Penny for the Guy..

Our working-class history that created the Welfare State is being erased by neoliberalism, which is why the memories, compassion and socialism of Harry Leslie Smith must be preserved.

Below are two selections from The Green and Pleasant Land. It is about Bonfire Night 1931 in Bradford and one in Halifax in1948.

The Green and Pleasant Land was unfinished at the time of his death. I've been piecing it together from all the written notes, typescript & index cards, my father left behind. The sixth anniversary of Harry Leslie Smith's death is November 28th. I hope to have it ready for a publisher by then. Tips or subscriptions are always greatly appreciated.

Photo by Jamie Street on Unsplash

In the late autumn of 1931, the sun above Bradford hid behind a curtain of soot-stained clouds. Coal was scarce and damp crept into our doss with heavy footsteps. I had holes in my boots and to my nine-year-old mind, the shortening days made me think winter was a lone wolf waiting in the dales around my city readying itself to pounce. I detested November's long nights because, in the attic, where I slept, there was only candlelight to read the books I borrowed from the library.

At the beginning of November kids like me escaped our Great Depression misery exhausting ourselves by foraging for scrap wood during the days leading up to Bonfire Night. In marauding gangs, we invaded derelict buildings that were shuttered because of the economic catastrophe. Inside- we scavenged for things to burn, from scrap wood to discarded crates. If we were lucky; we found old factory pulley ropes, that were greased with oil.

We took these ropes out onto the narrow cobbled streets, and with Captain Webb matches, we lit their ends. They smouldered- and glowed bright red like the tip of a cigarette in the dark night air.

We sang childish rhymes about monkeys shitting limes as if they were incantations to the gods of fire. Intoxicated by the ecstasy of play, we spun the hemp tapers around in the air until the frayed bits sparked against the desolate blackness of our poverty-strewn existences.

Like Prometheus, I and the others- ran and hollered out our boyish joy that we had the secret of fire in our possession. We forgot hunger, loneliness and sadness in those joyful moments of play.

Back then, happiness was brief because misery was around every corner in our neighbourhood.

I can still smell the musty aroma of burning rope on the nights before the 5th of November. But I also recoil from the pungent memory of sounds that tumbled towards me from nearby open windows. They were like screams escaping from a circle in Dante's Hell. The howls of women beaten senseless by their husbands drunk from beer or intoxicated from the humiliation of never-ending unemployment. I heard escape from the lips of the dying who didn't have the scratch to afford morphine to ease the pain of cancers gnawing at their body like wild dogs tearing apart carrion. The dying growled and yelped like animals mauled by a beast.

But when the fires we lit on the 5th of November burnt high with the scrapes of wood I had helped collect. I concentrated on the raging flames and imagined escaping the warren of my poverty in the faraway future of adulthood.

Much later in the Green & Pleasant Land, Harry describes the same night.

In its customary fashion when November’s arrived, the temperature fell; the sun went into exile and rain dropped like shrapnel from a coal-black sky down onto Halifax’s cobbled streets.   My spirit began to taper from the lack of light and the desperation of finding that one day led to another that was exactly the same as the last. The only element of my work day that I relished was the end of my shift at Macintosh’s which ended at half four. 

When I was done for the day, I crossed the factory’s gates with a hundred other employees. Everyone was dressed the same: workman’s jacket, cap and scarf.  Around us, there was the smell of tobacco that stuck like treacle to the outside air as workers sparked up a cigarette and exhaled dirty smoke. Few of us spoke, so the only sound came from the weary crush of our boots against the stone pavement. 

By the time we’d reach the end of the roadway, the stream of workers divided and subdivided as each employee rushed to catch a bus to their home. No one looked back at the looming brick monolith, where we toiled for our 9-hour shift.

November fifth was the only night when Halifax appeared festive, warm, and accommodating, during that month.

 “It looks like they want to burn down the neighbourhood,” Friede remarked when she witnessed the celebration for the first time.”

“This is all in good fun, a way for the young ones to blow off steam.”

“It is a strange festivity,” Friede concluded.

I laughed and said.

“It gives two fingers back at the winter to come. Everyone out tonight looks happy. I know it might be the beer in their bellies that gives their cheeks a rosy hue. But at least for this short time, people feel like they belong to a community. Better still, they can toss all their anger towards their bosses, the government, onto the fire and say ‘Cheerio.’”

 A couple days after the fiery celebration, it was evident that winter was coming. I smelt it in the outside air. I saw it in the pessimistic expressions of people on the street. It was everywhere except on the advertisements covering the sides of the local buses.  The cold gloom was at our border whilst hope, joy, and optimism readied themselves for hibernation.

We could do nothing to prevent the frost, the inhospitable temperatures, or the sunless days but bundle ourselves up in our winter coats, light a cigarette, take refuge in a cinema, and watch the latest flick from America. If we felt sufficiently flush or down in the dumps, we found a pub with an abundant coal supply to keep warm in the company of fellow lost souls.

As the nights grew longer- and more desolate in the West Riding; Friede’s sense of isolation became more acute. Her letters home to Hamburg were more desperate and frequent…

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. The Green & Pleasant Land, the project my Dad was working on at the time of his death is almost ready.