Jim Higgins

[John Paramo <albatrosrojo2000@xxxxxxxxx>]

FYI: I read this in another list.

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From:  "prianikoff" <xnichols@xxxx> 
Date:  Sun Oct 13, 2002  3:56 pm
Subject:  Re: Jim Higgins

I feel grievously saddened to hear news of the death
of Jim Higgins 
today, coming as it does so soon after the death of
Duncan Hallas. 
Jim was one of the great characters on the left in
Britain.

Although he came from an earlier generation of
socialists, I knew Jim 
reasonably well in the mid 70's, both in the I.S and
as a member of 
the International Socialist Alliance (later the
Workers League). 
Jim was a member of my I.S. branch, along with other
stalwarts from 
the Post Office Engineering Union. 

Jim's formative experiences on the left were during
the 2nd World 
War, when he sympathised with the CPGB's line,
famously daubing the 
slogan "Open the Second Front" on the walls of the
Inner Quad of the 
local grammar school. On leaving school, Jim joined
the Post Office 
Engineering department as an apprentice and worked on
the Heavy 
Overhead Gang. He also joined the Post Office
Engineering Union and 
the CPGB.
He was conscripted into the army in 1949 and served in
Hong-Kong as a 
signalman, where he continued to receive CP
literature, at the end of 
his service joining the Engineering No.2 branch of the
Communist 
Party.
In 1956, following the Hungarian uprising, Jim by now
a CPGB branch 
secretary, resigned from the Party and joined Wembley
Labour Party, 
where he found many of the members were ex-CP'ers.
He also came into contact with Trotskyists such as Len
and Freda 
Knight and Cyril Smith and began reading Trotsky for
the first time. 
These contacts led him into Healy's SLL, where he
remained until 1959.

It's hard to imagine Jim being confined within the
rigid framework of 
Healy's organisation, although at the time Healy was
in his least 
sectarian mode and anxious to win over Labour lefts.
After Peter 
Fryer began to question the internal regime and was
given short 
shrift, Jim joined a group of 20 SLL members called
the "Stamford 
Faction", which included Peter Cadogan. Jim was
expelled from the SLL 
for his noisy intervention at the SLL's National
Assembly of Labour 
and through Cadogan, met Tony Cliff and Mike Kidron,
soon joining the 
Socialist Review Group. 

By 1973, Jim reached his political pinnacle as
National Secretary of 
the International Socialists, forerunner of today's
SWP. He was 
thus centrally placed during the great wave of
industrial militancy 
of the early 70's, when IS launched its network of
rank and file 
papers, including "The Collier", "Dock Worker",
"Platfom", "Hospital 
Worker", "Rank & File Teacher", "Car Worker" and many
others. 
In some cases IS managed to connect with the emerging
layer of 
industrial militants very successfully. 
When the Pentonville 5 were arrested, I.S turned its
print-shop over 
to the Dockers' leaders and distributed thousands of
leaflets calling 
for a General Strike to "Free the 5". Hundreds of
dockers turned up 
to victory rally in Stratford Town Hall. The paid
circulation 
of "Socialist Worker" at the time was 28,000 and its
estimated 
readership 50,000.

By 1974, Cliff, immersed in his biography of Lenin,
made a 180 degree 
turn away from the class, arguing that the Shop
stewards were 
now "bent" and orienting towards unorganised youth. He
also began 
the process of encroaching on the independence of the
Rank and File 
papers and winding them down. 
Duncan Hallas, Jim Higgins and Roger Protz, the editor
of "Socialist 
Worker" resisted this ultra-left turn and the latter
two were sacked 
from the paper, while Hallas recanted.
Jim & the I.S.O continued to defend the independence
of the R&F 
movement and an orientation towards building in the
unions. One of 
the central issues became work in the Engineering
union Broad Left in 
Birmingham, where a layer of Car workers supported the
Opposition. 
The expulsion of the I.S.O wasn't long in coming. Jim
was genuinely 
hurt by Cliff's capricious treatment of him, but was
never personally 
vindictive towards Cliff , recognising his attractive
human 
qualities. 
He continued to rate him in the "top quartile of the
Endsleigh 
League" of Trotskyist leaders, along with Ernest
Mandel and James 
Cannon. (he places Healy in the Beezer Home Freezer
League)
Jim's hilarious anectdotal autobiography "More Years
for the Locust" 
fills in a lot of detail on the events of the 1970's.
As a writer, 
Jim was one of the best on the left and it is to be
hoped that there 
is a hidden treasure trove of his material yet to be
published.

Politically, he could be faulted for a number of
things: He had no 
friends amongst the Matgamnites or Left Faction
(Workers Power), both 
of which, as Cliff's right hand man, he helped drive
out of the I.S. 
The residual heat of this animosity endured, rather
like the bottom 
of the crater on Mount Vesuvius. Jim titled one reply
to a dispute 
with 'Workers Liberty', "Sean MaxShactmana"

Jim could also be faulted for not holding together the
organisation 
he was forced to create, or at least leading it into a
principled 
fusion with another one. This is down to a number of
things: -
He suffered quite a personal blow from giving up his
job, then losing 
the National Secretary position in I.S. For a while,
he started to 
become cynical and do questionable things. At one
point he worked 
for the Libyan financed magazine "Events" as a
journalist. His 
marriage also broke up and he became provocatively
"politically 
incorrect", which began to annoy quite a few women
comrades. (This is 
not the time or place to recount some of Jim's choicer
comments) He 
was an unreconstructed workerist in that sense,
although I've heard a 
lot worse from some of the people he actually worked
with.

I didn't keep in touch with Jim in later years and
can't fill in 
anything on the later years of his life in Norfolk.
But his writing 
shows that he continued to evolve politically and
certainly remained 
a Marxist, if a little disillusioned by his
experiences with those 
who claimed to be "new Lenins".

I like to remember him as he was in the early 70's: A
burly man, 
always in a button-up leather jacket. A mop of greying
brown 
hair.and bushy sideboards framing his black glasses
and jowly face. 
A deep resonating voice, that often broke into
laughter.: humour 
being his most effective political weapon.
Like most people actively involved in Socialist
politics, the total 
opposite of the mythical sectarian robot of
reactionary fantasy.

He'll be deeply missed by many and I hope commemorated
in public soon. 


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