GE 2019 - Notes From the Late Great Harry Leslie Smith (Part 3)

Sadly Harry Leslie Smith died late last year in his mid-90s.

But his wise words live on.  He would love Labour's manifesto 2019.

I want to pay tribute to Harry in these blogs by quoting from his last book 'Don't Let My Past Be Your Future.'

' ...when Theresa May, during her 2017 New Year’s address to the nation, spoke about bringing more social equality to Britain, I didn’t believe her. 'Cobblers,’ I said to myself. Our present government is too obsessed by Brexit, third runways at Heathrow or grammar schools to tackle the root causes of all societies misfortunes. This present day Tory administration is as horribly and dangerously separated from the needs of the people as their party was in the early 20th century. But back then my generation did have one advantage over today’s dispossessed; we knew the enemy to our success wasn’t the unionised worker but those who sought to never pay a decent wage to their employees. We knew our enemies were politicians and governments that sought to maintain their privileges over the interests of the common people.

It’s like colourblindness, but many today don’t see that their political enemies are those at the top, not those suit well down below them...

It wasn’t that I didn’t realise that Hitler was evil – anybody who watched the newsreels or read the newspapers could see that. It’s just his nefariousness didn’t seem to excuse the manner in which Britain treated the working class, the poor and the vulnerable. Much later on in the war, when I was in Europe, I was shocked to see that most working class neighbourhoods in Belgium and Holland were luxurious compared to the squalor workers were expected to call home in Britain. These places abroad even had indoor toilets, where as we at home scrambled outside no matter the weather to do our business like animals. I thought if those countries could afford to treat their workers with more respect than ours, a mighty empire, then it meant our leaders of the league really wanted us to be subjugated...

Those who controlled believers of society have not shared the burden of austerity they imposed upon the country during the great depression. It seems also similar to today’s crisis of faith in government. Many feel in this day and age that, while institutions like the NHS are within a hair’s breadth of insolvency because of underfunding, they are bearing the brunt of Tory austerity without any recompense. And they are not wrong because even under austerity British executives make so much more than the average worker. Yet during the Second World War, to offset perceptions of a half and have not society, the wartime government imposed an income tax of 95% on top earners so that it would at least appear that they could not profit... 

Today, politicians from all sides of the House of Commons need to create a new Beveridge Report for the 21st-century that addresses the great divide that now separate the top 10% of wage earners from everyone else. It must look at ways to combat automation, the sharing economy, democratic decline and the erosion of state services. We need an honest report to determine how we can renew our society, neighbourhoods and democracy through investment in all citizens and infrastructures. If politicians don’t initiate a new Beveridge Report, then it is up to the citizenry to compel them through either the ballot box or protest....

More lives have been lost to poverty from 1929 to 1939 and from all the battles our Armed Forces had engaged in on both European and Asian France. My sisters death, our family being forced to abandon my dad, the hunger, the humiliation of debt and homelessness, the howls from cancer patients too poor to afford medicine, the charity Christmas meals for the indigent, the diving through rubbish bins for my tea… All came from a political and economic system that treated Britain’s most vulnerable as chattel as if it had less value than livestock. 

When I made my mark for Labour that day, I wasn’t just voting for myself. I was also casting a vote for my dead sister and father who lay nameless in paupers’ pits. I was voting for all those who didn’t survive the great depression or the war we had just fought. I voted for a future that guaranteed a right to housing, education and medical care regardless of your financial situation. I voted for an economy that was protected through the nationalising of key industries so that when industrial strategies were devised they would be for the benefit of the whole country, not just a select group of stockholders. 

I felt both pride and gratitude to the Labour Party for creating the NHS in 1948 because, by making healthcare public rather than a commercial concern, it allowed me in millions of others to no longer fear that illness would lead to penuries and homelessness. To this day, my gratitude to the Labour Party remain steadfast because it was they who emancipated our country from the shackles of pay-as-you-go healthcare. 

No matter how much I could hear in the distance the sounds of the welfare state being constructed, it was also a time of despondency. Many believed we’d won the war but surrender the peace to put perpetual rationing, belt tightening and postponing personal pleasures for the National good. It was a fearful time to be young, middle-aged or old because none of us knew what tomorrow would bring. The Cold War was becoming more intense and nationalism was again rearing its head in the United States with its growing anti-communism...

In the 1950 general election, Labour polled over 1.5 million more votes than the Conservatives, but was returned to government with only a razor-thin majority of just six seats this compelled Attlee to call another election in October 1951.....There was nowt in the shops, nowt in our larders, nowt in our hearts but unease, resentment and a sense that we’d been betrayed by our so-called betters. Simply going into a shop and seeing empty shelves made me realise that my city, my county, my country were a long way from the land of milk and honey that have been promised to us by Labour after the war. Simply put, the people had grown tired of sacrificing today for a brighter tomorrow.

There, I would put pen to paper and try to understand the injustices my family, my generation and my class endured because Britain was governed by and for elites. I wasn’t radical then and I’m not now but I knew that if you ignore the pleas of ordinary folk for good jobs, decent homes and a decent future, social unrest will soon follow. My long and generally happy and productive life only happened because the welfare state was created by a Labour government when I was 22....

'It is a vital and powerful voice speaking across generations about the struggle for a just society' Jeremy Corbyn

THIS A CALL TO ARMS FOR THE MANY, NOT THE FEW: DON'T LET THE PAST BECOME OUR FUTURE

Harry Leslie Smith was a great British stalwart. A survivor of the Great Depression, a Second World War veteran, a lifelong Labour supporter and a proud Yorkshire man, Harry's life straddled two centuries. As a young man, he witnessed a country in crisis with no healthcare, no relief for the poor, and a huge economic gulf between the North and South. 

Britain is at its most dangerous juncture since Harry's youth - the NHS and social housing are in crisis, whilst Brexit and an unpopular government continue to divide the country - but there is hope. Just as Clement Attlee provided hope in 1945, Labour's triumphant comeback of June 2017 was a beacon of light ...Britain has overcome adversity before and will do so again - a new nation will be forged from the ashes of grave injustice.

Moving and passionate, Don't Let My Past be Your Future interweaves memoir and polemic in a call to arms. Above all, this book is a homage to the boundless grace and resilience of the human spirit. (From Amazon)

GE 2019 - Notes From the Late Great Harry Leslie Smith (Part 2)

Sadly Harry Leslie Smith died late last year in his mid-90s.

But his wise words live on.

I want to pay tribute to him in these blogs by quoting from his last book 'Don't Let My Past Be Your Future.'

"The political discourse Jeremy Corbyn has started in the Labour Party about the benefits of migration is good for this country. Corbyn believes that the real problem Britain faces isn’t migration because newcomers to our country can add to its wealth through the valuable skills many bring here, through the taxes they pay and through the businesses they build. To Corbyn, the real issues that are destroying the prosperity of workers can be laid squarely at the feet of an establishment that encourages wage suppression, contains the rights of trade unions, adopts the use of zero hour contracts, pays a ‘living wage’ that no one can live on and dismantles many social services that people depend on. Naturally, Corbyn and Labour also understand that migration has affected marginalised communities that were gutted by austerity, which is why they have called for the migrant impact fund suspended by the Tories to be reinstated as it helped vulnerable areas shoulder the burden on services that can arise from an influx of low skill migrants...

I’ve seen the mob call out many times throughout my life that it’s migrants that are ruining Britain. I remember the signs that said ‘No blacks. No Irish. No dogs’ in both good times and bad. But we must remember what my generation learnt in the 1930s: it’s not migration that is eroding the fabric of our civil society but issues like low wages, lack of job protection, insufficient or too expensive housing, lack of opportunity and the state taking too little tax from either the elite or giant corporations.

Xenophobia and bigotry always increase during uncertain economic times because racists and right-wing elements in government and society know they can divide us through spreading hateful falsehoods about minorities. Too many people in this country view the worsening refugee crisis that is overwhelming Europe as something that we should stay well away from, and excuse the callousness by claiming that those who arrive on Europe’s shores are not authentic like those in the 1930s who fled Hitler’s Germany. The sad irony is that the middle-classes in Britain in the 1930s, abetted by tabloids like the Daily Mail portraying Jews as vermin or Communists intent on destabling our way of life, used that same excuse to turn their back on refugees who were subsequently gassed In the Holocaust. The tactics used by UKIP, and unfortunately now large swathes of the Conservative party, to portray Muslim refugees as either terrorists or welfare scroungers are little different from what was employed in the 1930s against Jewish refugees....

At every turn, good people in Britain are given an opportunity to excuse or reinforce their prejudices against the marginalised because most of the media is feeding into a narrative that says that poverty is a character defect rather than a failure of society to adequately protect its less fortunate. The Conservatives and UKIPs entire ideology is based upon wedge politics. The migration of war weary individuals from Syria, Sudan, Afghanistan or a dozen other countries that are plagued by war or civil unrest fails to elicit sympathy In us because our politicians would prefer to deflect the blame onto the victims rather than our arms industry or our foreign policy. Both now and in the 1930s, refugees are dehumanised by language. It’s cheaper in the short term to paint victims of war as criminals, rapists and fifth columnist Islamic fundamentalists rather than seek a solution to the conflicts from which these refugees have fled or to help them resettle. 

Those on the left must counter the propaganda being churned out by the right-wing that benefits recipients are cheats and that the working-class has been betrayed by a membership of the EU or by the free movement of labour. The enemies of wage earners and immigrants or those in receipt of benefits; the mortal foes are the corporations that suppress wages and hide profits offshore by legal means. People have to use their time in shop queues, church meeting halls, mosques, synagogues, temples, lunchrooms and on the train ride home to talk about the real abuses working people face each day because of Tory induced austerities, not to chat about the match of the day

At home the Daily Mail complained about the scourge of Jewish refugees from Germany, and politicians wanted Britain to believe that they were desperate to get to Britain not from fear of Hitler but out of desire to subvert a way of life through the foreign ways and Bolshevik tendencies. If that doesn’t remind you of Donald Trump, then you have not been paying attention to his speeches for the last two years..."

'It is a vital and powerful voice speaking across generations about the struggle for a just society' Jeremy Corbyn

THIS A CALL TO ARMS FOR THE MANY, NOT THE FEW: DON'T LET THE PAST BECOME OUR FUTURE

Harry Leslie Smith was a great British stalwart. A survivor of the Great Depression, a Second World War veteran, a lifelong Labour supporter and a proud Yorkshire man, Harry's life straddled two centuries. As a young man, he witnessed a country in crisis with no healthcare, no relief for the poor, and a huge economic gulf between the North and South. 

Britain is at its most dangerous juncture since Harry's youth - the NHS and social housing are in crisis, whilst Brexit and an unpopular government continue to divide the country - but there is hope. Just as Clement Attlee provided hope in 1945, Labour's triumphant comeback of June 2017 was a beacon of light ...Britain has overcome adversity before and will do so again - a new nation will be forged from the ashes of grave injustice.

Moving and passionate, Don't Let My Past be Your Future interweaves memoir and polemic in a call to arms. Above all, this book is a homage to the boundless grace and resilience of the human spirit. (From Amazon)

GE 2019 - Notes From the Late Great Harry Leslie Smith

Sadly Harry Leslie Smith died late last year in his mid-90s.

But his wise words live on.

I want to pay tribute to him in these blogs by quoting from his last book 'Don't Let My Past Be Your Future.'

"The more Britain slips down the rabbit hole of Brexit, the harder it is to imagine that we will ever be able to preserve our NHS or maintain and improve our welfare state. It will take us years to try and establish trade deals that will keep our standard of living even at the current, equal level."

"Britain has the highest level of income inequality for all G20 countries, according to studies conducted by Equality Trust UK. The divide between the haves and have nots in Britain hasn’t been this great since the 1930s."

"The years 2016–17 across much of Europe felt more like 1938 before the storms of war swept across the globe. I was made acutely aware of this when I visited the infamous and now disbanded Calais Jungle where thousands of refugees from wars in the Middle East and Africa congregated, in conditions I have not seen since the Second World War, in an effort to find a safe haven in Britain across the channel. It confirmed to me that our western world is sitting atop a funeral pyre built from the injustices of corporatism and arrogant greed. The match has been lit and a fire smoulders just below our democracies..."

Harry Leslie Smith

'It is a vital and powerful voice speaking across generations about the struggle for a just society' Jeremy Corbyn

THIS A CALL TO ARMS FOR THE MANY, NOT THE FEW: DON'T LET THE PAST BECOME OUR FUTURE

Harry Leslie Smith was a great British stalwart. A survivor of the Great Depression, a Second World War veteran, a lifelong Labour supporter and a proud Yorkshire man, Harry's life straddled two centuries. As a young man, he witnessed a country in crisis with no healthcare, no relief for the poor, and a huge economic gulf between the North and South. 

Britain is at its most dangerous juncture since Harry's youth - the NHS and social housing are in crisis, whilst Brexit and an unpopular government continue to divide the country - but there is hope. Just as Clement Attlee provided hope in 1945, Labour's triumphant comeback of June 2017 was a beacon of light ...Britain has overcome adversity before and will do so again - a new nation will be forged from the ashes of grave injustice.

Moving and passionate, Don't Let My Past be Your Future interweaves memoir and polemic in a call to arms. Above all, this book is a homage to the boundless grace and resilience of the human spirit. (From Amazon)

The Real Jeremy Corbyn

For those who don’t like Jeremy Corbyn - and why on earth wouldn’t you? – he said in his election launch yesterday in Battersea, the Labour Party isn’t him, he doesn’t do presidential style elections. The Labour Party is a team, it is all of us.  He is the most democratic leader around. 

Some of Team Labour

Jeremy with his cat El Gato

But I want to talk about Jeremy Corbyn in this blog. I am prepared to concede that some people just don’t get him or have fallen for the terrible onslaught of smears that have been levelled at him since he because party leader. These are mainly from the right wing media who want nothing less than a Labour government - particularly a socialist Labour one - because Labour support redistribution of wealth, higher tax rates for the highest earners and corporate tax for big business meaning less profits, along with proper investment in public services. We’re not talking about healthy profits here, we’re talking about obscene numbers, and most fair minded people cannot possibly object to a more equitable society when countless families and single people are forced to use food banks on one of the wealthiest economies in the world.

If you don’t believe me, think back a few years to when Ed Miliband was Labour leader. The right wing media laid into him too. He is Jewish. They weren’t so kind to Ed Miliband’s father in the Right Wing press. The Daily Mail - far from apologising - described Ed Miliband’s response in its editorial headlined "An evil legacy and why we won't apologise", as "tetchy and menacing", and said it stood by its article, citing Labour's response to the Leveson inquiry. "The father's disdain for freedom of expression can be seen in his son's determination to place the British press under statutory control … If he crushes the freedom of the press, no doubt his father will be proud of him from beyond the grave, where he lies 12 yards from the remains of Karl Marx.....” guardian 1st October 2013

https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/2013/oct/01/ralph-miliband-what-daily-mail-said

Now the Daily Mail et al are at it again criticising Corbyn for being a Marxist and Labour for being anti-Semitic. While any anti- Semitism in any party is to be derided, all racism is on the rise across all political parties and is an unwelcome symptom of society today. 

https://www.thecanary.co/trending/2018/03/27/the-bogus-antisemitism-smear-against-jeremy-corbyn-was-just-debunked-in-the-times-of-israel/amp/

The Daily Mail has a shameful history of how they treated Jews and supported the Nazis. Here is a slice of that history about the Rothermere family (owners of the Daily Mail):

“Despite (Lord Rothermere’s) former mild reservations, the press baron was also now parroting the Nazis’ anti-Semitic slurs. Germany had been “falling under the control of alien elements,” Rothermere argued. There were 20 times as many Jews in government positions than there had been before the war....Israelites of international attachments were insinuating themselves into key positions in the German administrative machine,” he noted darkly. “It is from such abuses that Hitler has freed Germany.” The Jews were not just a problem in Germany. The menace they posed was much more widespread, he felt. “The Jews are everywhere, controlling everything,” Rothermere wrote in private correspondence.

Unsurprisingly, given its proprietor’s naked anti-Semitism, the Mail did not delve too deeply when it came to reporting the Nazis’ growing threat to Germany’s Jews. Its report of the boycott of Jewish businesses in April 1933 even contained a statement from Hitler’s spokesman arguing that allegations of “the mishandling of Jews” were “barefaced lies.”

https://www.timesofisrael.com/how-britains-nazi-loving-press-baron-made-the-case-for-hitler/

Then we hear the endless accusations about Corbyn’s ‘associations with the IRA’ and being a ‘terrorist sympathiser’. Please. Both Thatcher and Major had to negotiate with the IRA in order to bring about the Good Friday agreement. Corbyn is a pacifist - he has won a peace prize. 

https://www.uniglobalunion.org/de/node/39017

Jeremy Corbyn being presented with the prestigious Sean MacBride peace prize in Geneva

Further confirmation about the power of the controlled media can be found in this excerpt in the London Economic February 25 2019

Think Corbyn is a ‘danger to Britain’? Here’s how you’ve been brainwashed

“The Conservative Party is in chaos. Whilst the ruling party’s mismanagement and in-fighting is creating one constitutional crisis after another, poverty is increasing, services are failing, and debt is rising.  But with such a weak and incompetent Government in power, why are there those still those supporting it?

Here’s why…

They’ve already told you what to think on a multitude of issues. You think you made up your own mind, and you think you’re right. But, you didn’t, and you aren’t.

How do I know this? Because blind policy based voting results (whereby voters tick the policies they agree with, without knowing which party they were voting for overall) are always radically different to the actual vote result when it comes to general elections and other major political votes.

Had all votes in previous elections been cast on policy pledges alone, studies suggest the Green Party and Liberal Democrats would have both had a turn at power by now.

What this means is that people generally have a different perspective when presented with policy pledges, yet vote in a completely different direction. Why? Because these chaps’ media outlets are bombarding your brain with high level right-wing propaganda:

Lord Rothermere, a billionaire living in France, owns the Mail, Mail on Sunday, and the Metro.

Rupert Murdoch, a billionaire US citizen, owns the Sun, Sun on Sunday and is the man behind Fox News, BSkyB, News Corp, etc, etc.

Alexander and Evgeny (son) Lebedev, an Ex KGB Russian Billionaire, owns The Independent, Independent on Sunday, The Evening Standard.

Richard Desmond, a billionaire, did own the Daily Star, Sunday Star, Daily Express, Sunday Express. Now owned by Reach (previously known as Trinity Mirror).

David and Frederick Barclay, billionaire brothers living on a private island near Saark, own the Telegraph, The Spectator, and the Business.

The Sun, for example, claim to have backed the winner of each general election since the notorious Sun headline, ‘It’s The Sun Wot Won It’ referring to the 1992 John Major Tory victory.

The tabloid had led an increasingly personal campaign against the then Labour leader Neil Kinnock, culminating in the famous election day headline: “If Kinnock wins today will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights.”

The same campaign is running against Jeremy Corbyn right here, right now.

Is Corbyn the man of integrity we hear about from his constituents, or the national traitor that we hear about in the press? 

Think Corbyn is an unelectable loser? Apart from what you’ve read in your daily newspaper, how much do you really know about him?

Corbyn is a phenomenally hard working MP who passionately fights to protect the poor and vulnerable, seeks to protect the NHS, wants to nationalise natural monopolies and take back publicly financed utilities that were sold off to investors at a pittance, aims to stem the flow of capital from the poor to the rich, and campaigns tirelessly to seek diplomacy over war.

However, what is perhaps most threatening of all to the overseas billionaires is that Corbyn wants to stop corporate tax breaks, close down overseas tax avoidance, and stamp out wage inequality. This makes him hugely unpopular with the wealthy elite.

OK, maybe you do know a bit about Corbyn, but still dismiss his credentials out of hand. Sadly, it may be too late for you. The handful of right-wing media moguls running the bulk of the UK press have planted a seed, the roots of which have now grown deep within your subconscious, telling you that Corbyn is ‘dangerous for Britain’, just like Kinnock was.”

https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/opinion/think-corbyn-is-a-danger-to-britain-heres-how-youve-been-brainwashed/12/12/?fbclid=IwAR3-yLXUf2AK9yZ0HkDyqjwjCTWtiy_b-eyUm85fyfb-o2yg25oBkXcj0ZE#.XbnIyEMwCkc.facebook

It’s high time Corbyn was recognised for his humanity and being a principled man. But we live in a crazy perverse world where the good are seen as corrupt and the corrupt are seen as saviours. How have we come to this?

https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/20/corbyn-traitor-rightwing-press-risky-game-labour

But even if you are gullible enough to believe all you’ve read about Jeremy Corbyn or even if you like him but don’t think he makes for a good leader, he isn’t going to be around forever. He’s already talked about his successor. They are keen for it to be a woman. Maybe someone like Rebecca Long-Bailey. If you don’t vote Labour because of your views on Corbyn then that’s a bit like abandoning your football team because you don’t like the manager! Your team is bigger than the manager. It was there before him or her and it will be there after.

It has been shown in surveys that there is strong support for plans to renationalise energy, tax the wealthiest, and rule out a rise in the state pension age.

In an online survey of 1,000 adults for the Daily Mirror, renationalising the railways was backed by 52% of voters, with 22% opposed and 26% saying they did not know. Nationalising the energy market was supported by 49% with 24% against and 28% saying they did not know.

Labour’s most popular policy among those surveyed was banning zero-hours contracts, with 71% in favour and 16% against.

So there is strong support for the party’s policies and you should vote for a party on their policies. I am admin in a Facebook group which helps people with their social security benefits. It beggars belief why anybody in the group would vote anyone else other than a progressive party (Labour, Green, Plaid Cymru in Wales or the SNP in Scotland). Anyone thinking of voting Tory because Boris Johnson will ‘get Brexit done’ is screwing the rest of us and consigning sick and disabled people to years more of punitive benefits sanctions, bedroom tax, endless unfair PIP or ESA assessments where evidence is ignored and 73% of decisions are overturned at appeal. People should instead be looking at Labour’s voting record on welfare. Labour voted against all the harsh reforms in the welfare reform bill as it went through parliament. It doesn’t even compute with these Corbyn-bashers that it was his nemesis and hard Brexiter Iain Duncan Smith who was the architect of Universal Credit (aka Universal Chaos) and why they find themselves in such appalling situations with the benefits process. But if they don’t join up the dots they are part of the problem not the solution.

So let’s have some love for Jeremy Corbyn. I believe that British people like to see fair play. They don't like unfairness and good people being torn apart and besmirched by a nasty media.  Jeremy has paved the way for a more humane, fair, equal society, and paving the way for his successor whoever he - or most likely, she - will be.