Review Memoirs of a militant
Action at Saltley Gates – Kevin Halpin joined the battle
BY NICHOLAS MURRAY Militant action
“My shop floor life began at the age of 13,” begins Kevin Halpin’s lively, punchy autobiography of a committed working class trade union activist and leading member of the Communist Party, Memoirs of a Militant: Sharply and to the Point (Praxis Press, £9.99).
His working life began just before the War when it was “a virtual jungle” for workers and has been directly involved in all the central struggles of the union movement – not least through being chair of the liaison committee for the defence of trade unions from 1966 to 2002.
This is a story of a loyal Communist’s involvement in battles against government anti-union legislation from Labour’s In place of strife through the Tories’ industrial relations act. He has also been involved in broader community action such as the joint docklands action group (JDAG) in the 1970s and 1980s.
In spite of his full life of political militancy, Halpin has what Denis Healey famously called “hinterland”. He reveals he’s a good cook (which his fellow sailors on a Royal Navy minesweeper in World War Two gratefully discovered) and he has a passion for architecture, somehow finding time in a very full activist’s life to do up a Georgian house in East London he bought cheaply from the local council who wanted to demolish
30 uniteWORKS January/February 2013
it. Those who know Halpin only in his public roles will enjoy reading about his early family and working life in Preston, Lancashire that made him what he is today.
The Communist Party gave Kevin Halpin, like so many others, a political education and he became an avid reader of the literature on what was happening in the Soviet Union in the post-War period. “I think I knew more about the Soviet state collective arable acreage than anyone,” he jokes.
Halpin had no time for the Eurocommunists in the great debates about the future of Communism in the 1970s. He believed that the reformers were “breaking away from class positions and accusing members of ‘economism’ and he was never tempted to abandon his fundamental loyalty to class politics.
But it’s primarily in his work as a union organiser and militant, in the campaign to free the Pentonville Five, the battle of Saltley Gates, and all the anti-union legislation of the second half of the 20th century, that Kevin Halpin will be remembered by the wider trade union movement.
Halpin says he hopes that this story of a lifetime’s defence of working people will “help to give back confidence to win” and his self-confidence and determination will surely do just that.
PA Photos
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36