I can measure how a month has treated me by whether I can afford Swedish rye bread. By that standard, September was harsh: thirty days of thin-sliced Wonder Bread, the cheapest option. At least I didn’t run out of coffee. One cup a day remains my last small luxury. Funny, the little things that connect us to the before times, eh?
(6 more paragraphs to go until the main essay, sorry and thanks)
I’m not watching the clock, but I’m profoundly aware of how fast it’s racing towards 1 October, when my rent comes due. I still haven’t managed to scrape it all together. I’m $385 short in Canadian dollars, which terrifies me. Eviction takes time, but once that process begins, it’s like toothpaste squeezed from a tube because it never goes back inside.
I started this Sub stack in November 2021. I’ve used it to preserve my dad’s writings and to document why his final mission in life — to ensure his past did not become our future — still matters. Sub stack has provided support, but it’s now a harder platform on which to strike a match and keep it burning. That’s neoliberalism for you.
Still, it has been a good place to store and share these writings, especially given my health problems. I don’t expect to die for a few more years, but if I go earlier than either I or medical science predict, this Sub stack will remain. It will preserve a personal working-class history of things past that may have some use for others when I’m gone.
I hope it continues to inspire and radicalise readers to break the neoliberal chains that bind us to our yokes.
There’s no question: this is a plea for help with my rent. I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t truly need support. And if you can’t contribute, please know I still value your solidarity and ongoing encouragement.
I’m asking for your help with my rent, which is due tomorrow. I’m $385 short in Canadian dollars. If you can contribute, any amount would be invaluable. But please, only give if you can do so without putting yourself at risk.
Labour Party Conference 2025: Betraying Britain and History
In 2014, at the Labour Party Conference, my dad, Harry Leslie Smith, delivered — perhaps — the finest speech ever given by a non-politician, on why public healthcare is the bedrock of a functioning democracy and society.
“Today, we must be vigilant, we must be vocal, and we must demand that the NHS always remain an institution for the people, by the people. We must never let the NHS fall out of our grasp — because if we do, your future will be my past. I am not a politician, a member of the elite, or a financial guru, but my life is your history — and we should keep it that way. So say it loud and clear in this hall and across this country: Tories, keep your mitts off our NHS.”
In 2025, the content of my dad’s NHS speech would likely never be allowed at a Labour Party Conference, because it openly espoused socialism. It was a speech that championed the working class, criticised the entitled elite, and argued for a truly inclusive Britain.
It was a speech that rejected capitalism as a cure-all for maintaining public infrastructure. It championed higher taxation for Britain’s entitled elite. And it did not patronise today’s younger generation, instead acknowledging that they had been short-changed by neoliberalism.
It was a speech that wasn’t superficial. And in 2025, it does not tally with what Keir Starmer has done to the Labour Party.
My dad doesn’t even exist as a memory for those in command of Labour today. Harry Leslie Smith was everything they are not. He was the real deal, with no bullshite about him.
I knew Starmer’s Labour had de-platformed my dad’s legacy long ago. The city of Halifax, despite having a Labour MP, still won’t put up a blue plaque to acknowledge his life there. Perhaps it’s because he didn’t become a millionaire from the sweat of other workers.
I don’t know, but the penny finally dropped for me: Harry Leslie Smith was erased from the party’s history, just as his entire generation’s struggles were ignored when, on the centenary of his birth in 2023, no acknowledgment was made. The Labour MPs who clamoured for selfies with my dad during election cycles — and some who secretly tried to get him to join their coup against Corbyn — couldn’t be arsed to tweet “Happy Birthday.”
The man who, in 2014, was lionised in Britain’s news media as giving Labour its voice back is now a non-person for Labour’s leadership.
It’s not sour grapes that I mention this, but as a warning: anyone who expects, or claims, the NHS will be safe under a Starmer Labour government is being naïve — or deliberately misleading people for their own ends.
My dad, if still alive, would long ago have broken ranks with Labour. He would have denounced them for being willing participants in Israel’s genocide against Palestinians. He would have castigated them for racism and xenophobia towards Britain’s migrant population, and for their appeasement of Donald Trump’s new world order of fascism. He would have told Keir Starmer and his craven cabinet of careerists to “get stuffed — or worse.”
Remember, my dad’s generation took what was theirs from the 1% in 1945 and built a Welfare State. If they could do it, we can do it again. Listen to Harry Leslie Smith’s recollections. Remember the hardships your parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents endured, and fight like hell to send every centrist packing — because they are more dangerous to us than the Tories during an age of fascism. We now have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
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I’m 62, living with cancer and lung disease, and like so many others, survival is a precarious daily undertaking in this cost-of-living crisis. This newsletter is how I , carry forward my dad’s Last Stand legacy, and keep a roof over my head.
Four new yearly subscribers this month would cover my rent and with 36 hours left it is touch and go. If you’re able, your help through a subscription or the tip jar would make a significant difference.
In 2014 I was in the audience at Labour Party Conference when your dad gave his speech, don't have the words to express how good he was. Afterwards I shared his photo on FB saying it was the best political speech I'd ever heard, made by someone who was not a politician.
Every word mattered because of his lived experience, including "don't let my past be your future ".
It is heartbreaking that so many members have lost all trust in the party, in particular Keir Starmer. Every pledge broken and complicit in a genocide, his failures will not be forgotten.
Keir Starmer has dragged the Labour Party so far to the Right that they're now in bed with a lot of Tory ideas. The Tory Party are now the Libertarian Fascists. Anything rather than have the rich pay their taxes.
In 2014 I was in the audience at Labour Party Conference when your dad gave his speech, don't have the words to express how good he was. Afterwards I shared his photo on FB saying it was the best political speech I'd ever heard, made by someone who was not a politician.
Every word mattered because of his lived experience, including "don't let my past be your future ".
It is heartbreaking that so many members have lost all trust in the party, in particular Keir Starmer. Every pledge broken and complicit in a genocide, his failures will not be forgotten.
Hope the small donation helps.
Keir Starmer has dragged the Labour Party so far to the Right that they're now in bed with a lot of Tory ideas. The Tory Party are now the Libertarian Fascists. Anything rather than have the rich pay their taxes.