We should fear the hard scrabble past of the 1930s because it's our future. Tales from the Green & Pleasant Land.

The Harry’s Last Stand project was an attempt to use his life story as a template to effect change and remake a Welfare State fit for the 21st century. Harry Leslie Smith’s unpublished history- The Green & Pleasant Land is a part of that project.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 sometime in June- as I want the last instalment on here to be his eye witness account of the 1945 General Election. It will be an interesting contrast to what is offered for Britain by today’s Labour in this summer’s General Election.

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. I have also added a Tip Jar for those so inclined.

I am navigating all the excerpts from The Green And Pleasant Land to a subfolder on my Harry's Last Stand Substack. It will be easier for readers to find the progression of the last book Harry Leslie Smith worked on before his death in November 2018. I have been editing and shaping it to how my Dad wanted it presented to his readers.

Reading a chapter here or there doesn't give the full breadth of despair and desperation endured by the working class during the Great Depression.

The Green And Pleasant Land

Chapter Twelve:

As the daylight grew shorter in the autumn of 1930, my dad's presence dimmed in our family's life. Bill Moxon was now my de facto stepfather, having become my mum's lover a month after my brother Matt was born.

Dad, despite his one night of rage, meekly took his demotion to "grandfather."   

Despite being a small boy, I knew calling my father grandad was a wicked and cruel betrayal of him. My opinions and reluctance to do this were not considered important to my mother because- like everything else that occurred in my early life- it was a means to survive and live another day.

Psychologically, being forced to deny my father to the outside world damaged me.  

After that, I trusted no one. How could I? My mother and father taught me to lie about the most fundamental human bond a child encounters to define their identity. The knowledge of who their parents are and calling them mum and dad to all and sundry. They had taught me to lie and say to people in the doss or anywhere else. "He's my grandad," as if it were instructions on how to tie my bootlaces.

My mother justified her command to deny my dad's identity to me to prevent my sister and me from starving to death or being sent to a workhouse.

"Your father's a cripple because of his hernia- and there is no work for him. But Bill will feed us."

But it left fire marks of shame and self-loathing on the beams that held my personality together. My love for my parents from that point on contained rough grits of anger and even hatred for them. Dysfunction in a family breeds so many conflicting emotions for those we love. My anger at my father in adolescence was an attempt to deflect the anger I felt for myself. I had a bitter taste for myself because I believed I deserted him just like my mother had, his brothers and sisters had, like his health had and like Britain had.

What a horrible and criminal waste it was for capitalism and our so-called British democracy to allow people like my dad to sink under waves of penury. Those lost to the economic catastrophe of the Great Depression were like sailors who had fallen overboard a ship. Their cries for help were heard, but no attempt at a rescue operation was ordered because they were considered non-essential cargo.

It is why I remember my last Christmas with him in that hungry year of 1930.

On Christmas morning, high above the flock mattress I shared with my sister- rain smudged the skylight window of the attic in the doss house. My body felt damp and cold underneath the coat I used as a blanket. Dad woke my sister and me with a greater-than-usual gentleness.

My father gave my sister and me each a penny candy wrapped in coloured paper. He served us weak, lukewarm tea, which he had made in the room my mother and Bill Moxon occupied below us. The tea was sweet from dollops of sugar. When I finished drinking it, I sucked on the penny candy whilst washing my face with a rag I dipped in a wash bowl of stale water.

My father instructed us to go and wish our mother a Happy Christmas. Which I reluctantly did because I was not looking forward to encountering Bill. He was only a few weeks into being part of my life as my mother's "pretend" husband. But Bill acted towards me as if he was there to smarten me up with stern discipline. He was always made worse by drink and I knew he'd had a stomach full on Christmas Eve. I heard his drunken carousing because his songs, swearing, yelling, invectives, and jokes barged into the attic on the violent wings of his booming voice. I knew meeting him on Christmas morning, he'd be hungover, sullen and prone to sharpness against me.

Downstairs, I found my mother making a breakfast of fried toast that I washed down with another cup of tea. She had a present for both my sister and me that the Church had provided indigent mothers so that their children wouldn't believe Father Christmas had forgotten them.

My mum had enrolled my sister and me in the diocese festive charity meal. Before lunchtime, I left the doss with my sister and walked to the parish church to hear mass and receive the church’s bounty.

The feast for Bradford’s catholic poor was held in a gymnasium owned by the Saint Vincent De Paul Society. Inside, a nun gathered us in prayer. We who were destitute, hungry, poorly housed, and unlucky gave thanks to the ever-watchful Jesus.

I prayed that the nuns were in a forgiving mood that day. I did not want my ear pulled or my backside bruised by their love for discipline in the name of the Lord.

We sat on long bench tables and ate our Christmas meal. It consisted of stringy poultry, spuds, and pudding. The gravy was thin, and the food tasted of lost hope.

A priest with a tubercular cough wearing a dingy Father Christmas suit arrived after the meal. He presented each of us with an orange and a pair of socks. The priest was impatient and irritable with us because he enjoyed drinking more than ministering to children.

At home, I found my father upstairs in the attic. Frost was on the skylight that was streaked with coal soot.

“Happy Christmas, lad, sorry there weren’t much for thee and thy sister. Next year, hey son, next year…”

In the first week of 1931, my father moved out of the doss house and out of our lives. Dad left quietly without even a goodbye to me. He was gone as if he had never been in my life.

When I turned eight, I stopped asking my mum about my dad. He was alive, but I was told to think of him as dead because that was my mother's story, and she needed to tell that story to survive. Much later in my life, I understood to survive poverty; you must do unspeakable things. It turns you feral, or it makes you dead.

Thanks for reading and supporting my Substack. Your support keeps me housed and also allows me to preserve the legacy of Harry Leslie Smith. Right now until the Green and Pleasant Land is ready for a publisher and there is one interested-thinks are rather dire for me. 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 P.S there is a discount if you subscribe for this post.