My ongoing love affair with the Governance & Legal Unit

Some of you will be familiar with this story. Last year, just after the Brexit referendum, I was suspended as a member of the British Labour Party which I had joined as an overseas member during the summer of 2015. I was born in the UK and so was entitled to join the party, which I did to support Jeremy Corbyn.

It's pretty clear that the reason for my suspension was that I write the wrong kind of poem. The British Labour Party's Governance and Legal Unit are not alone in thinking I write the wrong kind of poem. Many other people also hate my poetry. Generally speaking, I take this as a compliment and am happy to wallow in the hostility of people such as them. I can think of nothing worse than being the favoured poet of people who in Ireland think water charges were a fab idea, in America think Hilary was preferrable to Bernie, or in the U.K. think the Labour Party should concentrate on trying to win the votes of aspiring estate agents in Leamington Spa. 

At the time of my suspention Left Futures ran a story about it, as did The Canary. 

You can read these here and here.    

 

Since last June I have inquired a number of times, via email, as to what the status of my suspension was. I received a ballot paper for the leadership and NEC elections last summer, but heard nothing more. 

Then, the week before last, I received an email from a Louise Withers Green of the Labour Party's very official sounding Governance and Legal Unit informing me that I was ineligible for party membership as I had announced my intention to run as an Independent candidate for Mauchline Ward on East Ayrshire District Council. Ms Withers Green appeared to be operating under the misapprehension that I was a Mr David Shaw which I am not, and as far as I know, have never been. 

I immediately emailed Ms Withers Green back saying that this was all very interesting but, as the man once said to Inspector Clouseau, "that is not my dog." I had never been to East Ayrshire and had no idea how to get there.

Then the real fun began. Ms Withers Green emailed me back the following morning saying that the earlier email had been sent to me in error, attaching the following letter.

The evidence, which was also attached to Ms Louise Withers Green's email,  included the following items.

My personal favourite

It's not clear to me how posting a link to a satirical item about the impending victory of communism to a Facebook group dedicated to supporting the Latin Mass is relevant to my membership of the British Labour Party. But there you go. These are strange days at the Labour Party Legal and Governance Unit. More generally it is clear that someone has been complaining to Labour Party Headquarters that I have been publishing the wrong kind of poems in the wrong kind of publications and then sharing links to these poems in the wrong kind of Facebook groups.

Of course none of this is really Ms Louise Withers Green's fault. It's the fault of the person who, ultimately, operates her, Labour Party General Secretary Ian McNichol, pictured below on a recent Labour Friends of Israel trip to Tel Aviv.

Ian is the dude in the middle with more hair than the other two.

But the story isn't over yet. Just when I thought it couldn't get sillier it did. 

Half an hour later the beleagured Ms Withers Green emailed me again to say that this letter (and the attached 15 pieces of evidence) had also been sent to me by mistake. It was, she said, an "administrative error" and I should ignore the whole thing.

Later that day I sent a data protection request asking to see ALL the documentation British Labour Party HQ has relating to me; it's clearly quite a file. I have heard nothing more so far.

There is one simple way the boys and the girls of the Labour Party's Legal and Governance Unit can solve at least a couple of the issues here. 

I am inviting them all, including both Ian McNichol and Louise Withers Green, to attend either the Irish launch of my New and Selected poems which takes place as part of this year's Cúirt International Festival of Literature on Monday, April 24th, 7.30pm at the House Hotel, Galway OR the Southern England launch of the same book which takes place in Chichester on Thursday, May 4th, also starting 7.30pm. Both Mr McNichol and Ms Withers Green clearly need to buy a copy of my new book to see if I have in fact been (a) writing the wrong kind of poem and (b) been publishing them in the wrong kind of publications. The book will include an acknowledgments list of publications in which the poems in it were first published. 

In the meantime I have written the script for a comedy series titled 'The Legal and Governance Unit' which I'm expecting will appear on the BBC in the autumn and will, I'm told, star Hugh Bonneville as Ian McNichol.

I haven't yet been told who will play me. But rumour is it's either Frankie Boyle or Ken Livingstone.

Chichester, Wednesday April 23rd

Chichester Open Mic poetry reading at New Park Centre, Chichester Wed April 23rd, 7.30 – 9pm. Reading from guest poet Kevin Higgins 7.35-8pm, followed by open mic, with a final poem from Kevin Higgins. Bar and chat, book stall, etc.

Venue:

New Park Centre

New Park Road

Chichester

West Sussex

PO19 7XY

How to get there

Kevin Higgins facilitates poetry workshops at Galway Arts Centre and teaches creative writing at Galway Technical Institute. He is also Writer-in-Residence at Merlin Park Hospital and the poetry critic of the Galway Advertiser. He was a founding co-editor of The Burning Bush literary magazine and is co-organiser of Over The Edge literary events in Galway City.

His poetry collections include The Boy With No Face (2005), Time Gentlemen, Please (2008), Frightening New Furniture (2010) all  published by Salmon. His work also features in the generation defining anthology Identity Parade – New British and Irish Poets (Ed Roddy Lumsden, Bloodaxe, 2010). Mentioning The War, a collection of his essays and reviews was published in April 2012 by Salmon and has been described by prominent member of the Irish Parliament (Dáil) Clare Daly as “a really good and provocative read. It will jolt you; it will certainly touch you; make you laugh; maybe make you snarl a little bit as well, depending on where you come from or what your background is.”

Kevin’s poetry has been translated into Greek, Turkish, Spanish, Italian, Japanese & Portuguese. The Ghost In The Lobby is his fourth collection of poems. 

Praise for Kevin Higgins’s poetry: 

“His contribution to the development of Irish satire is indisputable…Higgins’ poems embody all of the cunning and deviousness of language as it has been manipulated by his many targets... it is clear that Kevin Higgins’ voice and the force of his poetic project are gaining in confidence and authority with each new collection.” Philip Coleman

“With backstage guardians in Paul Durcan (see his titles) and Patrick Kavanagh, Kevin Higgins's work has a buoyant spoken immediacy (often taking the form of dramatic monologues), his poems springing out of colloquial address and celebrating the ordinary through a use of quotidian bric-a-brac, which he often pits - with positive effect - against larger (but no more important) forces…Comedy is part of his poetics, and what I especially like in his work is its swiftness of wit, its tone of buoyant contrarianism and jubilant disappointment”, Eamonn Grennan, The Irish Times 

“It is a profound compliment to the quality of Kevin’s writing that you can disagree with the content and yet find yourself still reading on and appreciating the style. You’d have to say that he is one of the lead poets of his generation in Ireland at this stage.” Clare Daly T.D. 

 “Gil Scott Heron’s The Revolution Will Not Be Televised as re-told by Victor Meldrew”. Phil Brown, Eyewear

“Higgins picks apart the human condition, its disappointments and indulgences, with vigour and acumen.” Roddy Lumsden

“good satirical savagery”. The Cambridge Introduction to Modern Irish Poetry, 1800-2000