Chapter Five: You Know What You Know. Excerpt from Harry Leslie Smith's Green and Pleasant Land.

As Britain prepares for the coronation of King Charles a palette cleanser from Harry Leslie Smith. Here is an excerpt from his book the Green and Pleasant Land about doss house life during the Great Depression in Bradford.

I adjusted, quickly, to our new surroundings in Bradford. They were more grim than the hovels we had inhabited in Barnsley but I was a child who had not yet discovered capitalism's forbidden knowledge-that servitude was exploitation.  It all seemed normal and the way the world worked. Besides, I still felt loved by my parents and sister which made me believe I was safe even when our food supplies ran low and hunger pangs gnawed in my belly with the ferocity of carpenter ants against a timber framed house.

But I wasn't safe nor was the rest of my family, we were casualties in the monied class’s war against a just society. When there is no social safety net, and you are working class, poverty can't be outrun. It consumes you because those who govern society believe your labour is energy for their betterment that is easily replaceable by millions of other units identical to you.

That doesn't stop people from trying to flee their misery. Humans are hardwired to keep hope alive and believe that tomorrow can be better than today. Many times my mother attempted to slip her chains of poverty. First, by marrying my dad which proved a quick road to penury for both of them. And then, in 1928 after my dad lost his job in the mines because of injury she upped sticks with him and my sister and me for Bradford.