Harry Leslie Smith's Past Must Not Become Our Future. We should remember his 100th birthday on February 25, 2023.

It’s the winter weather and the waiting, but I am in a funk. I am not sure if it could be defined as depression or just simple despair. Whatever you want to call it, my days have an unpleasant angst to them. This is of no great tragedy. This mood I wear uncomfortable- like a damp sweater against bare skin is not unique to me. It is the times we live in, and hope for respite from our era is naive.

I know I am in this low atmospheric, emotional trough because I am waiting for my CT scan results, which will show if my cancer has returned or my greater fear that I have interstitial lung disease.

My scans since my cancer diagnosis in 2020 have indicated anomalies in the base of my lungs, which is indicative of pulmonary fibrosis. That disease killed my brother at 50 and my dad at 95. I know, if it turns out to be the case that my lungs are fibrotic, it will not be a long wait for me to join them.

But asides from remorse that time's winged chariot might be ready to ride me off into the darkness, there are other reasons I am down in the dumps.

The 25th of February looms close, and that is the 100th anniversary of my father’s birth. The anniversary coming reminds me how much I miss his company and the work we did together. His centenary also reminds me how so much of the mainstream world forgot his books, speeches, and impact on social media so easily and quickly after his death, despite our times being a mirror of his early times.

I shouldn't have been surprised by his erasure because my dad's No Pasaran working class socialism never sat well with news influencers or sitting politicians. I remember during the 2015 General Election a Blairite MP couldn't understand how my dad couldn't have enough money at 92 to buy a residence in Leeds. "But surely you could afford to own up north?"

Last week, I pitched a story to the Guardian about the 100th anniversary of his birth. But as is the Guardian’s Modus Operandi they haven’t responded to my query. I am not surprised because they never responded to my dad’s pitch for the essay, “Is Cameron’s Britain What We Fought the War For?”

In fact, it wasn’t until the essay was published by a 3rd party blog where it went viral- did the Guardian run it, without payment to Harry.

Still, that essay got him “discovered,” by the Guardian. From it, he became a regular contributor to their newspaper until his allegiance to Corbyn soured their appreciation for his essays.

It is more disconcerting for me how my requests to the Morning Star to run something for Harry Leslie Smith’s 100th birthday go unanswered. I'd like to think my emails are caught in spam filters rather than the centenary of his birth being ignored.

The Mirror will be doing a piece on Harry, and that does please me because he had a fond attachment to that news organisation since his youth.

I have been told that the People’s Museum where I donated Harry’s “iconic,” leather jacket in 2019 will remember him with an online blog post.

On an up note, after four years of badgering, pestering and being a general pain in the arse, my father might get his blue plaque up in Halifax, the town of his youth. If it happens it will occur in summer. But there is still a long way to go on that front.

Hopefully, Harry's publishers respond and agree with my suggestion to make his ebooks on the day of his birth free downloads. But considering I was told by one of them that Harry's time had passed, I don't hold out much hope.

As for my book about Harry, me and our times together it still sits with a few publishers who haven't rejected it. It is a good book but as I have said in the past I tick few boxes in the corporate publishing world to get a memoir green-lit.

As for the Labour Party- that Keir Starmer is leader tells me the pragmatic socialism my dad espoused is as good as forgotten. So any mention from them as a collective would seem dishonest. Now and then they retweet his famous 2014 speech on the NHS. But it is posted without context to make it seem that he'd approve of Wes Streeting's plans for the NHS.

I wouldn’t have a problem with my dad being forgotten by the news media, the publishing world, and the political class if 2023 wasn’t the shitstorm he predicted it would be. As a society, we are not in a position where it is prudent to forget Harry Leslie Smith and the world he described before the Welfare State. But as our memory of things past and present is controlled by the 1%, there is little that I can do but keep- keeping on until I can’t anymore.

I feel compelled to keep pressing on to preserve what my dad did and what I did with him during those last eight years of his life. Otherwise, it just seems like it was such a bloody waste of time, his energy and ultimately my good health. It is necessary because this world we live in is a nightmare for the ordinary.

If upper-middle-class Britain can allow 4 million children to go to bed hungry in 2022. Do you really think the top 15% of income earners are going to care if that number reaches 8 million in 2023 or 2024?

Public healthcare both in England and Canada- is for the chop. But maybe just maybe by keeping the flame of my dad’s memory alive by reminding people of his books where he describes the hard life of the ordinary in the 1930s, people will find their anger to fight back as he and his generation did. Hope like in 1945 only comes with action.

Fascism has become the factory default setting for democracies that put the needs of the few over the many. We are now living in a time, that was pledged to be “never again” on the cenotaphs of our war dead. Harry Leslie Smith's past became our present tense. Forgetting his memories of growing up working class in the 1920s and 1930s or his books about those hardscrabble days condemns the younger generations to those conditions. That’s why my dad’s books, speeches and deeds must be remembered on his 100th birthday and beyond. Not remembering his eyewitness accounts allows the entitled to rewrite history and make it a nostalgic, happy place where the working class were content with their labours. Remembering Harry Leslie Smith's world is about you getting so pissed off that you take to the streets in anger at how the 1% has stolen your potential and your children’s potential to not only a happy life but a purposeful one.

So, I will continue bashing away to keep his legacy alive. The news media, the politicians, and the status quo who want us to forget what we shall lose by allowing them to sell off our public healthcare to hedge funds can go to hell.

Thank you for reading my substack. Your support and subscriptions are more important for me now than ever because I am skating on the thinnest of ice. Your subscriptions help me maintain my dad Harry Leslie Smith’s legacy alive as well as keep me housed. On February 25, 2023 Harry Leslie Smith would have been a hundred. I think he would have been sickened that his warning to not make his past our future became true. Take care, John