Democracy isn't on the ropes it's down for the count.

I couldn't be arsed to thumb wrestle with the fates today. Instead, I am sending out 13 quotes and a video from Harry Leslie Smith that- despite him being dead for over 5 years- sum up our reality in 2024.

The Harry’s Last Stand project which I worked on with my Dad for the last 10 years of his life was an attempt to use his life story as a template to effect change. His unpublished history- The Green & Pleasant Land is a part of that project. I have been working on it, refining it and editing it to meet my dad’s wishes. It should be ready for a publisher in May.

Your support in keeping my dad’s legacy going and me alive is greatly appreciated. I depend on your subscriptions to keep the lights on and me housed. So if you can please subscribe and if you can’t it is all good because we are fellow travellers in penury. But always remember to share these posts far and wide. Below is a chapter selection that deals with the rise of Hitler as Harry becomes a teenager.

1. All people really want in this world is a chance to make good on their lives through the opportunities that affordable healthcare, education and decent-paying jobs provide.

2. For the past thirty years, both Labour and Tory governments have been too enamoured by the majesty of corporate power and excess to comprehend that, to create a just society, you must tame the beast of capitalism, not let it roam free like a rampaging beast."

3. When my generation built the welfare state, we didn’t eliminate wealth: we tamed it and harnessed its energy through taxation and nationalisation schemes.

4. Too many in the middle class have lost their capacity to be outraged about real injustice. Their voices have grown quiet when it comes to wage inequality unless they can point the finger at the migrant. They are schtum when it comes to the housing crisis unless they can blame the migrants for making affordable housing out of the reach of millions.

5. We have to face facts: it is not the Polish migrant workers at Lidl that are upsetting the balance of society but the fact that 10 per cent of the richest households in this country own 45 per cent of Britain’s wealth.

6. At every turn, good people in Britain are allowed 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.

7. 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

8. The longer Russia remains in the grasp of Vladimir Putin, the longer its own people will suffer the economic consequences of his dictatorship more than anyone else, but if we don’t remedy inequality and the refugee crises, Putin’s Russia will be the external threat that pushes Western democracies over the edge.

9. Our entire world teeters perilously between oligarchy and dysfunctional democracy, which has been made worse by the rise of leaders like Trump, Putin and Xi Jinping in China.

10. Former assembly-line workers from America’s rust belt, evangelicals outraged by being led by a liberal black president and businesses trying to return to the glory days of the robber barons each sought affirmation in Donald Trump’s promise to ‘Make America Great Again’.

11. I understand the anger that drove people towards the cliff of Brexit or into the poisonous arms of Donald Trump because poverty shrank my possibilities just like a prison cell reduces a person’s mobility and stunts their dreams.

12. During the early 1930s, I knew I was trapped by my family’s lack of financial resources. I had no dreams about growing up and having a good job. No politician had to tell me I had no future.

13. I knew from the day I started pushing a beer barrow at the age of seven that my education, my childhood and my human dignity were being sacrificed because my family needed to eat- but the state was unwilling to supply us with what we needed to survive.

14. And a short video from Harry Leslie Smith on the Refugee Crisis.

Thanks for reading and supporting my Substack. It’s an SOS because the end of the month approaches and I am short on rent with only 5 days to go.Your support keeps me housed and also allows me to preserve the legacy of Harry Leslie Smith. A yearly subscriptions will cover much of next month’s rent. 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 or a gift subscription. I promise the content is good, relevant and thoughtful. Take Care, John.