Marxists’ Internet Archive

Jim Higgins

1930 – 2002

Biography

Born into a working-class family in Harrow, Jim Higgins joined the Young Communist League at 14 and left school at 16. Two years later he was apprenticed to the Post Office as a telecommunications engineer. After National Service in the early 1950s, he became active in both the Communist Party and the Post Office Engineering Union. He broke with the CP in 1956 following Khrushchev’s “secret speech” and the Soviet invasion of Hungary. Higgins read Trotsky voraciously, and joined a small group – Socialist Labour League – and then the Socialist Review Group which became the International Socialists.

By the 1960s he was a POEU branch secretary and was elected to the union’s national executive, but he gave up his union work to become IS’s full-time national secretary in the early 1970s. IS grew rapidly in the later 1960s and early 70s but in a burst of internal quarrels in the period 1973-76 he was forced out of the organisation and then built a new life as a journalist. He remained active as a writer and speaker at left wing meetings up until his death.

Works:

Spring 1961	Dead Scrolls? (book review)
Autumn 1963	Ten Years for the Locust
May 1964	A Weekend with the Lumpentrots
Summer 1965	Mike Kidron (letter)
Winter 1965/66	Harry Wasn’t (book review)
Spring 1966	[White-collar workers]
Winter 1966/67	Luxemburg and Lenin
Spring 1967	Is Almond a Nut? (book review)
Autumn 1967	1917: Lenin and the Working Class
March 1968	A Day with the Leadership
March 1969	Rosa Luxemburg & Karl Liebknecht – For them there was only one nation – the working class
March 1969	Workers’ power or jobs for the boys?
April 1969	Morning Star (book review)
October 1969	The Origins of the Communist Party (extended book review)
April 1970	Lenin (pamphlet)
November 1970	The Minority Movement
February 1971	Revolutionary Trade Unionism
April 1971	Revolutionary Trade Unionism - Part II
October 1971	Sectarianism, Centrism and the I.S. Group
March 1972	Marxism and Terrorism (with Duncan Hallas)
May 1972	Setting the Record Straight
December 1972	Natalia Trotsky and the Fourth International (book review)
January 1973	The Assassination of Trotsky (book review)
January 1973	Trotsky: a documentary (book review) (as Robert James)
July 1973	Why did you join the party? (as Robert James)
December 1973	Zionism
April 1974	Rank and file movement: the first links are forged (with Paul Foot)
February 1975	R.P. Dutt: Stalin’s British mouthpiece (obituary)
July 1975	Now Let Us Praise Leon Trotsky (extended book review)
6 Sept. 1975	The deluge after Blackpool
27 Sept. 1975	AUEW: Decline of a union
18 Oct. 1975	Trade unions: Democracy at the Top
8 Nov. 1975	Clive Jenkins: Tomorrow the world
15 Nov. 1975	Equity: Lets Play Trade Unions
22 Nov. 1975	Communist congress: Pale-pink Reds
29 Nov. 1975	AUEW election
13 Dec. 1975	TUC Running Scared
17 Jan. 1976	The unions: Out of molehills
24 Jan. 1976	Transport: Art for BR’s sake
14 Feb. 1976	The lessons of Linwood (book review)
April 1976	Hagiography or History (review article)
April 1976	It’s time to give left-wing democracy the deodorant treatment
3 April 1976	Doon in Troon
10 April 1976	The year of Scanlon?
24 April 1976	Good soldiers?
8 May 1976	Are Journalists Often Red?
29 May 1976	Amalgamating the engineers
19 June 1976	Bristol fashion
August 1976	Too much Cogitation is bad for Monty’s eyesight
September 1976	TUC leaders back Labour – at our expense
18 Sept. 1976	Seamen back from the brink
12 Nov. 1977	Breakthrough for the Trots?
9 Nov. 1985	The Fall of the Mekon
1993	1956 and All That
July 1993	From Gangrene ... to the Danger of Amputation
1994	What Is To Be Done With Lenin?
Spring 1995	Max Shachtman and His Left (book review)
Winter 1995/96	The Prophet’s Children (book review)
Summer 1996	The Ideas of Leon Trotsky (book review)
July 1996	A secular-democratic state
1997	More Years for the Locust (book)
1997	Trotskyism in the United States (book review)
1998	The arrogance of the long distance Zionist
1999	The Fate of the Russian Revolution (book review)
1999	The Locusts, Cankerworms, Caterpillars and Palmerworms Will Get You If You Don’t Watch Out
2000	A World To Win (book review)
2002	The Asturian Uprising & the Warsaw Commune (book review)
2002	How Not to Hammer Hitchens (letter)
2002	Tony Cliff (letter)
2002	Trotskyist Bears and Working Class Stars
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