Britain fought Hitler To The Death B/C They Were Promised A Welfare State, in Peacetime.

Before my father died in 2018, he spent the previous decade using the history of his life and working-class contemporaries as a political canvass to paint the dangers of unfettered capitalism for humanity and democracy. He correctly predicted that without a return to socialist politics- fascism and wealth inequality would destroy not just our society but civilisation itself.

His unfinished history- The Green & Pleasant Land is a part of that project, along with the 5 other books written during those last years of his life.

For the last year, I have been refining and editing The Green And Pleasant Land to meet my dad’s wishes. Below are more chapter excerpts from it.

I have also included a tip jar for those who are so inclined to assist me in this project.

The Green And Pleasant Land

Chapter Twenty-One

Roy departed Halifax for training with the Coldstream Guards at the start of 1940. His call-up date for active service was earlier than mine because he was two years my senior.

He didn't have any siblings. So, Roy asked if something should happen to him; would I ensure his mother was alright? I said I would do my best. Then, I joked, he could return the favour if I didn't come home from the war by caring for my mother.

"I'd rather you had asked me to care for a box of snakes."

I didn't envy him leaving but didn't mention it. During our last pint together, I let him speak reverently about the King and Country. He sounded like my dead Grandfather who also spoke reverentially about the Empire, or Bill when he talked about his stint with the Royal Marines during the Great War.

At the start of the war, none of us knew who would be left standing after it was done. So, I didn't bother to argue with Roy about the perfidy of patriotism.

Photo by National Museum of Denmark on Unsplash

Unlike Roy, I could find no reason in my heart or head- to die for Britain. It had sacrificed my childhood to ensure the entitled lives of the rich would go on uninterrupted by the economic crisis following the 1929 Bank Crash.

I wasn't alone in this thinking. Initially, there wasn't much enthusiasm among the working class for the war. After it began, we rightly saw it as a conflict to maintain a status quo of empire and wealth.

It's hard to appreciate "democracy" or the need to defend it, if you barely make ends meet, can't afford to own property or retire in old age and live out your last years with some dignity.

I still wasn't sure where my place in this war would be. I was resolved- no matter the service I picked, my joining would take as long as legally possible.

Shortly after Roy left, my employer, Mr Grosvenor offered an alternative to volunteering for the war.

Grosvenor was a Quaker bound by faith to reject every war as unjust and unnecessary. He said there was a means for me to avoid enlisting, when it was my time to be called. I could escape the fighting, he promised.

"Become a Quaker, like me,"

Grosvenor said he would vouch for my conversion. Grosvenor also promised, he would stand before a military board of inquiry and attest that I was a conscientious objector, unfit to serve because of religious beliefs. My employer sweetened the deal and pledged upon his death, he'd bequeath me partial ownership of his shop as he was childless.

I contemplated his offer and said I would let him know. I told no one about my boss' suggestion. I didn't want to be labelled a coward, despite knowing fighting and perhaps dying for ruling-class Britain was not in my best interests.

As I procrastinated against the inevitability of the war grabbing hold of me, it caught up with my sister.

Alberta married "her Charlie," in April because he got her pregnant. I was working when they tied the knot, so I didn't attend the wedding. It was a registry ceremony in Bradford. My mother went. But despite my father still being alive and living in the city, he was not invited. It was impossible because my family still stuck to the lie that he had died long ago.

When Mum returned from the service, she reported her new son-in-law was trouble for Alberta.

"There is something off about him, even if he wore army togs."

After the wedding, Charlie and his army unit deployed to France, where he saw action. He returned to England, at the start of June through the Dunkirk evacuation. Shortly after the fall of France, I I travelled to Bradford to visit Alberta and Charlie, who was home on leave.

It was terrifying to see what a few months of total war had done to him. He was a broken man with a tremor in his hand. When I left their house, Charlie, at their door, looked me straight in the face with a dead expression.

"Don't get stuck into this fucking war because it will kill you."

Not long after Charlie was evacuated from the shores of Dunkirk, the Blitz began. It brought the Second World War home to Britain. But up North, it was still a newsreel war for most.

However, as part of the civilian air raid fire and warning brigade that protected my employer's warehouse, I attended meetings with civil defence personnel. At these gatherings, the warnings were dire about what awaited every part of industrialised Britain. Hitler was going to rein terror from the skies across the whole country, not just London. No one was safe and a land invasion was considered to be imminent.

In 1940, it was only a matter of time before the war came to Halifax and took innocent lives with indiscriminate glee. When it finally arrived on Halifax's doorstep, I was at Grosvenor's warehouse on the moors on night shift for my air raid warden duties.

The sky above me was clear and crisp. It was full of stars, but the moon was absent. I thought the night would be like all of my previous shifts on the moors. Where in the morning, my log book report statement read. “No enemy activity over section.” It wasn’t to be because the war came home to my city before ten o'clock PM, on that night.

At around 9 PM, In the distance, I heard a loud explosion ,and saw a flash erupt in Halifax several miles away.

Then above me, there was the drone of a lone aircraft flying away.

I didn't know what would happen next. I was scared and excited by the event. I worried that more Luftwaffe bombers were nearby, ready to hit downtown Halifax. If there was another raid that night, I didn't know if my friends or my family would be hurt or killed in it. I was also scared that perhaps the Luftwaffe was on its way to attack me standing guard alone at the Grosvenor’s food warehouse.

I wanted to leave my post but knew I couldn't. I craved a cigarette but was afraid to break the blackout and perhaps signal to the Luftwaffe that there was a target below asking to be bombed.

At dawn, I anxiously rode my bike to work. There I learned how deadly the night was for Halifax. Eleven people on Hanson Lane were killed by a hundred-pound bomb dropped by a Henkel.

A week later Sheffield was bombed like it was London. Over one terrible night, the steelworks were obliterated and over 600 civilians were killed in their Blitz. I asked my civil defence leader if I could be sent to Sheffield to help with the rescue and clean up. But I was told to remain in Halifax because there were concerns another and greater air attack was imminent.

I continued to attend lectures at the Mechanic's Institute during the first 18 months of the war. Many of the discussions were divided between those who thought the war against Hitler was in the best interest of the working class and those who promoted Stalin's non-aggression pact with Hitler.

Attitudes in the working class towards supporting the war slowly began to change when Labour, in 1940 became part of a National government led by Churchill. There was a feeling we finally had a seat at the table of power.

The "we were all in it together" mood was enhanced further after William Beveridge a Liberal Lord, was charged by parliament, at the urging of Labour, to write a detailed report on what Britain economically and socially should look like post-war.

Labour politicians and left-wing tabloids informed the working class that this Report, once completed, was Britain's blueprint for a modern welfare state where poverty would be eliminated.

The Beveridge Report wasn't presented to parliament until 1942. But even the promise of it pushed much of the working class into supporting the war effort. A promise by the three main political parties: The Tories, Labour and the Liberals that defeat of Hitler guaranteed a post-war welfare state, which included public healthcare changed the tide of the war for Britain just as much as American Lend Lease. The ordinary worker finally had something to fight for, a future free of want for themselves, their loved ones and their mates. .

In 1941, on my 18th Birthday, I was notified by post that I was subject to arbitrary enlistment into the armed services before my 19th birthday. Or I could volunteer and choose what branch of the military I wanted to belong to if done before December 31,1941.

I still didn't know what I was going to do. However, in June of 1941, after Hitler broke his non-aggression pact with Stalin by invading Russia, being personally part of the war seemed impossible to avoid. It was total war, here, there and everywhere. No one, who was alive and young then could skirt being dragged into it willingly or unwillingly. .

During the autumn of that year, my employer asked me again if I wanted to become a Quaker.

I told him no.

My employer begged me to reconsider.

“Stay with us and be a conscientious objector.”

He argued. Why should I not be spared? Why should I not be given God’s grace of a long life which could be used to sell cold meats and Barnsley chops to the people of Halifax, for him? He told me two of his other shop managers had already taken his offer and would become conscientious objectors.

I politely declined to make it a trinity of pacifists. I only asked that he keep my job open for me when all this war nonsense ended.

I wasn't prepared to lie to a military board and say I was a god-fearing pacifist because I didn't believe in God, and I certainly didn't believe in turning the other cheek. Having to defend, in the past, my mother against Bill's violence taught me that you must stand up against a bully.

I also wanted to leave Halifax and the acrimonious emotional orbit of my mother.

Within months, newspaper headlines written on chalkboards in front of shops cried out about more deadly Luftwaffe air raids against Britain, the encirclement of Leningrad and the fall of Kiev. We were not winning the war, and things were bleak.

Then Japan's attack on Pearl Harbour came on December 7th. After the US entered the war, the mood in Britain shifted slightly towards optimism. Perhaps, we might survive to see peace return to our lives.

In December 1941, just before Christmas- I took a bus to the RAF recruitment centre in Huddersfield. I arrived at the drab Recruitment Office on the high street. The regional headquarters was filled with banks of typewriters and sallow men in woollen uniforms. I showed the duty sergeant my resident ID and proclaimed I was volunteering for the RAF. I was ushered into another room, where I filled out a brief questionnaire about my education, my occupation, my residence, and my religion. I wrote: Left school at 14, Grocer’s Assistant, Roman Catholic. I was five feet four inches tall, and 130 pounds. The RAF gladly took me as a volunteer. There was little else they could choose from as our island was being strangled to death in the Atlantic and in the North African desert campaign.

All of continental Europe was in the hands of the Nazis. The war effort needed anyone who could walk into a recruiting centre and sign their life away on the dotted line.

I was told to report to RAF Padgate the first week of January for Square-bashing.

When I returned home and for all of Christmas week my mother refused to stop boasting to neighbours and shop clerks about my enlistment

My lad is a brave one. He went and joined the RAF. You know the never, so few, lot. Not like the rest of the lazy sods around here waiting for Hitler to come to knock on their doors.”

My last Christmas as a civilian was a quiet affair. Alberta stayed in Bradford because Charlie had recently gone AWOL, from the army. He wasn't listed yet as a deserter and Alberta hoped he would return to their home and then surrender himself to the military police.

The day before I left for RAF induction and square bashing, I indulged myself- with a visit to the public baths at the top of Boothtown Road. I arrived and paid an attendant 50p. It was a privilege to soak in a warm bath rather than a tin tub filled with tepid water in a kitchen. An attendant led me along a narrow passageway until he found an unoccupied room. Inside the narrow, wood-lined space was a hanger for clothes and a deep, porcelain bathtub.

The attendant placed a plug into the bath, turned the taps on, waited until the bathtub filled with warm water, and then departed.

I undressed and submerged myself in the clean hot water. I was empty of thoughts or cares until the water grew cold, and it was time to dry myself, dress, and depart.

Afterwards, I spent some hours with Alberta, who had come down to Halifax to bid me farewell. We did not talk much. We sipped our ale. We held each other’s hands on the table. We looked into each other’s faces, seeing if we could read our past upon them. She joked and bantered more than me because I was withdrawn and frightened about what tomorrow would bring.

There was no one and nothing which could ease my sense of apartness from the civilian world. When it was time for my sister to leave, she kissed me.

“Come back safe, Harry, just come back.”

The following morning, I awoke with a jittery feeling like it was a school morning. I dressed warmly and went to the kitchen. My mother was sitting alone, warming herself by the oven. Bill had already gone to work, and Matt and Junior were at school. She made me a cup of tea and cut me a large slice of fresh bread. There was a generous lather of butter and jam on it.

“Go on, tuck in. Well, lad, this is it. Keep your head down, Harry. Don’t do anything daft because life is short, my boy, life is short.”

I hugged her with mixed emotions. I mumbled farewell and made my way to the train station.

The train platform was deserted and I waited alone for my train to Padgate, The day was cold, damp, and grey. Sweet smoke from the Macintosh Toffee factory fell like drizzle across the station. I reached into my overcoat and found a near-empty packet of cigarettes. I placed one in my mouth and furiously struck a match. I inhaled the smoke from the harsh tobacco.

In the distance, I heard the whistle of the train. I smelled the coal burning off its engine. I breathed in the coal that had been dug from the pits of Barnsley, Elsecar, and Barley Hole. I tasted it in my mouth, around my teeth, and on my tongue. It was the soot of my father, my grandfather, and all my ancestors who laboured beneath the ground. As the train drew its way into the belly of the station, another passenger approached the platform. He was a man in his fifties, long past the time for war, and he was whistling the tune, ‘Run rabbit, run rabbit, run, run, run.”

Your subscriptions are so important to my personal survival because like so many others who struggle to keep afloat, my survival is a precarious daily undertaking. The fight to keep going was made worse- thanks to getting cancer along with lung disease and other co- morbidities which makes life more difficult to combat 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, gift subscription or tip. I promise the content is good, relevant and thoughtful. But if you can’t it all good too because I appreciate we are in the same boat. Take Care, John