Keir Starmer And the Banality of Neoliberal Evil.

There is no hyperbole in stating that Keir Starmer in less than a year has done more to destroy Britain as a modern, progressive nation than Margret Thatcher did after all her years as Prime Minister. The Labour government’s obliteration of the benefits system should be considered a crime against humanity.

Today is the most dangerous and tumultuous time since the 1930s. We don’t know how this will end for us. All bets are off because, in 2025, we lack a coherent and universal political surge towards socialism to counterbalance the appeal of fascism.

Before my father died in 2018, he spent the previous decade using the history of his life and working-class contemporaries as a political canvas to paint the dangers of unfettered capitalism for humanity and democracy. He correctly predicted that without a return to socialist politics- fascism and wealth inequality would destroy not just our society but civilisation itself.

His unfinished history- The Green & Pleasant Land is a part of that project, along with the 5 other books written during those last years of his life.

For the last year, I have been refining and editing The Green And Pleasant Land to meet my dad’s wishes. Below, I have returned to an excerpt from the books beginning because it describes not the past but present day Britain for many. The Green & Pleasant Land is almost complete and beta copies are available for anyone who is interested to read it.

I have also included a tip jar for those, who are inclined to assist me in this project.

Take care, John

Bradford 1930-Autumn

Not long after my brother Matt’s birth, our unhappy family did a midnight flit from Chesham Street because of rent arrears. We ended up in a miserable slum called St Andrew's Villas. The new neighbourhood was fraught with itinerant labourers, unemployed mill workers, former soldiers from the Great War and struggling pensioners.

As in Chesum Street, these new doss house neighbours were told Dad was our granddad. It was a necessary deception in my mother's scheme to find another man to provide for us. I was shamed not only by my dad's surrender to his debasement but also by my acceptance of it when I started calling him "Grandad" in public.

St Andrew's Villa had a common room where I became acquainted with the other tenants who were once workers. During better times, they had drawn wages and were proud of their labour. But the Great Depression destroyed their self-worth. Some accepted their unemployed fate, and others were angry about it. Mr Brown was one of the angry ones.

Brown had been a soldier in the Great War, and he was pissed off that the land fit for heroes had turned out to be bollocks. There were a few other veterans of World War One, who lived under our roof, and they looked to Brown for leadership and guidance. He knew what to say when shell shock overcame them. He went to their rooms when they screamed at night, "GAS, GAS,” or cried for a dead comrade blown to nothing from artillery.

 Brown was a chain smoker, and the brand he smoked advertised itself as World Famous. To prove it, inside each packet of cigarettes, they placed a national flag printed on a silk card from a country that sold their brand.

Each time Brown opened a fresh packet of cigarettes he gave me the silk card cobnt.

 At bedtime, while my baby brother cried and my parents quarrelled; I stared at the flags on those silk cards and wondered what those countries looked like and whether kids were as poor there as I was in Bradford.

One morning, when the money from the poor relief had run out early, and there was no food for breakfast. My mum told me I needed to work like a man now, or the family would starve, be homeless and end up in the Poor House. During our talk, she wept & cursed Ramsey Macdonald, whom she called a lying Labour bastard.

Mum grabbed my hand and said the off-licence down the road was looking for help. She said I should go immediately and alone. I was to speak clearly and tell the owner I would work longer and harder than anyone else in the neighbourhood.

I did as I was told. I went to the off licence and approached the owner behind the counter. I told him I was looking for work. He laughed and gave me a disdainful glare. I told him that my dad was once a miner, but injury had robbed him of employment.

I was hired because of cold-hearted capitalism. It was less expensive for employers to have children do adult labour.

I worked for him every day after school, late into the night and a half-day on Saturdays. I scrubbed floors and stacked shelves on an empty stomach after doing a full day at school. The owner liked that I could work for next to nothing because my family was famished. He promoted me in no time to beer barrow boy.

 I was tasked to deliver crates of beer to local customers. I stood less than five feet and weighed under seventy pounds, but I was expected to push a steel-wheeled handcart, wide enough to fit five crates of beer containing nine, one half-pint bottles. It was arduous work for a seven-year-old, and I was threatened with lost wages for broken or stolen bottles. But I did it without complaint because hunger scared me more than being worked like a pit pony.

My tiny legs and arms hurt after pushing the barrow during my daily shift. I manoeuvred my wares up and down the narrow industrial streets of our neighbourhood. It was a great humiliation for my father to watch me return from work and place my wages into the family’s piggy bank.

As always, thank you for reading my sub stack posts. I really need your help to keep the legacy of Harry Leslie Smith and his Last Stand alive, in the public eye and relevant. Your subscriptions to this newsletter do that and also keep my housed which has become a precarious thing thanks to getting cancer, interstitial lung disease and some other co- morbidities during 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. There is also a tip jar for those inclined. I promise the content is good, relevant and thoughtful. Take Care, John