An Era that is in love with fascism and despises socialism is an epoch ripe for authoritarianism by the 1%.

The 1930s aren't that far away in time from 2023. We live in an epoch with similar inequalities and in a time also in love with fascism. What is different is that the 21st century is radically opposed to socialism, which is indicative that our entitled are better masters of propaganda than Goebbels and have made the ordinary despise the medicine that could cure them of their hard grind existence.

The epidemic of homelessness and hunger we are witnessing today in Western nations shouldn't be. Humanity had been there and done that during the Great Depression. Except then following, the economic harshness of the 1930s and the Second World War, the working class said enough. They demanded and got a democracy fit to measure for the many rather than the few. I am not so sure- whether the generations alive now can do the same if they don't take ownership of their history that was primarily working class and revolutionary.

For the last few weeks, I have been presenting to you- Chapters from my dad's The Green and Pleasant Land- a personal history of life during the Great Depression, which was a journey from the despair of widespread famine to deliverance with the creation of the Welfare State in 1945. 

 The Green & Pleasant Land was unfinished at the time of my dad’s death. I've been piecing it together from all the written notes, typescript & index cards my father left behind. Over the next few months, I will be posting the entire work here on substack because it is a brilliant read and an important history of working-class life- during a time before the Welfare State. It is so important now that people own their working-class history because democracy in the 21st century has become more about giving the good life to its top-income earners at the expense of everyone else.

The Green & Pleasant Land

Chapter Eleven:

Acrimony was ripe for picking during the last few weeks of Mum's pregnancy in September 1930. My parents harvested the bitter fruits of their failed marriage and served my sister and me a daily feast of their loathing for each other. In between berating my dad, Mum wrote desperate begging letters to O'Sullivan that were addressed to his last known residence down south.

My sister and I were charged with posting them. More often than not, Alberta would tear open the letter and read aloud Mum's pleas to her former lover to be a gentleman and take some responsibility for his child soon to be born. They were never answered. Much later, Mum pretended they had been. My mother claimed she couldn't accept the ultimatum contained in his reply. According to Mum, O'Sullivan, "wanted me to run off to Australia with him and our bairn, but I couldn't bear to leave you and your sister behind."

On the 24th of September, my mother went into labour, and Alberta fetched the midwife. I stayed with my mother, who moaned in birthing pain whilst lying on a filthy flock mattress, until the midwife arrived.

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During Mum's labour; Dad, Alberta and I were marooned in the kitchen. Dad sat stoned-faced on a stool that faced an empty stove.

Dad only broke his silence once during that day. It was after he grew irritated with me when accidentally during horseplay I hit my sister. "Good men never hit women."

After hours of listening to my mother curse the midwife and the midwife curse my mother back, all of us- finally, heard the screams of a young life arriving into this world.

The midwife yelled for us to come and see the new addition to the family. Dad did not leave his stool. But my sister and I came to our mother and marvelled at our baby brother.

My mother named him Matthew after his biological father, ensuring my dad would reject him outright.

Not long after Matt’s birth, our unhappy family did a midnight flit from Chesham Street because of rent arrears and ended up in a miserable slum called St Andrew's Villas. The new neighbourhood was fraught with itinerant labourers, unemployed mill workers, former soldiers from the Great War and struggling pensioners.

My parents paid a reduced rent under the agreement; we cleaned the common areas, including the outdoor privy, which stank as if it had been in use since the Doomsday Book.

As in Chesum Street, the other doss house neighbours were led to believe our dad was our granddad. It was a necessary deception in my mother's scheme to find another man to provide for us. My dad went along with it reluctantly. But I was shamed not by my dad's surrender to his debasement but my own acceptance to it by calling my father Grandad in public.

St Andrew's Villa had a common room where I became acquainted with the other tenants. They were once all hard workers, but the Great Depression had ground them into factory floor waste. Some were accepting of their fate others angry. Mr Brown was one of the angry ones.

Brown had been a soldier in the Great War, and he was pissed off that the land fit for heroes had turned out to be bollocks. There were a few other veterans of World War One, who lived under our roof, and they looked to Brown for leadership and guidance. He knew what to say when shell shock overcame them. He went to their rooms when they screamed at night, "GAS, GAS,” or cried for a dead comrade blown to nothing from artillery.

Brown was a chain smoker and the brand he smoked advertised itself as World Famous. To prove it, inside each packet of cigarettes, they placed a national flag printed on a silk card from a country that sold their brand.

Each time, Brown opened a fresh packet of cigarettes he'd give me the silk card inside.

At bedtime, while my baby brother cried and my parents quarrelled; I'd stare at the flags on those silk cards and wonder what those countries looked liked and whether kids were as poor there as I was in Bradford.

As always, thank you for reading my sub stack posts because I really need your help Your subscriptions to Harry’s Last Stand keep the legacy of Harry Leslie Smith alive and me housed. The selection you just read was from my dad’s The Green and Pleasant Land. It was unfinished at the time of his death. I’ve been I've been piecing it together from all the written notes, typescript & index cards. So if you can join with a paid subscription which is just 3.50 a month or a yearly subscription or a gift subscription. I promise the content is good, relevant and thoughtful. Take Care, John

PS, I am leaving the first 10 chapters in the free section for another few days before it is paywalled.