"It's not because we didn't value democracy but because our democracy didn't value us. " The rise of fascism..

Hello again:

Thank you for taking the journey with me by reading instalments from the Green & Pleasant Land- the book my Dad was working on before his death. So far, you have travelled from Harry Leslie Smith’s birth in 1923 until 1941. During that year my Dad entered RAF Padgate to join the war effort which is today’s reading from the work.

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 and remake a Welfare State fit for the 21st century. His unpublished history- The Green & Pleasant Land is a part of that project.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 “really" late 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.

Square-bashing at Padgate:

Sheets of winter rain fell against the windows of the third-class rail carriage that took me to the RAF base at Padgate. I stood for the duration of my trip because the train was overbooked.

The other passengers were mostly like me - young men on their way towards being square bashed for King and Country. We exuded a fug of boyish excitement that blended into our collective smell of damp, sweat, tobacco and beer.

 Outside the cold and bleak landscape of Yorkshire and then Lancashire trundled across my vision. I hadn't been on a train since 1937 when Alberta took me to Blackpool as a school-leaving gift. I felt a similar excitement but also uncertainty about what awaited me in the RAF.

There was also a growing sense of emancipation from my past and the humdrumness of my recent existence in Halifax.

However, the euphoria of change was tempered with a dark thought that becoming a participant in this war might include a letter sent to my mother telling her I had died for King and Country.

I didn't give a flying fuck for Britain, its empire or its soddening class system. My disdain for the way Britain operated to enrich the entitled classes was not a minority opinion. It was a belief held by many in the working classes who were not enthusiastic about fighting the war when it began.

 It's not because we didn't value democracy but because our "democracy" didn't value us. It underpaid us and overworked us. British democracy in the early 20th century had complete contempt for its workers and colonial subjects. We couldn't afford healthcare so we died earlier than the middle classes. We were denied decent housing, proper holidays and the right to leisure. 

So being asked to defeat Nazism to preserve the status quo insulted any sacrifice we would make for the war effort. It's why William Beveridge a Liberal Lord was charged by parliament in 1940 with writing a report that set out a blueprint for a post-war British society where all mattered not just the wealthy few and the middle classes that preserved the class system of entitlement. The Beveridge Report wasn't presented to parliament until 1942. But even the promise of it assuaged the working classes who then accepted they must do wartime service because defeating Hitler offered ordinary blokes like me the rich dividends of a post-war welfare state. It's what motivated my teenage self to see RAF induction as a lark rather than a possible death sentence.

. *******

At Padgate Rail Station, I followed other bleary-eyed teenagers who carried like me- suitcases made of cardboard along a road that led us to our RAF base for induction.

As I strolled along with the rest, my elation grew at the prospect that my entire life was radically changing. The former person I was- Harry Smith born on the wrong side of the tracks, who became a beer barrow boy at the age of seven, and an assistant manager in a grocer's shop at seventeen-shed from me the closer I got to the gate of the RAF base. 

I was about to become a cog in Britain's war machine. It seemed alright except for the nagging memories I had of the World War One veterans who had been residents in the doss houses I lived in during childhood. I remembered their stories about the horrors of the first world war and how they were forgotten by Britain once their war was over.

Would I and and my generation become like them because sometimes I wasn't sure or confident for the present or future.  I tried to ignore those memories of the shell shocked Tommies who  lived cheek by jowl with me in the grimiest parts of 1930s Bradford. I wanted to  believe this time politics was on the side of the worker because the government in this war was a coalition where the Labour Party controlled the domestic agenda.  

When we arrived inside the base, a warrant officer barked at the others and me.

 “Have your enlistment papers ready,” Stand in a neat single file. No talking,”

In small groups we were ordered to proceed into a prefabricated building where there was a clatter of noise from typewriters and ringing telephones. My papers were assessed by a clerk who asked. “When you volunteered, you indicated that you wanted to be a wireless operator. Is that what you still want to do?”

I thought for a moment and agreed it was my preferred choice. The notion of becoming a wireless operator seemed daring to me. For someone who had grown up in the slums, wireless operations seemed to be a  cutting edge technology. 

The clerk looked down at my enlistment paper and initialled them with a thick fountain pen. I was dispatched to another section of the building where a medical doctor ordered me to strip.

I was prodded from all directions. My pulse and blood pressure were taken. I was measured and weighed like livestock. Finally, I was inoculated against diseases with injections that made the muscles in my right arm ache.

It was a strange sensation to be looked at by a doctor because up until joining the RAF, I had never been examined by one, owing to its expense.

 Pushed out of the medical exam room, I tumbled down a hallway marked with arrows which pointed me towards the next station of my transformation, from civilian to soldier, the barber shop. There a man with clippers made quick work of my hair with a short, back, and sides cut. 

From there a sergeant spat orders at me to be on the double and get kitted out.

I went to another room where a clerk measured me for my uniform. Afterwards, the clerk went from piles of shirts to heaps of trousers, coats, and boots, and then neatly presented them to me.

I signed that I had accepted: one shirt, one pair of trousers, one belt, one overcoat, boots, a hairbrush, a boot brush, a cap and one kit bag. I agreed; it was my responsibility to keep, in good order, the clothing and accoutrements given to me by the King. Loss or malicious damage to this uniform was a breach of regulations which would result in forfeiture of one’s pay.

I was also given my service number, which I was to memorize. Upon request, it was to be repeated, immediately: “Smith, LAC 1777….”

From now on, the numbers tumbled out of me, as if they had been given to me at the baptismal font. I was presented with my pay book. It recorded my weekly stipend awarded to me for service whilst employed by the nation. I stammered a very civilian, “Ta.” The clerk ignored me and he wanted to get on with the next fitting, for the chap waiting patiently behind me.

Thanks for reading and supporting my Substack. 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. But if you can’t it all good too because I appreciate we are in the same boat. Take Care, John