The Labour Party Conference 2024 Will Bury Any Hope For a Britain Where The Many Prosper.

I don't think anyone should be excited by this year's Labour Party conference because it will cement a neo-liberal vision for Britain where only the top 20% of income earners will get a life worth living. The jig is up for anyone on the left who thinks they can push the party leftward to keep the NHS an institution for and by the people. It was different in 2014 during Ed Miliband's tenure. There was hope, but then the world was normal. It is time for the history books because Brexit, COVID-19, the war in Ukraine, the Cost of living crisis and fascism's triumph over democracy have forever altered our world.

Below is a selection from my book Standing with Harry. The segment reflects upon Harry Leslie Smith at the Labour Conference keynote speech on the need to preserve, improve and expand public healthcare.

After London, we took a train to Manchester for the Labour Party Conference. It was both your first and last political conference that you attended in person.

“All my life, I’ve believed politics can change a society. But I just cannot stand the bullshit that comes from being in a convention hall with a bunch of politicians. Even the best will betray someone, some ideal or some cause from spite, foolishness, greed, or self-advancement.” 

At the time, neither of us knew how galvanising a role you would play at the upcoming Labour Party conference. Originally, you were only booked to do one fringe event and a book signing in the main concourse during the conference.

When we arrived, no one paid you any mind. You were just some old gent of no recognisable importance. Your anonymity allowed us to observe the comings and goings of the Labour Party shining stars, on the day before the conference.

You laughed when you spotted Chuka Umunna strut about the empty conference centre, instructing people on how best to put up displays. "He's a man with ambition that exceeds his grasp."

 At breakfast, you watched Dennis Skinner hold court at the Premiere Inn restaurant telling tales of campaigns and conferences of long ago. He impressed ordinary conference-goers by his legitimate boast Labour HQ had offered him more expensive digs, but he preferred slumming it with the ordinary folk. Afterwards, you remarked, “He’s a dandy from the coal face. But that’s ok because he is no class traitor and fought for the disadvantaged all his life.”

To the Labour party apparatus, you were an enigma they tolerated, because the Daily Mirror and Unite said you were a thing. They simply didn’t know what to make of someone coming to speak at the Labour Party conference with no political, business or union connections, who had lived in Canada for 50 years, but had the temerity to scold modern British society for forgetting its socialist roots. Labour organisers for that conference expected you to give a bland speech, which garnered a few applauses, and then you would disappear, and be forgotten by everyone there. Instead, you became a Yorkshire version of the prophet Tiresias in Greek Drama. You were to become the warning most did not heed in the Labour party due to their hubris and entitlement.

Before your speech, Ed Miliband certainly hadn’t heard of you. He was pissed off his time was wasted by having to meet you a day before your healthcare speech. But the feeling was mutual because it was late in the afternoon, which was a time of day when you preferred to nap.

After your encounter with the Labour leader, you said, “John, I don’t give a shit about those mucks.” My speech tomorrow is about giving voice to the dead who were lost beneath the waves of capitalism and a class system that favoured wealth. I want to remind people of their working-class past and motivate them to fight for a better society. If this all falls on deaf ears, I had an honourable shot at changing things. Never in my life did I expect to be here. So, to hell with it if it goes to shit. We will have a beer, a good dinner, and fuck off back home.”

After meeting Ed Miliband, you practised reading your speech three times on an autocue in a room behind the conference’s main stage. By the last go, you were satisfied as if you read speeches from autocues regularly, rather than this being your first time.

Back in the hotel room, we ate sandwiches and drank beer I’d bought at Tesco while you watched Last of the Summer Wine on television. You laughed at the jokes as if they were as fresh as when you first saw the program thirty years ago with mum.

The next morning, after a light breakfast of porridge and coffee, I wheeled you in a transport wheelchair to the conference centre from the hotel. A Labour party official working at the conference escorted us to the green room. You noticed Dennis Skinner was in the room, and that relaxed you, as for the other Labour party functionaries and trade union people, they ignored you. We were nonentities in this world of high stakes politics. Before your speech, to Labour party conference organisers you were supposed to be the forgotten tap dancer  before the real talent came onto the stage. In the Green Room, you were testy because the responsibility of what you were about to say began to weigh upon you, like the hundred-weight coal sacks you carried as a ten-year-old boy, to earn some scratch. “You’ve got me in the shit, now,” you growled. Your mood was eased when Dennis Skinner began telling you stories about political canvassing with Tony Benn in the late 1960s.

Then an attendant called your name and ushered you out to get you ready for your speech. I didn’t go with you because I didn’t want to spook you. I would watch your speech from the monitors. So that when you spoke, you weren’t looking for me in the crowd and could concentrate on the autocue.

While you waited to be called on stage to give your NHS speech to the Labour Party conference, Dennis Skinner kept you company in the auditorium hall. Skinner kept you calm by cracking jokes. He took your mind away from the job you were about to do, but felt so underqualified to do, which was to remind Britain it had a duty to preserve the Welfare State built by your generation.

Once at the lectern you looked serene and professional, as if you had waited your whole life to tell Britain and its 1% about the suffering your family and millions endured before public healthcare. The words you used to speak about a time before the NHS when life for the poor was so easily lost to curable illnesses and disease was both poetic and brutal.

You were an authentic voice to say why Labour was a tide that raised all boats in 1945 and must be again a socialist surge for this 21^st century generation or else perish as a political force.

During your speech, you received three standing ovations that you took with the poise of a professional orator when you good-humouredly waved the audience to return to their seats so that you could finish speaking. You had the room. You owned everyone’s heart. When the television camera cut to the audience, I noticed people were either spellbound or weeping, because you reminded them that politics must be a movement for and by the people, not corporate interests.

That speech was your greatest political triumph because it won hearts and minds in the Labour party. When it was over, Andy Burnham, who was on stage behind you, came up to hug you with tears in his eyes.

When you left the stage, you raised your arm in the air as if you were a prize-fighter who in three rounds had knocked out the reigning champion with a devastating punch to the jaw. You had avenged the miserable death of your sister Marion in a workhouse infirmary, and the lonely end of your father, who died a pauper after years toiling at the coalface.

When you returned to your seat, Dennis Skinner whispered to you, “You’re  a true Barnsley lad because your words were like butter on a knife. You gutted those tory bastards for their austerity and what they’ve done to our kind. Well, done, mate.”

Below is some of my dad's speech that I can guarantee your Keir Starmer's Labour Party would never have let him make because it is opposite of everything the party in 2023 stands for.

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