Thursday 5 December 2019

GE2019 - Notes From The Late Great Harry Leslie Smith (Part 5)




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.  His words were very prophetic, he mentions the folly of following or believing Johnson.
From his last book 'Don't Let My Past Be Your Future.'








"I know my moment on this earth it’s almost done. I will soon join my mother, my father, sisters, brothers, wife, son and friends who have passed on before me. I have tried to relate to you what I have learned and seen through many years of life because we are in the most dangerous time. It will be up to you to decide whether you fight for sunlight or submit to darkness. I am too old now to do much more but tell the truth about the history of my generation. To survive, live well and enjoy love, you must choose the path of your ancestors. In you the blood of all those who fought for fair wages, housing, healthcare and defended our island against the tyranny of Hitler. ....

I can’t make that decision for you. I have shown you what that world looked like when the 1% enslaved an entire generation to feed their greed. It is now up to you because the sunset has come to my life but you must not let it come to our country. It shouldn’t be this way. It should be better for you. You deserve more...

I was born in the darkest of times and it seems because of Brexit and Donald Trump that I will exit this world in a similar era of uncertainty, inequality and cruelty.

Right now, we are at a juncture in history that is as dangerous to this generation as the 1930s were to mine. There are serious threats of war emerging all across the globe, some calls by the folly of neoliberalism and others just erupting because we forgot that tyranny, if fed, will metastasise in even the healthiest of societies.

It is your choice now to decide whether you let the jungles of greed, neoliberalism and corporations grow over and obscure the welfare state... My past won’t become your future if you hold firm to the belief that all people are born equal and deserve the right to life free of want, ignorance and sickness. Believe in yourself, and social justice, and live by the creed that we are all our brothers keeper.

When I glance at this Tory government front bench I can plainly see that these politicians came off the rack of a party political machine that is good at only one thing: promoting opportunists....

It’s why I felt sick and when Theresa May, after a series of terrorism attacks in London and Manchester in Spring 2017, claimed our security had not been compromised by the fact that 20,000 police personnel have been let go during these long years of austerity.... it doesn’t take a security expert to deduce that after four major terrorist attacks in three months, which have left scores dead in Manchester and London, that the simple tools of security have been compromised by Tory austerity policies that have got it or police services. 

Political talk at the beginning of April 2017 was of how the Tories could govern Britain for a generation and that Labour, unless it became a party that favoured more right-wing economic policies under the guise of middle of the road politics, was doomed to obscurity. However we live in the most unsettled of political times and, because Jeremy Corbyn harnessed the hopes and dreams of the youth vote, Labour was able to get its largest folk share since 2001.

It surprised everyone, including me. Six months ago, when I was first writing the concluding chapters to this book, I was doubtful that Corbyn could survive until autumn 2017. I could not imagine then how are political landscape could change so dramatically. 

Labour on social media changed the Tories narrative that this election was about Brexit, and made it instead about austerity...

In the north, south and all compass points in Britain, Corbyn delivered speeches of passion and popular eloquence because he talked about wanting a government that was for the many not the few. I saw him transformed during this election from a fringe politician into a national leader.

Yet it wasn’t until Labour produced its election manifesto that I felt Jeremy Corbyn had a real chance of breaking Theresa May’s commanding lead in the polls. It was a manifesto that I understood would be a game changer. It was held for 21st century voters the same optimism, the same life changing policies that caused me to vote labour in 1945 at the age of 22.
Corbyn’s manifesto wasn’t revolutionary: it just contained good and practical policies that would benefit most citizens. It called for things this nation needs, such as the renationalisation of the rail services, as well as an NHS for and by the people. It spoke to the young who have borne the heavy price of austerity by offering free university tuition, a proper housing strategy and a child day care strategy. Moreover, all of these initiatives by Labour were properly costed...

But what when Theresa May is replaced by another Tory, whether it is Boris Johnson… Or another that stalks in the shadows, don’t ever believe the Tories if they try to tell you they have changed their stripes. You see, even if the Tories were to end austerity, it can never really be over until they restore all they took away from us in the last seven years and take back all they gave to the wealthy through tax cuts or privatisation of state assets.

So, what remains now in the wake of Theresa May's botched attempt to win glory for herself and greater Parliamentary power for the Tories? Without a doubt, we will see another general election very soon and we should accept, owing to the volatility of politics today, that all bets are off. What is essential between now and the next election, if we wish to end austerity and prevent my past becoming your future, is that Labour increases its outreach to the young, the disaffected and the hard-pressed middle-class. Labour has a real chance of forming the next government and returning economic and social equality back to this country. To do so will not be easy. It took almost 30 years to destroy the welfare state and its rebuilding will be a long and arduous task. But, as I saw the foundations dug for a progressive society in 1945, I know we can do it again..."

The greatest tribute to Harry would be to vote Labour in his memory, for his son and to all of us who want a better world.

Sunday 1 December 2019

GE2019 - Notes From The Late Great Harry Leslie Smith (part 4)

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.'

"Neoliberalism has turned the welfare state into Bolton Abbey. It has become a beautiful pile of rubble. It was exposed to the indifference of successive governments, including Labour, for too long. Moreover, this generation has allowed the 1% to steal its birth right and that can’t continue for much longer without Britain returning to my past. And if we are in the 21st-century are forced to my past because the Tories have successfully murdered the welfare state, it will be more brutal and bloodier for you than it was for me so many years ago. This time there will be no mercy because the state will be able to monitor and control all facets of your life; our entire lives can be traced, from our use of mobiles and emails to comments on Social media to purchases via credit card and the use of loyalty cards. Anonymity has gone, and the state has greater weaponry for social control than ever before. It will be impossible to resist to mobilise like we did in the 1930s and 1940s. You must begin to act now because tomorrow it could be too late.


Everything that we have today in terms of social benefits originates from those six years when Labour was in government after the war. Without the Attlee government, Britain would’ve been a dark and fearful place during the second half of the 20th century. And yet many of our citizens are ignorant of history and made arrogant by the fake news of the right wing, which disparages the great accomplishments we made as a nation, when we cleared the slums, they free healthcare at all, built affordable homes and made higher education access a ball to working-class kids.

We shouldn’t be where we are today as a people and as a society. 1 million people should not need to use food banks to keep their bellies full. Politics is vile to people and now too many are turning to the right wing populists the way the poor once flocked to snake oil salesman to cure their ailments...

UKIP is a fraud. It can no more offer political salvation to the disenfranchised masses than a television evangelist can fast track you to heaven with £100 a nation to his dodgy ministry.

As for the Tories, the concept of aspirational politics is a cruel deceit. Toryism is no more than an elaborate pyramid scheme where they convince everyone to steal from the lowest to keep their place in the hierarchy.

As for Labour, my heart will always be with them...I hope the party will heal its divisions and grow more united because of its recent electoral gains during the snap general election. But more importantly, I hope the party has learned that it can’t help the working classes, the vulnerable or the middle classes if the right wing and left-wing of the party are at each others throats and a blood feud....the success of Labour’s 2017 election manifesto proves that pragmatic socialism is as attractive to this generation as it was to mine in 1945.


We must never forget, nor to hide or diminish, how much good New Labour did when in government. They established the minimum wage, greater environmental protection and greater inclusion, brokered the Good Friday Agreement and allowed for civil partnerships for gays and lesbians. Tony Blair and New Labour also were able to instil an optimism in our nation, which should not be discounted. But the sheer arrogance and folly of Iraq plus the financial obscenity of PFI, the private finance initiative that has indebted generations to come, left a bad taste in the mouths of many who believe in progressive politics. Up until the 2017 general election, many voters felt betrayed by Labour whether in Scotland, the Labour heartlands in England or the metropolitan regions – everyone had an axe to grind with Labour because they promised us the moon in the late 1990s and instead delivered as the shame of the Chilcot enquiry....

My faith in Labour has been tested over the years, but I have never doubted it is the only political movement in Britain that can deliver real change to ordinary people. That’s why, in 2014, after years of being an anonymous citizen who went about his life trying to do the best for his family and community, I felt compelled to speak out about the decline of the welfare state and slow creep towards privatisation of the NHS, when I spoke at the Labour Party conference. My speech was shared almost 3,000,000 times on Facebook because I was able to remind Britain that life before the welfare state and the NHS wasn’t like an episode of Downton Abbey for the majority of citizens. I was able to talk about my sister's unjust death and of those who suffered from cancer but were denied morphine because they couldn’t afford the cost of medicine. I was able to remind our nation of their ancestors struggles. I was able to let people know that a nation can heal its injustices, its wounds and its animosity, if it has the courage to be a country that won’t leave those wounded by austerity on the economic and social battlefields of life. I was honoured to speak for the dead of my generation and gratified that Labour in 2014 felt it was important to remind Britain for inglorious past before the welfare state.

Under Corbyn, Labour has begun to show that it can harness the ideals of Clem Attlee’s government, which won over working-class lads like me to the practical benefits that can be achieved by participating in democracy. But even though Labour has risen from the ashes of low polling through a return to the common sense populism of building of Britain for the many not the few, it must remember that we live in uncertain times...The party must not allow it sudden popularity to blind it; it must be built on more than the temporary whims of the electorate. It’s why Labour politicians and supporters must start to come to terms with their failures like Iraq and perhaps their stance on Brexit. They must start telling the hard and bitter truth about how we can build a new and vibrant social state for everyone. 

The world we live in today is rife with corruption, populism and economic sectarianism. This is a harbinger of worse things to come. And if we do not fight against austerity, the gradual privatisation of the NHS or addiction to fake news, we will be frogmarched back to my childhood where no one lived well except the rich."

Final notes on this book to be appear on this blog soon.