Jim Higgins (2 December 1930 – 13 October 2002) was a British

revolutionary socialist Revolutionary socialism is a political philosophy, doctrine, and tradition within socialism that stresses the idea that a social revolution is necessary to bring about structural changes in society. More specifically, it is the view that revoluti ...

and leading member of the International Socialists.

Biography

Born into a working-class family in Harrow, London, Higgins joined the Young Communist League at 14. Age eighteen, he was apprenticed to the

Post Office A post office is a public facility and a retailer that provides mail services, such as accepting letters and parcels, providing post office boxes, and selling postage stamps, packaging, and stationery. Post offices may offer additional serv ...

as a telecommunications engineer. After

National Service National service is the system of voluntary government service, usually military service. Conscription is mandatory national service. The term ''national service'' comes from the United Kingdom's National Service (Armed Forces) Act 1939. The l ...

in the early 1950s, he became active in both the

Communist Party of Great Britain The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) was the largest communist organisation in Britain and was founded in 1920 through a merger of several smaller Marxist groups. Many miners joined the CPGB in the 1926 general strike. In 1930, the CPG ...

and the

Post Office Engineering Union The Post Office Engineering Union (POEU) was a trade union in the United Kingdom. It represented engineering staff in the Post Office, mostly working in telecommunications. History The union was founded in 1915 when the Post Office Enginee ...

. He left the Communist Party after

Nikita Khrushchev Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (– 11 September 1971) was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and chairman of the country's Council of Ministers from 1958 to 1964. During his rule, Khrushchev s ...

's 1956 secret speech and the

Soviet invasion of Hungary The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 (23 October – 10 November 1956; hu, 1956-os forradalom), also known as the Hungarian Uprising, was a countrywide revolution against the government of the Hungarian People's Republic (1949–1989) and the Hunga ...

. Higgins instead joined the

Trotskyist Trotskyism is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Ukrainian-Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and some other members of the Left Opposition and Fourth International. Trotsky self-identified as an orthodox Marxist, a rev ...

Socialist Labour League The Workers Revolutionary Party is a Trotskyist group in Britain once led by Gerry Healy. In the mid-1980s, it split into several smaller groups, one of which retains possession of the name. The Club The WRP grew out of the faction Gerry Healy ...

, soon leaving to join the

Socialist Review Group The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) is a far-left political party in the United Kingdom. Founded as the Socialist Review Group by supporters of Tony Cliff in 1950, it became the International Socialists in 1962 and the SWP in 1977. The party con ...

which became the International Socialists (IS), and becoming the group's Secretary. By the 1960s, Higgins 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. In a burst of internal quarrels in the period 1973-76 he left the organisation. He was a founder member of the Workers League, but this organisation soon broke apart. Instead, he built a new life as a journalist, later moving into magazine

design A design is a plan or specification for the construction of an object or system or for the implementation of an activity or process or the result of that plan or specification in the form of a prototype, product, or process. The verb ''to design'' ...

. He remained active as a writer and speaker at left wing meetings up until his death and in 1997 published a memoir, ''More Years for the Locust''. Papers left by Higgins and Al Richardson have been deposited with Senate House Library, University of London.Al Richardson / Jim Higgins papers
University of London

Selected publications

*''Lenin'' ( Socialist Worker pamphlet) April 1970 *''More Years for the Locust'' IS Group, London, 1997

References

External links

Marxists' Internet Archive, articles by Jim Higgins
1930 births 2002 deaths British male journalists British trade unionists British Trotskyists People from Harrow, London Communist Party of Great Britain members Socialist Workers Party (UK) members Workers Revolutionary Party (UK) members British political party founders {{UK-trade-unionist-bio-stub