When we forget our working class history, the entitled exploit our present day existence.

From the struggles of the Greatest Generation, the modern Welfare State was born only to be destroyed by neoliberalism over the last three decades. To forget that past is to live in a purgatory of centrist politics that only benefits the few.

The creators of much of our literary, journalistic and cinematic popular culture are from the upper middle class- society’s entitled set. They have fashioned a myth about Britain’s past that is cast from their privileged position in society. It is not done in error or naiveté but in malevolence. It is to keep us obedient in an increasingly unequal and authoritarian society governed for the benefit of its top income earners.

Your support in keeping my dad’s legacy and me alive and housed is greatly appreciated. With rent day approaching your assistance is always welcome. if you can please subscribe because it literally helps pay my rent. But if you can’t it is all good because we are fellow travellers in penury. I have also added a tip jar for those who are inclined and able to. Below is more from the Green & Pleasant Land, the history my father was working on at the time of his death.

Photo by Gabor Barbely on Unsplash

Chapter Seven:

Summer- 1930 was harsh and hungry for Britain's working class. Our doss house reeked of mouldy potatoes fried in cheap margarine that the residents ate for their main meal with onions. There was an ever-present smell of sweat and dirt in the house and on the streets of our neighbourhoods because even the price of soap seemed to be beyond the means of those who lived in the slums of Bradford.

The economy was in freefall because the Great Depression was in every nation. The economic conditions cut Britain's exports of manufactured goods in half. It was like an economic Spanish Flu because much of society, outside of the rich, was affected by the economic malaise it created.

Unemployment was at 20%. But in some regions, like Yorkshire, Wales and Scotland; it went as high as 70%.

For families like mine, this was a famine because poor relief wasn't enough to keep you fed, clothed and housed. It was a pittance tossed at us by a Labour Prime Minister, who hadn't a clue- how hopeless the situation was for Britain's former workers.

Along with the smells of filth and unwashed human bodies, there was a growing stench of shame from men who once worked and now could find no one to hire them. We had been abandoned by capitalist politics. It was every man for himself, and my mother understood that motto best because she was six months into her pregnancy with O'Sullivan's child when summer began.

A panicked desperation had settled into her consciousness that left her angry and argumentative. She was making plans to dump my father and find a man fit enough to do a day's labour.

As for Dad, he resigned himself to eventual abandonment and accepted stage directions from my mother on how to best shrink from our lives. She said to him.

"When we move from this doss and go to another, in public, you won't be my husband or our children's father. You will be their granddad because you can't work, and I need a man who can feed us and keep a roof over our heads."

So that summer, I kept well away from my mother rather than fall underfoot of her wrath and schemes.

Like all the seasons I lived through during my boyhood, it was my sister, Alberta, whom I looked to for companionship and mentoring. She was my best teacher on how to survive the unrelenting cruelty of poverty in the 1930s.

Alberta was wise to the streets and wise to the machinations of adults. She warned me of those grown-ups in our area who had been labelled by other children as sexual abusers of kids.

She taught me, in winter, how to forage through restaurant bins for my tea.

At the start of that summer, she showed me the ropes on the best ways to harvest specked fruit that the mongers binned. She distracted the store owner whilst I dug through refuse and pick the well-ripened fruit that I'd store in a greasy paper back. On side streets I bite into the rotting fruit and it dripped sweetly into my empty stomach.

But shop owners did not take kindly to kids, who came from the barren land of doss house Bradford nicking dented and bruised fruits that were rubbish to them.

If caught, Alberta roared at the shop owner like a lion. My sister's fierce indignation- when accused of taking what was not hers generally got us out of difficulties before a policeman was summoned.

In the heat of July, I dreamed of the times before we lived in doss houses when my dad had the dignity of an employed man. At bedtime, I fixated on a happy memory from our time in Barnsley.

It was when my dad bought me and my sister a bottle of Dandelion and Burdock from a cart at the market. I’d never tasted pop before. It seemed so extraordinarily delicious, almost magical. Outside of that day at the market, I never had it again during those early childhood years.

I was desperate to recapture that joy I encountered when I first tasted pop before the Great Depression wiped away my family's working-class prospects. I coveted one sip of what to me was an exquisite and exotic nectar because it was far from my reach in the summer of 1930.

I believed all I had to do was make my own Dandelion and Burdock, and everything the Great Depression had stolen from my family: housing, work, food, security and love could be returned to us.

Not far from our squat was a derelict field littered with rubbish and weeds, where I played often with my sister. One day, I picked up an empty beer bottle and knocked the dirt out of it.

I told my sister I would make Dandelion and Burdock pop because I knew the recipe.

She looked sceptical but humoured me. My sister helped me gather dandelions and other weeds.

I took our harvest of weeds, shoots, and stalks, shoved them into the bottle and said.

"Now, all we need is some water, and- it will taste as grand as the real pop."

My sister laughed good-humouredly. We returned to our doss house and I filled water into the bottle stuffed with weeds.

After the bottle was full, I put my thumb on its opening and shook it vigorously, until the weeds turned the water briny.

 I took a sip from the bottle and immediately spat it out. It wasn't fizzy pop. It was flat brackish water. It tasted like my existence.

My sister saw the disappointment on my face. “Go on, pass it over. It can’t be as bad as all that.”

She took a sip and hid and told me a lie so as not to break my heart.

“It’s all right. Now come on, let’s get cracking before Mum sees us and gives us a right bollocking.”

Whether the sun was rising or setting, during that summer, I was always hungry. And yet I encountered brief interludes where the wonder of childhood consumed me and gave me a respite from the rough edges of living skint.

The strangest thing happened to that open field where I thought I could make Dandelion and Burdock pop because, at the end of July, magic did happen. A circus set up their tents on the common.

Alberta and I made our way there. We heard the sound of hammers being struck on tent pegs while a foreman swore at workmen to be "quick about it."

Not wishing to be discovered, Alberta and I went to the opposite end of Trinity Field. There, we were camouflaged by tall grass. In the distance, I heard the sounds of exotic animals bellowing from the field. We crouched on our hind legs and strained our eyes, hoping to catch sight of this mysterious world being built around us.

The odd elephant trumpet made our mouths drop open in surprise. I was tinged with mild fear, wondering if the mighty beasts could break loose and trample us hidden in the brush. An hour had almost passed, and I grew restless. I was about to ask my sister if we could go when suddenly, Alberta began to shake my shoulder,

“Harry, Harry, come and look.”

Outside one of the tents were three beautiful, lithe Burmese women whose necks were wrapped tightly with gold bands. Near them, jugglers began to practice their act. It was a cacophony of different voices, in foreign accents, with different attitudes, who lived different lives from ours in the slums of Yorkshire. Further off, I heard lions roar and in my imagination, it was lion speak for "bugger off Bradford."

Everything I saw that day crouched and hidden at the edge of a circus in the long unkempt grass of the common- was enticing, forbidden, and beautifully foreign to the world as I understood it.

For me, rent day approaches like the headlights from a truck with an unsteady load on its trailer. It leaves me stuck in the middle of the road, transfixed by it, or perhaps I am too tired to react this time and jump out of its way.

A yearly subscription will cover much of next month’s rent because I need only 4 to make it for September. But with a few days left, it is getting tight.

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 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's all good too because I appreciate we are in the same boat. Take Care, John