SUSPENSION UPDATE The Continuing Adventures of Operation Ice Pick

Further to this story, I have today learned that my 'administrative suspension' as an overseas member of the British Labour Party has come about as a result of a frivolous complaint made my someone who was, it's clear, rather irked by three poems I shared on Twitter during the first few days of the attempted coup against Jeremy Corbyn in the immediate aftermath of the Brexit vote. 

The poems in question are Premature Elegy for Hilary Benn, The Ghost of Miniscule John Mann, and On Your Unsuitability for High Office. They can been read here, just scroll down and you'll find them.

They're sensitive souls at Labour Party HQ, and I am happy to admit that they have much to teach me about the need for me to be more subtle in the metaphors I use. 

Labour Party General Secretary, Iain McNicols, who has had an interesting day himself today, has appointed Sam Matthews of the Party's 'Disputes and Discipline' department to be investigating officer in my case. 

Just to be clear, that is not Iain McNicols pictured above holding the ice pick which killed Leon Trotsky. Mr McNicols is in fact pictured below. 

I look forward to discussing the subtleties of metaphor with Mr Matthews. 

P.S. Does anyone know of any expensive hotels in the central London area? Preferably one that has stuffed grape leaves and beetroot tapenade on the menu. I am presuming that I will have to travel to London for my metaphorical discussion with the good people of UK Labour Party HQ and that Iain McNicols will be paying my hotel bill.

Poet suspended for satire. Censorship; paranoia; witch hunts - the Labour Party is bringing itself into disrepute... https://t.co/EYVxalHlJL

— Pete Sinclair (@pete_sinclair) August 7, 2016

'Labour Party kills satire.' Poet Kevin Higgins suspended from party for writing satirical poem. https://t.co/eecowjuPrg #JezWeCanAgain

— Dr. Chris Jones (@dr_chris_jones) July 21, 2016

The poem UK Labour HQ doesn't like. What's wrong with it? Oh yes of course - it supports Corbyn #freedomofspeech https://t.co/2omRd48Kd5

— Greenwich Momentum (@MomentumGrw) August 7, 2016

Where do we sign up for the "Kevin Higgins for poet laureate" campaign? https://t.co/4UG3E8N0tW

— OffGuardian (@OffGuardian0) July 21, 2016

Kevin Higgins gets his bum spanked by the Labour Party. https://t.co/Zg60J3Pbys

— June Caldwell (@junecaldwell) August 7, 2016

An open-letter to former Labour member of Galway City Council Nuala Nolan: challenge to publicly debate the issues

An open-letter to Nuala Nolan, (former Labour member of Galway City Council)

Dear Nuala,

You have made a public statement (via your Facebook page) which in my view in effect advocates less spending on the Arts, particularly in the context of hospitals where Arts and Health initiatives have been increasingly popular. You have gone further in additional comments on your own Facebook post and clearly said that you think that money which should have been spent on patients' treatment, is being spent on the arts.

A huge amount of good work has been done in the Arts and Health area with, on the scale of things, very little money. I have considerable experience of this myself, having work as Writer-in-Residence with Galway University Hospitals Arts Trust since 2007.

I think a full public debate of these issues would be beneficial.

I would be willing to publicly debate this and all related issues with you at a time and location that suited you. Interested members of the public would be invited to attend and ask questions. I am sure that we could between us find a neutral chairperson.

I very much hope that you will take up my invitation to publicly debate these issues.

Sincerely,

Kevin Higgins 

Post by Nuala Nolan.

Clare Daly and the true meaning of the word 'comrade'

with Clare Daly at the Dublin launch of my book Mentioning the War: Essays & Reviews (1999-2011)

http://www.irishleftreview.org/2012/06/12/speech-clare-daly-td-dublin-launch-kevin-higgins-mentioning-war/

Clare Daly has been much in the news over the past twenty four hours following her resignation from the Socialist Party. No doubt today's newspapers will have more.

I first met Clare in 1988 at a Labour Youth conference in Liberty Hall. She had become a supporter of Militant in Newbridge a couple of years previously and I'd been involved in Galway for the previous six years. At that conference Clare was elected to the Administrative Council [National Executive] of the Labour Party. The following year she was expelled from the Labour Party in Dick Spring's anti-Militant purge. I was similarly expelled from the British Labour Party a couple of years later.

I first really got to know Clare when I returned to Galway in 1991 after three years in London. Often times I stayed with her when I was up in Dublin for meetings which were so important I've got no memory at all what most of them were about. I left what we used to call the 'organisation' in 1994 but always retained huge respect for Clare. She is 100% principled and 100% human. A million miles from the caricatures of socialists which are all too often close to the mark.

The Socialist Party's statement about her resignation, which sparked off the media storm yesterday, is an absolute disgrace. But it is no surprise.

There are two types of people in organisations like the Socialist Party. There are those who would stand in front of an oncoming tank in defence of someone smaller than themselves. And then there are those dull little people for whom Trotskyist politics is less about changing anything than it is about finding a place to hide. They are the type who love committee meetings held on a Sunday and whose feeling of political purity tends to be dependent on their ability to find some ex-comrade to denounce.

Later today the Socialist Party is holding a press conference about Clare's resignation. It's likely that all their public representatives will line up to put the Party spin on her departure from their ranks after 26 years. Their faces will be a picture of earnestness. The one thing you can be sure of is that, whatever they say, you shouldn't believe a word of it.

One or two of their public representatives will probably be there only because if they were to refuse they would soon enough be on the receiving end of the sort of statement the Socialist Party issued against Clare yesterday.

Clare was never a Party hack in that way. She's the sort of person who'd speak up for you when there was no one else left to speak up, which of course is precisely why she is such a brilliant public representative. Long may she continue.