Ronald Valentine Higgins - East End Docker, Footballer, Trade Unionist & Lancaster Bomber Gunner

On Sunday 23rd June there was a Newham Labour Party "meet the candidates" BBQ in Cody Docks, Canning Town. Party members met potential candidates standing for selection in 2014.

West Ham MP Lyn Brown was the special guest.  Cody Docks is an amazing regeneration project but even this was out shined on the day by the 3 generations of the Higgins family from East Ham.

I first met 90 year old Ronald Valentine Higgins (born 14 Feb 1923) several years ago at another Labour Party BBQ on Wanstead Flats. Ron has had a pretty incredible life. He started his working life in the famous Thames Iron Works, which was not far away from Cody Docks and the home of West Ham FC. He later played for West Ham and Leyton Orient FC. Since he was a semi professional footballer, he was not eligible to compete in the 1948 London Olympics, even though his running times matched that of the leading British competitors. He also managed East Ham FC.

Before this he served in the RAF during the Second World War as a gunner on Lancaster Bombers. He took part in 32 missions. The life span of an average Lancaster Bomber crew was only 20 missions. They had to complete 30. After the War and football, Ron worked in the Docks and became a GMB convener.

Picture of me, his son also called Ron, Cllr Forhad Hussain, Cllr Terry Paul then below Ron Senior and Hanif Abdulmuhit (picture taken by Ron's Grandson Paul).

I think we were all really proud and humbled to meet Ron.

West Ham Labour Party AGM 2013 results

Picture is from the end of tonight's West Ham CLP AGM and of some of the new "dream team" Executive also celebrating the 65th birthday of the NHS.

58 delegates crowded into the Party rooms at 306 High Street, Stratford, E15. Best attendance since 1980s according to one delegate.

Can't think why? :)

For contested positions we had one minute hustings then ballot. It all went pretty smoothly.

From left - Julianne Marriot, new vice Chair Campaigns & Communications; Terry Paul, re-elected Assistant Secretary; Gordon Miller, re-elected Agent and new Vice Chair membership, Charlene McLean, re-elected Chair; Alan Griffiths, re-elected Secretary and Anne Easter, new Women's officer.

Not in photo was John Saunders, re-elected Treasurer; John Whitworth, re-elected political officer;   Winston Vaughan, re-elected as Equalities Officer; Kim Silver, re-elected as Trade Union Liaison officer; Ahmed Noor, re-elected as Social officer. Apologies if I have missed anyone out?

Kim and I were also re-elected to the Executive Committee as 2 of the 4 trade union delegates.

"Trident: What its for?" Newham Compass and Fabian Debate

This picture is from the debate organised on Trident by Newham Compass and Fabians last week.

Kate Hudson from CND and Labour Party Councillor (and NEC member) Luke Akehurst debated the proposed Trident Nuclear submarine and missile programme.

Former Newham Cllr (and budding author) Graham Lane (middle of photo) chaired the meeting.

Luke went first and started by arguing that he is not here to argue for the use of nuclear weapons rather it's role in deterring such war. While there is no current threat Trident is an insurance policy for the next 40 years, since who knows what threats we will face during this time interval.

He agrees that the world would be a much better place if there was no nuclear weapons but believes that this is more likely to happen if there was multilateral rather than unilateral disarmament. Since no one would care if we disarmed by ourselves. If you have a deterrence you can negotiate it away but if you haven't got it & then find you need it to face a threat then it will be too late.

Trident lite nuclear solutions make pre-emptive strikes more likely & more dangerous than not having nukes. The total cost of Trident should be viewed over its entire lifetime - 0.3% of total government budget.

Kate was not having any of this and costed Trident at £3 billion per year for 30 years. The equivalent of 30,000 new homes being built each year which could provide 60,000 jobs.

She believes that even the UK Military top brass are worried about opportunity cost of Trident and that the UK cannot have Trident and be an useful military ally. Former Labour minister Des Brown thinks we cannot afford Trident. She points out that even Tony Blair admitted that that having Trident is not about defense but about national status.

Having any nuclear weapons is just too dangerous. If we think we need them then so will other countries.

The debate and Q&A that followed was civilised and courteous unlike similar debates I remember from my youth. As an aside I pointed out in the Q&A that myself and Terry Paul (a Newham Councillor who was also present) were "cold war warriors" who had spent part of our misspent youth in the 1980s as members of the British Territorial Army. Who at the time were trained to defend the German plains and stop the possible advance of hordes of Soviet tanks.

At the time I didn't think we would have much success in this role nor the reassurance we were given that don't worry if nuclear weapons were being used in the battlefield because as long as we had 18 inches of earth above our trenches, we were perfectly safe from anything apart from a direct hit! ...Yeah.

Dan Hodges at West Ham CLP

West Ham Labour Party like many active CLPs prides itself on its political debates. We regularly invite controveral guest speakers to our General Management Committee meetings (GC) which are open to all members to attend.

At GC last week, our Political Education officer had arranged for Labour Blogger and Daily Telegraph columnist, Dan Hodges, to be our guest speaker. See Dan speaking in picture next to the "tweeting" minutes secretary Terry Paul and our Chair, Charlene McLean.

Dan, is let me say, quite a "controversial figure" in the Labour Movement. His mum is former Labour MP and Hollywood actress, Glenda Jackson. He has worked in the past for the Labour Party and the GMB. But he is widely derided as the "Blairite Cuckoo in the Miliband camp". He has been a ferocious critic of the Labour leader, Ed Miliband and a strong supporter of his brother David.

You can check out my twitter comments here (25 October) on his speech and the Q&A. Afterwards the usual suspects took Dan off to "The Goose" in Stratford Broadway to continue the debate.

Dan had made a number of valid points about how fragile the Labour lead in the polls and that we should not at all take victory for granted in any future election (he thinks that unless we change, and change our leader, we will lose). He was willing to take the mick out of himself and be polite and measured in his responses to fairly direct questions and comments.

Yet I think that most people felt he is just plain wrong in his views. I must admit that he reminded me of personable figures on the "ultra left" who you listen to while quietly thinking "Yes, but, no but, but this is nonsense". I don't think the right wing of our Party (and of course we have a right wing and there is nothing per se to be scared of that) understand that the world has changed since 2008 and that we will not achieve what we frankly all want in our society without radically changing the way we run our economy.

Update: apologies but of course Glenda is still a MP (thank you Alex Sobel) and Dan has tweeted that "nice blog" but he didn't say that unless we changed our Party leader we would lose.