I am running hard against a clock, ticking down to September, but I think I will complete the last touches for The Green and Pleasant Land on schedule. When Harry’s Last Stand began in March 2010, I didn’t realise it would consume the rest of my life. But 16 years later, I am not disappointed with what my father and I undertook or that it continues long after his death. The preservation of working-class history is necessary if society is ever able to fight its way back to a Welfare State where every citizen is granted a dignified and purposeful life.
Below is a chapter excerpt from Harry’s Last Stand, which was published in 2014. The chapter resonates with the melancholy and outrage of a man nearing the end of his life, lamenting neoliberalism’s destruction of the post-war social democratic world.
We are coming to the end of the month, and my situation isn’t as dire as in some other months, but it still requires your assistance to get to the finish line of paying my rent.
We live at the sharp end of history. The average person today is at serious risk of losing their livelihood and their lifestyle. No one is immune from unemployment, and too many are just one pay cheque away from insolvency.
Too many lives in Britain are ruled by financial uncertainty. Whether it is fear of eviction, economic strain caused by wage restraints, clawbacks in benefits, fuel poverty or the food poverty that has forced many families to trek from one food bank to the next like prehistoric hunter-gatherers, it has caused serious structural damage to the fabric of our society. It threatens to impede the proper emotional and educational development of our children just as the Great Depression did to my generation.
In times of doubt and crisis the tone is always similar, no matter the century. In my youth, a coalition government asked the working classes to tighten their belts to speed Britain’s economic recovery. We were asked to be patient and told that jobs and wages would return. We waited through many winters, springs, summers and autumns, but recovery never came. Jobs, stable wages and decent housing didn’t actually materialise until after the Second World War. Only then did prosperity begin to return to Britain and the modern welfare state was created.
As in my youth, today’s politicians utter like a catechism that both full employment and better wages are only a matter of letting the business cycle run its course. Their pronouncements are the same carnival barker’s cry that I heard in my boyhood: to be patient and endure economic suffering and injustice because it is the patriotic thing to do.
All our leaders read from the same hymn book and sing that the economy has recovered, but that it is as fragile as blown glass, so don’t expect much if you are working or middle class.
The question our leaders don’t want to answer is: ‘For whom has the economy recovered?’
It is certainly not for the average wage earner, the student or the pensioner. The sad truth is most workers haven’t seen substantive wage increases in 25 years. Since the 1980s, substantial wage increases have been geared towards upper middle-class occupations, leaving every other worker in the cold.
I admit that in the 1970s and early 80s I was lucky, and survived with little discomfort, but the average bloke who worked in a factory, shop or mill was hit hard in both decades. Hyperinflation and labour unrest created a financial instability that produced Thatcher’s Britain. The country wanted stability, but the price we paid was unemployment levels that skyrocketed to Depression-era levels while whole regions, communities and industries were decimated by policies of privatisation. In that era, Thatcher’s conviction that a free market unfettered by regulation would return Britain to its former mercantile glory was as near-sighted as was the left wing’s refusal to accept that capitalism does produce benefits to the individual and society at large if properly controlled and cultivated.
Many of the people I knew in my youth suffered greatly in the 70s and 80s. Their lives had remained fixed in Halifax, and they remained tied to their working-class professions. For them, both the winter of discontent and Thatcher’s political and economic revolution were seasons of bitter disappointment. It was a time of self-reflection about the value and the meaning of their sacrifices in the Great Depression and during the war.
The summer of 1977 was the last time I saw the mates of my youth all hale and hearty. After that year, one by one, my boyhood friends began to die, until the last one shuffled off this mortal coil in 1993.
But in August 1977, I was 54, and though we were no longer larking about and chasing girls around town, my mates were still in fine form. As we aged, married, moved on and had our own families, we drifted apart physically, emotionally and even politically. However, since our friendships were forged in the difficult days of the 1930s, we were united forever by our past struggles in a hard-knock world. We might never have articulated it, but we loved each other and rooted for each other’s success.
The last time we were together was to watch Halifax Town AFC play a forgettable match in the Edwardian Shea Stadium. We sat on stone seats, drank Webster’s green ale and smoked Rothmans cigarettes. In between taking the mickey out of the players on the pitch, my friend Roy, who had been in the Guards during the war and had seen combat in Italy, told me:
“I don’t know what it’s all about any more. It’s all cocked up.”
It was a tough time for Roy because he was a factory worker and although he owned a house, inflation gnawed at his wages. Crime was up all across the country, and it looked to him like civil society had had its chips. My other friend, Eric, who had been in selective service because he was a skilled tool and die maker, told him not to fret:
“The unions are just getting what’s due to their members, after years of being beat down by Tory governments.”
Doug, my other mate from that long-ago world, also worked for a union shop. But he wasn’t as convinced as Eric about the crusade of the unions during a time when the country was in debt, and bills had to be paid. He had his doubts, and moreover he was growing afraid for his future and his retirement.
“If we don’t get a handle on these strikes, ordinary folk are going to go off us because this country is a right bloody mess. I think Labour has lost its way because it is no longer about the working man; it’s about the egos of the union bosses.”
When the match was over, and we pushed our way through the same turnstiles that had been around since I was fifteen but were now rusting and dilapidated, Roy looked over at me.
“You’ve been as quiet as a mouse when we’ve been nattering on about politics. That’s not like you, Harry.”
‘Oh aye,’ I said. ‘I was just thinking that things are bad today, but they’re not like in the past. I’m worried about how everything is changing and getting mucked up. But I feel lucky. I can pay my mortgage; I can pay for our groceries. I can even take holidays with my wife. Besides, my lads are healthy, and my oldest is at uni – that’s more than we could have ever hoped for. And I know it is a bit of a worry for you, but your house is paid for, and retirement is nearby. Your daughter’s done her schooling and now has a right good job. It weren’t like before, because we have better housing, the NHS and real universities that the working class can attend and make something of themselves in.’
“Too right,” he said.
After that, we went off to the pub and forgot about politics. But for the rest of the evening, in the back of my mind, I was fearful. Why? Because despite what I’d said, I knew from history that extreme economic and political discord is bad for society. I also knew that people crave stability and they will settle for anyone, regardless of their merit or worth, who promises them calm waters, low taxation and a return to the straight and narrow. Life was all right for me at the time, so perhaps I was just letting the wider problems of the country slide by me.
Crikey, that was ages ago. How I wish my friends had survived as long as me, because I really miss their friendship and their laughter.
By the 1980s I was in my sixties, preparing to retire, and I was chuffed for myself and my family. My children were all grown. My eldest had married and was beginning a family, my youngest was finishing up at university, and my second son was working as an artist and theatre set painter, despite the difficulties of his mental illness. Personally, it looked like it had all worked out for me. I had survived the Great Depression, found love and risen to the middle class. Yet, on the horizon were all of the telltale signs that this was not to last, because Margaret Thatcher was the Prime Minister of Britain and Ronald Reagan was President of the USA. Those two conservative leaders and their cadre of neo-con supporters saw society very differently than my generation did. Reagan and Thatcher espoused an ideology of smaller government, less taxation and more input by business leaders rather than the interest groups of ordinary citizens. It was, in short, a revolution against the welfare state. Battles were fought to castrate unions in both America and Britain. In the US, the air traffic controllers were fired, and in Britain Thatcher went to war against the north, its mines and a union that had sought to protect the livelihood of a region.
We couldn’t prevent it from happening, but people still protested and made a last-ditch attempt to save society from those who wanted to make civilisation exclusive to the rich. Students and unions protested in the streets against the gradual erosion of the welfare state. However, in the end both Reagan and Thatcher won their revolutions. Today, not even mainstream left-wing politicians are mentioning the benefits of the welfare state versus our increasingly monetised public service.
Too many people in Britain are struggling with food poverty, fuel poverty, and rent poverty. It can’t be just ascribed to a ‘cost of living crisis’. It ceased to be a crisis when the recession stopped wage growth and caused cutbacks to social services. Now it is more akin to an income catastrophe, where the well-to-do seek to feather their nests on profits created by wage suppression. To talk about recovery when consumer debt is at an all-time high is misleading.
It is a question of credibility. How can legislators talk about recovery when they speak without understanding the real misery that austerity has caused to 21st-century society? How could they really know what ordinary folk feel? In this and every other developed country, a politician’s net worth always exceeds that of the average worker. They are statistically always part of the top 1 per cent of society. Besides, even if they come into government with modest means, they always leave rich.
Considering the hardships that have been endured by the poor and the sacrifices made by the middle classes since the 2008 meltdown, there has been little compassion offered by governments to their people. Instead, every Western country, its parliaments and senates, has voted for austerity over comprehensive tax reform, because the latter would affect their corporate friends’ bottom line. For any MP or newsreader to say that we are on the mend is about as reassuring as someone who is colour blind telling you the light is green.
But it is little wonder to me that Westminster is disconnected from ordinary people in Britain. All you have to do is take a look at where these people went to school. Fifty-four per cent of Conservative sitting MPs received their education at fee-based schools, like Harrow or Eton. If you factor in Liberal Democrats and Labour, the number of MPs who attended independent schools accounts for a third of the House of Commons’ membership. Outside of government, in the world of plumbers, joiners, accountants, technical workers, doctors and lawyers, only 7 per cent of the population attended fee-based schools last year. In fact, this number of public school boys guiding the ship of state hasn’t been this prevalent since the days of Empire.
My values weren’t formed on the playing fields of Eton. They were formed by experiencing the cruelty caused by the Great Depression, and forged by service to my country in the RAF during the Second World War. My values include both sacrifice and sharing. My values are framed by the idea of a welfare state that is not just compassionate but prudent. I find it ironic that many right-wing commentators and politicians find fault with certain immigrant minorities because ‘they don’t fit in’. Ostensibly, these newcomers cling to their ancient traditions and don’t assimilate into our British way of life. Perhaps they don’t immediately, but over time people always start to assume the attributes of their country.
In truth, there is only one exception to this rule, and that is the students who attended private or fee-based schools. The ones who don’t fit into our society are not the new migrants, but the old families and the nouveau riche who adamantly believe that they and their progeny should rule Britain for their sole material benefit.
Thank you for reading and supporting this Substack.
Your support helps keep me housed and allows me to preserve the legacy of Harry Leslie Smith.
The fight to keep going was made worse by getting cancer along with lung disease and other comorbidities, which makes life more difficult in these cost-of-living crisis times. So if you can, join with a paid subscription, which is just £3.50 a month, or a yearly subscription or a gift subscription. A Tip Jar is also available. But if you can’t, it’s all good because we are fellow travellers in penury.
I’ve also reduced yearly subscriptions by 40% during the final week of August to help with my rent.
It’s been a long haul to complete my dad’s Green and Pleasant Land — the unfinished story of his generation’s youth, which Harry left behind.
It traces his life, family, contemporaries and working class history from 1923 to July 1945, ending with Labour’s landslide victory.
I don’t know who will raise all boats in the 21st century — it certainly won’t be Labour in Britain, the Democrats in the U.S., or the Liberals in Canada. The West has entered its Last Orders phase. The fight for a better future will be as bitter as it was in the 1930s and 1940s. It’s going to take every shoulder to the wheel to push us out of this dystopia.
Take care,
John
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