Like 1938, our society in 2024 is buying time, until a big war begins in earnest.

We have arrived at 1938 in Harry Leslie Smith’s Green And Pleasant Land.

The book is a memoir, history and confession about the lives of working class people who lived during a time of political and economic extremities. From their sufferings these unemployed miners, mill workers, along with the rest of ordinary Britain made a better world for themselves and others by constructing a Welfare State, where all could share in a nation’s prosperity.

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. His unpublished history- The Green & Pleasant Land is a part of that project.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 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. Below is another chapter selection from the Green & Pleasant Land.

For many including me the whole of 1938 felt the way it does during the minutes leading up to a thunderstorm that brings lots of lightning. The air had an electrical charge to it because of all the political and military events colliding into each other in Britain and around the world. .

Europe was on the brink of war, whilst Japan was already at war against China. The Spanish Civil War was in its second year of conflict. The carnage and atrocities were played out on newsreels and the tabloids. Oswald Mosely collected Britain's disaffected to join his mob of Black Shirts who styled themselves on Hitler's anti-Semitic street fighters. In Halifax, I rarely saw a Black Shirt. That didn't mean there weren't fascists and anti-Semites in the city- just that they were biding their time until they believed it was acceptable to brandish their hatred in public.

To liberals in the middle class they probably sensed society was coming apart at the seams in 1938. But to us in the working class; it had already a long time ago. .

I turned fifteen that year but didn't feel optimistic about my future because the world was going to shit and I knew the first ones dragged down in its fiery crash would be poor folk. .

If those times had been peaceful, I would have felt hopeful. Things were going well for me as long as I stuck to my working class lane. . I could afford to eat and purchase clothes that didn't make me feel as if I were a beggar in rags. I could afford to socialise, go to the pictures and also find time to read books.

I'd been promoted at work and was now an assistant manager at Grosvenor's, which didn't pay much more than when I was their barrow boy. But it did enrich my feelings of self-worth.

I even obtained work for my mother's Boyfriend Bill, who now was employed at Grosvenor's as a butcher. His primary job was making mince in a bathtub that was above the shop. He liked working up there because he didn't mix well with others. Alone with a bathtub full of mince his temper only exploded if the owner's cat snuck into the room and attempted to devour the mince.

With money Bill made as a butcher, he saved up enough to purchase a used wireless radio that operated on a wet battery that needed to be charged in a shop every few days.

It took a central position in our parlour. Bill wanted the radio to listen to football or cricket while smoking a shag cigarette that fouled the room in blue smoke.

When I got the chance, I listened to the news because the owner of Grosvenor's was a pacifist, and he was concerned by events in Hitler's Germany.

"Storm clouds of war are coming lad. You best think of how you can stay out of the carnage."

He advised me to learn up on the "events of the day."

Before 1938, Bill stayed clear of politics or world events. He preferred not to get cluttered up by knowledge. Yet Bill was astute enough to know Hitler was no good. During the Munich crisis in September of that year, Bill listened intently to the wireless. He was spellbound by the notion there could be another war.

After each BBC news bulletin from Munich Bill grumbled to me,

“No good will come by this. Fritz is a right bastard, You best decide now which branch of the service you will be joining at 18. Because this war will be long and bloody.

I didn't know if war was coming. But I didn't relish its possibility.

If there was a war, the soldiers would be promised better lives and better living conditions after the battle was won. The same promises were made to the men returning in 1918 from the Great War.

Those men never got their land fit for heroes. As a child, I saw a great many war veterans living in run-down doss houses with my family. Legless, armless, and or homeless; they were no more victorious than the German soldiers. Talking to those Great War veterans when I was a child; I learned wars were conducted for the rich and powerful and fought by the poor and hopeless.

So I certainly did not want to end up in a war because of Hitler, nor because of Czechoslovakia or because those in charge had bungled the economy and society through their greedy corruption.

In late September 1938, Neville Chamberlain returned to Britain from his peace talks with Hitler in Munich. He waved a piece of paper to the news reel cameras and proclaimed peace in our times. When Bill and I heard the announcement on the wireless my mother's boyfriend was quiet for a moment. Then he  looked at me and said.

"We scrapped out of that by the hair of our chinny, chin, chin.  But a banging big bloody war is coming lad.

His discussion ended as abruptly as it began because  my mother told both of us to get off our arses and clean the fireplace grate. That day ended another began. The routine of living continued as if peace was a promise of forever. But a year later, a war began in earnest and the world was awash in blood and death as if it was 1914.

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