The Welfare State Stood Between Us and Fascism
It is an ocean of time that separates 1923 from 2026. Yet when you look at soaring rents, food banks stretched beyond capacity, and wages that no longer cover a month’s survival, it all starts to feel like déjà vu.
My father was born on February 25th, 1923. He has been gone for seven years and three months. He was an ordinary man who survived extraordinary upheaval — the Great Depression, war, reconstruction.
His generation believed they had buried the politics that produced hunger, slums, and preventable death. They built a welfare state not as charity, but as defence — a barrier against the return of fascism, economic tyranny and the dehumanising of the worker.
Neoliberalism dismantled that barrier.
What they feared is no longer theoretical. It is here again — in housing markets that treat shelter as speculation, in the privatisation of healthcare, and in politics that scapegoat the vulnerable while protecting concentrated wealth.
Because his birthday is near, I want to take you back to where his life began — in the aftermath of one collapse, before another gathered momentum.
Below is an excerpt from his final, unfinished work, The Green & Pleasant Land. I have restored it into a publishable manuscript — the book he believed needed to be read by those now struggling through the uncertainty of 2026.
Chapter Seven
She Bolted to St Albans
Mum’s affair with Mr O’Sullivan tore apart our family’s unity and our bonds of love. My parents engaged in hurtful screaming matches with each other.
The emotional atmosphere in our small room was oppressive and volatile. It could take hours or minutes. But once my parents’ mutual resentment gathered momentum, it would explode. Hurtful words erupted and buried our living quarters in molten lava — hatred, self-pity, despair.
Mum was desperate for love, for an escape from poverty. She blamed my father for our circumstances and berated him whenever she could.
The only time she did not find fault with him was on my birthday. As a gift, Dad had stashed away some of his poor relief and took me to a pantomime performance of Humpty Dumpty at the Alhambra Theatre.
He could only afford the cheapest seats, high up in the theatre.
As we climbed the stairs, Dad said, “Mind you don’t bump your head on a nearby cloud.”
I didn’t care. I had never been to the theatre. I was thrilled to be there with him. I felt touched by magic.
That feeling did not last.
After my birthday, something snapped in Mum. She convinced herself that O’Sullivan could save her and her children from our Dickensian poverty. So she ran away with him to start a new life in St Albans because he said he loved her.
Until she left at thirty-five, she had never travelled farther than Leeds from her birthplace in Barnsley.
We waited through the early spring for news. None came.
During that time, my father, my sister, and I survived on handouts, begging, and the occasional pity of relatives who paid arrears on our rent or brought leftover food from their table to our doss house.
What happened to us in 1930 broke my father. He never fully recovered. He retreated inward. I would find him staring at the grimy walls of our room, tears rolling down his face.
Most days he escaped by walking the streets of Bradford or reading from his eight-volume encyclopaedia of the ancient world.
To me, her leaving felt worse than death. Death would not have been a choice. This was.
Alberta, wise beyond her ten years, became my surrogate mother and my father’s emotional crutch. It was a burden no child should bear.
At night we huddled beneath blankets made from old coats. Alberta made plans. She showed me how to search the rubbish bins behind Bradford’s high street restaurants. She taught me what was safe to eat and what would make us ill — schooling me like a diamond merchant instructing an apprentice to spot flaws in a cut gem.
She kept me alive with affection, harsh words, and the occasional slap. We laughed together. We stole food together. We survived together.
The adults around us had little left to give. The world had been merciless with them.
During that year the Great Depression tightened its grip. Coal, steel, and textiles collapsed across the North. By 1930 Britain had 2.5 million unemployed. Government assistance lasted fifteen weeks. After that, hunger did the rest.
Malnutrition crept across Bradford’s streets. Rickets. Tuberculosis. Starvation. Healthcare was available — if you could pay for it.
We children chanted through streets heavy with want:
“Mother, Mother, take me home from the convalescent home.
I’ve been here a month or two, and now I’d like to die near you.”
When Mum finally returned, she appeared at the entrance to our room as though she had merely gone to the shops. She wore a floral dress that sparkled against the grime of our walls. In one hand she carried a pineapple. In the other, “authentic Irish soda bread.”
My father stared at her, speechless.
That night she announced she was pregnant.
The pineapple was shown to the lodgers as proof of the wonders available in London.
Another chapter in our family’s nightmare had begun.
The day of my father’s birth is only days away. I will remember him because he was my dad.
But what he wanted most at the end of his life was not personal remembrance. He wanted people to remember what his generation endured — and what they built in response.
They refused to accept that poverty and cruelty were inevitable.
We should refuse it too.
Thank you for reading and for helping to keep my father’s work alive.
Your support allows me to continue restoring and publishing his writing — work we began together in 2010. The Green & Pleasant Land is complete in beta form and currently with publishers. It will be published this year, and those who have supported this journey will be acknowledged in the book.
A few days remain until March 1st — rent day. This Substack does much to keep a roof over my head. Due to the worsening economy, I lost four paid subscribers this month and need nine new paid subscribers to close the gap.
If you are able, please consider becoming a paid subscriber (£3.50 a month or £30 a year, adjusted to your local currency) or leaving a tip. Your support makes this work possible.
If you would like a beta e-copy, just let me know.
Take care,
John