Hope is hard to find in the grey teatime light of austerity and war.

I am posting this to buck up my own flagging spirit. It’s been a tough few years for all of us. I am starting to wonder if any of what I did or what others do matters. Will it disturb the neoliberal universe? I don’t know but I suppose what makes a life worth living is the trying, until one can’t anymore. I guess I am off put because I had to cancel a medical procedure for Monday to check for cancer recurrence. It makes me feel irresponsible that lack of money was the cause to shift around an appointment. But this is life during the end stages of neoliberalism. Many have it far worse than me. New Essay tomorrow in the morning when I feel more myself.

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Too many of us believe we can’t change the world by our actions. Too many of us believe that our voices will never be heard because we aren’t “influencers” in our work or community. But that’s not true. We all have the ability to change the world around us, for the better, in small or large ways.

Just look at the life story of my dad, Harry Leslie Smith. He was the epitome of the ordinary man.

He didn’t crave the limelight - only the sunlight that would allow him to work late into the evenings on his garden. He was a good citizen who paid his taxes, voted in all elections, and helped to provide and nurture, along with my mother, our family. All through his life he followed politics but wasn’t consumed by every issue of the day because life was for living, not campaigning 24/7.

Yet, at his death at the age of 95 in November 2018, he was known as the world’s oldest rebel because of his defence of the NHS, the Welfare State and the vulnerable - not just in Britain but around the world.

The last ten years of my dad’s life were an excellent example of how an ordinary citizen without influence, wealth or connections can rise above the tide of established voices to speak his mind.

But it wasn’t an easy journey for my dad to go from anonymous old man in the crowd to evolving into a voice for tolerance and a Britain for the many, not the few. On my dad’s part, it took gumption, patience and a thick skin to endure the first few years of his journey into Harry’s Last Stand because at first, few in the media or in politics wanted to hear from a kindly old gent with no connections to the world of punditry.

And, yet none of this would have happened if my brother Peter had not died tragically, in 2009 at the age of 50.

My brother’s death left my dad at 86 crippled by grief and loneliness and wanting to die because he had outlived one of his children. I knew then he wouldn’t live long unless he found purpose and enjoyment out of being alive. It’s why I encouraged him and helped him to start writing about his harsh life growing up in the slums of Barnsley, Bradford and Halifax during during the tsunami of economic misery that struck Yorkshire in the Great Depression of the 1930s.

It was a painful task for him to go back to those years of hunger, homelessness, and where politicians in Westminster ignored the hungry cries of his  generation. But by writing about his youth, my dad started to see parallels with Britain’s descent into austerity after the 2008 banking crash and the defeat of the Brown Labour government.

Writing gave my dad the courage to join social media platforms like Twitter where younger political activists found inspiration in the memories he evoked about his generation's ability to change Britain for the better at the end of World War II.

Bit by bit, tweet by tweet, essay by essay and book by book, my dad was able to use his ordinary, working class experiences as boy and man in Yorkshire over 75 years ago to help frame an argument that we must do better as a society in the 21st century, or else the history of the 1930s would repeat itself on today’s generation. Sadly, he like so many others on the left in our 21st century failed to change our tumbled through the looking glass into fascism.

It’s dark out there. But my dad’s generation knew the darkness well and I think they would say, “We must be a tide to raise all boats and resist the right with all our might to our dying breath. Existence has no meaning without empathy and incrementalism only helps maintain the status quo of entitlements to the few and misery for the many. Take a page out of my dad’s book and use what ever time you can spare to try to make a difference that helps make a better Britain for all.

And so an essay which probably isn’t true anymore because now everything is off the rails. But it was written with the optimism my dad held onto throughout his life. IT’s why I ensured his last years were filled with love and laughter because he deserved that reward for being a good egg.

Hope is hard to find in the grey teatime light of this December, because despite all of the holiday cheer around us, darkness gathers. It has been the hardest, saddest and cruellest of years – a sour vintage which has brought to everyone’s doorstep heartache, financial worries and political unease.

Austerity seems eternal, and for many it is as if they are living within a new circle added to Dante’s inferno for the 21st century. Callous and barbarous wars in Yemen and Syria test our faith in humanity, while the unstoppable refugee crisis it produced makes us want to weep in despair for the decrepitude of our civilisation.

Hope is as absent from society today as cash is to a pauper’s wallet because a noxious populism fuelled by hate now smoulders. Everywhere we turn it feels like optimism has been eclipsed by a world we don’t want to recognise as our own. Despair is in the breath of our words because we are frightened.

But as my life has been long, I have seen Britain up against the setting sun of history before. I witnessed our country on its knees from the Great Depression; with its back to the wall and under threat of invasion by the Nazis. Over my nine decades of life, I’ve known despair but never hopelessness.

My hope for a better tomorrow for everyone in our country doesn’t come from our military victories against fascism. It doesn’t come from Churchill’s defiance or the words of present-day politicians. No: the source of hope that has carried me through decades of existence comes from the collective will of my generation in 1945 to beat our swords into ploughshares and harvest a just society through the building aof a Welfare State.

My hope has always come from the humanity, kindness and intelligence that inhabits the majority of people who reside on our shores. It may seem dormant now, but it will rise again because those sparks of decency that built the NHS, gave affordable housing to each and every one of us, and provided free education to all, are in each Briton alive today – because you are the children and the grandchildren of my generation. If we did it before, then we can do it again.

The 1945 General Election was called after our long and brutal war with Germany. It would decide whether our country would cling to its feudal past or accept a bold egalitarian future. I was 22, a member of the allied occupation force and stationed in Hamburg. And it was there that I cast my ballot for the first time – and it’s been a love affair with democracy ever since.

On the day I voted in that occupied city, which looked more worse for wear than Aleppo does now, sorrow could be found on every street corner because of a dead tyrant’s madness. While I queued to vote, I remember how conscious I was of both what I had endured as a boy and teenager during the Great Depression and what I’d witnessed during the war. I felt by making my mark and voting for a welfare state, I was declaring to my country, my peers and those that did not live to see that election day, that my destiny mattered regardless of my humble station in life. The hope that has kept me going all these years came from that election, when ordinary people said their lives mattered just as much as any elite class.

Thanks for all your continuing support. You have been great, and I am so pleased my Substack has nearly 2400 subscribers- 228 of which are paid. I am building a community with your help. But it is slow and arduous work.

In August I published over 25k words here, which is a lot of words. To be honest too many words. If I wasn't so short of cash the post would be fewer but more polished. But that isn't happening anytime soon if ever. I still have a bit to cover for my rent. So, if you can and only if you can please subscribe to my Substack or use the Tip Jar. I am reducing a yearly subscription by 20% because it is a fire sale, of sorts. Take care because I know many of you are sharing the same boat with me.