Kevin Higgins joins the Labour Party campaign for marginal seats in memory of James
Introduction
In ‘Past’ – among other things – I remember my friend James who was an anti-poll tax activist and a member of the Labour Party for a bit in Edmonton in North London when I lived there in the early 1990s. James went missing seven years ago and I feel I know for sure he’s no longer with us, as I know if he was he’d be in touch some way to chinwag over recent events. He’d say something like: “So, Kev, does this [Jeremy Corbyn becoming leader] mean socialism is back?” And I’d reply, “It might, me auld mucker, it might.” And then he’d tell me to PLEASE put my tea mug on the coaster he’d provided for it (and spent the morning polishing).
I recruited James to both the British Labour Party and the Militant Tendency in the early nineties – those were the days! – and watched the 1992 UK General Election results with James in his tower block flat in Shropshire House, London N18 and I know, if he were still with us, he would phone me this week.
I am travelling to the UK this week, to nearby Chingford, where I’ll spend Monday and Tuesday campaigning for Faiza Shaheen who has a good chance of unseating former Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Iain Duncan Smith, to whom I have paid poetic untribute elsewhere.
James was always a great man for doing the grassroots stuff that a lot of the more theoretical socialists find challenging. No better man to convince a little old lady called Edith, or Flo, who wasn’t sure how she was going to vote yet. As I walk the streets of Chingford and Woodford on Monday and Tuesday, I will be thinking of James.
Past
Past clicks ajar the box
you thought you’d locked it in
and starts walking in your direction.
Under its right arm, it carries a kitten
you’d thought long dead
which is delighted to see you
and licks your hand
in the hope of butter or salt.
Past fishes your friend out of whichever
European river he went into
and deletes the message
you got from his cousin asking
if you’ve seen him.
His hair, still the same
Judas Iscariot red.
Yours, its increasingly inferior
imitation of its ex-self.
You talk hours
about coming revolution
which, like the kitten,
you remember burying
but which now magically offers you
an opening comradely hand.
Past takes its spade
and digs up your old defeats,
offers to turn them into victories
if you’re prepared to gamble
on losing again
and pain which even now haunts,
like the tooth you tried
but failed to extract yourself.
Photo Credit: Faiza Shaheen / Twitter