candidate to stand for election to Parliament at a Neath by-election. Haston, despite the RCP lacking a Neath branch, polled 1,781 votes against an excess of 30,000 votes for the Labour party.

Haston was born in Edinburgh in 1913 and went to sea at the age of 15. Originally a Communist, he left the Party in 1936 and became a Trotskyist. Thereafter Haston was involved with a number of groups, primarily the Revolutionary Socialist League and the Workers' International League, which merged in 1944 to become the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP). Following the demise of the RCP in 1949, Haston joined the Labour Party. He died in 1986.