Plebity - non-profit advocacy and articles on free speech as a core value of the left
Jim Higgins defied Canadian law to fight for democracy in the Spanish Civil War . On return, he was branded a communist, hounded by the RCMP, and welcomed by Lincoln Battalion comrades when he sought refuge in New York.
Jim was born in London in 1907, schooled in Manchester and Bristol, and sailed to Canada at twenty-one. During the Great Depression , employers blacklisted him for union organizing, the RCMP added him to their radical files for relief camp “agitating,” and he was jailed briefly when the Regina Riot ended the On-To-Ottawa Trek .
By 1937, he was with the International Brigades in Spain; a machine gunner in the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion —the Mac-Paps. Forty years later, he was found by Manuel Alvarez , a boy whose life he’d saved during the bombing of Corbera d’Ebre. Manuel’s 1980 book, The Tall Soldier ( El Soldado Alto) , paid tribute.
Plebity - non-profit advocacy and articles on free speech as a core value of the left