Re: Jim Higgins (Reformatted)

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

John Paramo wrote:

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.


--

Louis Proyect
www.marxmail.org




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