Sitemap - 2023 - Harry's Last Stand Newsletter

"These horrors of austerity economics on the working class, are not unique to me – millions of my generation suffered the same or worse during the Great Depression."

Repatriation to a land ripe with austerity.

COVID unleashed Pandora's box of woe because our society is structured to exclusively benefit its top income earners.

Homelessness is the Ghost of Christmas Future for millions of under waged workers.

An Era that is in love with fascism and despises socialism is an epoch ripe for authoritarianism by the 1%.

Do we get out of this alive, intact and with a democracy that functions for all its citizens rather than its top income earners?

"The summer reeked of mouldy potatoes fried in cheap margarine washed down with tea made from leaves flavourless from reuse."

A New Great Depression is just around the corner but when it comes this time, governments will just deny its very existence.

There will be blood because neoliberalism is as deaf to the people's needs as the Romanov's once were to the aspirations of Russia.

5 Years dead and I am still hollowed out by your exit from my life. But, I am glad you are gone considering the times we now live in.

"Life is more than a budget holiday in Spain or a new car on tick; it's about creating legacies that can outlive your natural life."

The cost of living crisis in 2023 is creating a lost generation just like it did in the 1930s.

It was anger, solidarity and socialism that built the Welfare State and kept the West safe from authoritarianism until neoliberalism corrupted everything.

"I urge you with all my heart and the terrible memories of my Great Depression Childhood, Don't Make My Past Your Future."

"I saw no doctor because there was no money for one." What was past is new again- thanks to neoliberalism.

"I shouldn't have survived my childhood because I came from the working class."

Like Macbeth's "Damned Spot," I can't get the blood stain out of the carpet or the memory of what caused it out of my mind.

2023 looks like a digital version of 1923 because of growing poverty, homelessness and an eternal cost of living crisis.

At sixty, I feel too old for a revolution, but I know it is coming.

Harry Leslie Smith's working class odyssey is a tale about the birth and death of the Welfare State.

The world seems bleak right now because it is.

Remembrance Day 2023 a time for ploughshares rather than swords.

"I was seven years old when I became a child labourer."

Bonfire Night 1931- Tales from the Green and Pleasant Land. The Forgotten History of Britain's Working Classes.

Netanyahu's Stalingrad on Sea.

Remembrance Day has never been about ending war but about glorifying it to justify the killing of millions.

Run, rabbit, run, tales of war from the Green & Pleasant Land of Harry Leslie Smith.

Covid is the new normal that will forever define our society

The Decline & Fall of Western Democracies in 2023 was foretold by the Bank Crash of 2009

The 1% are banking on our forever war in Ukraine and new one in Gaza will divert our attention from the cost of living crisis.

Cakes and Ale for my 60th Birthday while a terrible revolution rumbles near everyone's door.

95 Years ago, my Mum was born under the shadow of Nazism.

Life-our constant battle to add up to something more than a hill of beans.

Gaza is less history repeating, and more the ending of any chance for a decent future.

For Dead Palestinians and Israelis words from King Lear ring in my ears, "As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; They kill us for their sport."

Love during times of Occupation. Harry Leslie Smith on life in Hamburg 1945.

Keir Starmer proves that all that glitters is not gold.

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

History isn't repeating itself as farce but as fascism.

The Banality of Suella Braverman

1930-A Land Fit For Heroes, just like 2023. Tales from the Green and Pleasant Land. Harry Leslie Smith

It's 2023 and every city and town has an epidemic of Hobo Camps like it is the 1933 Great Depression. Neoliberal Politics Failed Us.

"Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here"-21st Century Refugee Camps

On Nazis Dead or Alive.

"All in all- it’s been a f***king blast.”

In our living moments the dead always scrape against our hearts. Remembering Peter on his Birthday-Socialist, artist, brother-good egg.

Politics & journalism have an insidious undercurrent which promotes conformity over truth which is what kept Russell Brand safe.

Harry Leslie Smith vs the faux guru of revolution Russell Brand.

Depression's small black dog sits beside me as a new covid wave prepares to slam into the upcoming autumn.

Neo-liberalism turned the Welfare State into Bolton Abbey-a beautiful ruin.

When Covid Hushed the City of Toronto and only the sick ventured outside for medical treatment.

Darkness came at noon, the moment the news media turned the crime of stealing food into a crime against society.

Grandad believed in monarchy, empire and the class system, where he was proudly at the bottom of it. Tales from the Green And Pleasant Land

It is not only heat domes we live under- but the threat of a never-ending fascist dome.

The Fight against the Cost of Living Crisis begins with remembering our past was working class.

When Summer had as much Discontent as Winter. Tales from The Green & Pleasant Land, 1930.

Junior Doctors and Consultants are striking for more than just wages. They are striking for your right to timely, state of the art public healthcare.

Eye's Wide Open The Art and Life of Peter Smith, son of Harry Leslie Smith as written by his wife.

Covid is the Elephant in the room that just won't leave and it is shortening our lives and pleasures.

Ours is the only era that has come face to face with its imminent destruction and knows how to stop it but won't.

In 2023 we are losing our democracy to neoliberalism and fascism.

"Fight for the welfare state or austerity will bury democracy." Harry Leslie Smith 1923-2018

I look at the Before Times as if they were ancient history. But I know everything I've lived led me towards socialism as the only answer for society.

Sorry, Captain Tom But Tomorrow Wasn't A Good Day And Some of That Is On You.

Harry Leslie Smith recounts life in Hamburg 1947, a city still in rubble from WW2. But where hope for a working class future that included prosperity was strong enough to fall in love and marry.

This "Is what it is world," doesn't have to be our reality if we only own our socialist history.

I am not an expert in broken healthcare systems, but I am one of its victims.

Failing to humanely end the refugee crisis spells the end for caring democratic societies-all roads lead to authoritarianism now.

Your birth right is a functioning Welfare State, because it was your ancestors: blood, sweat and tears that built it.

Until Human Voices Wake Us & We Drown, Living During A Time Of Covid.

2023 is a new gilded age where renters are in danger of becoming a permanent underclass.

The Greatest Crisis Humanity Faces is the Crisis of Denial in the Age of "Global Boiling."

2023: Destination Dystopia

The Green And Pleasant Land Sampler-A Memoir of Why The Welfare State was Founded And Why We Must Rebuild It Again.

As I Approach The Last Breaths of My Life, I Can Still Hear The Roar of Outrage, Fear And Desperation From The People of 1930.

I am losing the war on the cost of living crisis, and I think you are as well.

The Irony: It Will Be A Labour Government That Makes My Dad's Past Your Future.

The Climate Crisis Crossed its Rubicon This Summer.

London, No Place for Old People or the Poor. Harry Leslie Smith's reflections on the Capital City.

500 Days of War & 500 days of A Cost of Living Crisis & No End In Sight.

Harry Leslie Smith would never be allowed to give his NHS Speech to A Labour Party Led by Starmer.

After 75 Years The NHS Is Dying Because We Forgot Our History Is Working Class, Not Downton Abbey.

Love Among the Ruins: a Phone Reminder Of Lives Lost Long Ago. Born in The Age of Hitler Dead During The Dying Days of The Welfare State.

The NHS at 75 Will Die From The Rot Of Privatisation B/C People Forgot Why It Was Created In The First Place.

Be The Tide To Raise ALL Boats And Fight For Democracy That Works For All Of US.

Canada Day: When It Was Under The Sun Of The Welfare State

A Catastrophic Implosion Awaits Not Just Russia But Us, From This Ukraine War.

As Thick As Thieves- A Sister Teaches A Kid Brother During A Famine How To Eat From Rubbish Bins. The Past Will Become Our Future

Make Them Welcome, Harry Leslie Smith's Last Video Plea On World Refugee Day.

Father's Day- And the Awfully Big Adventure Of Living.

More Refugees Are Dead Beneath The Waves of Homer's Wine Dark Sea.

My Childhood Ended When I Turned Seven. Excerpt From The Green & Pleasant Land

Canada's Wild Fires Made The Climate Crisis Real For Millions And Then We Shrugged.

9 Years Ago, Today, Harry's Last Stand Was Published.

As Public Healthcare Collapses Around Us, The Fight To Access Medical Treatment Is A Personal Battle For Survival.

Piers Morgan, This Morning, Phil and Holly- The Whole Dog and Pony Show of Selling A Book.

"No other generation in history has shat where it ate more than the Boomers."

We Are All Riding A Bucking Broncho In Mortality's Rodeo.

Long Covid will be the issue that lights the fuse sparking a 1789 year for us.

"My generation’s hard fought lessons are being forgotten"- Harry Leslie Smith On Brexit

Notes from the First Summer of Covid 2020

On Mother's Day, It Is Good To Remember They Are More Than Just Our Mums.

Trump's CNN Town Hall Meeting. We don't live in interesting times; we live in doomed times.

May 8, 1945 Victory in Europe The Start of the Great Reset For Society

Chapter Five: You Know What You Know. Excerpt from Harry Leslie Smith's Green and Pleasant Land.

2023 Became the Year, our Governments Normalised Us Living With Less So The 1% Could Live With More

I want 10 more years of Life But I will settle for Five if I can get the job done and complete the Harry's Last Stand Project because it matters.

Like Sanctions Against an Enemy Nation, The Cost of Living Crisis enabled by our Governments and Entitled are Shortening Lives, Including Mine.

The death of a father in the times before Covid.

I kept my Twitter blue tick, not because I wanted to but because it was the least bad option before me.

The Green and Pleasant Land- Chapter Four: Doss House Despair on the Cusp of the Great Depression

Monarchy Is No Way to Run a Democracy in 2023

Don't Let My Past Be Your Future-Excerpt

1945-The April Rain

A Daughter Dead In October, But A Son Saved in November-Chapter Three in The Green & Pleasant Land-A working class world before the Welfare State

When the World Wore Masks. Chapter 7 Standing With Harry

Sovereignty is just not something that Dictators steal because the 1%'s corporations do it to.

Corbyn's Leadership was the Labour Party's Prague Spring & it ended the same with a Purge.

Harry's Last Stand-For Those at the Back- Democracy is dead without public healthcare.

Dying In A Room Rented By The Week or How the 21st Century Embraced 1930 for the Benefit of The 1%.

"Stuff Happens," The Unspooling of neoliberalism 20 years after the start of the Iraq War.

The New Normal: an excerpt from Standing with Harry- on healthcare, anxiety and finding reasons to survive.

A Workhouse Death During the 1926 General Strike-The more things change, the more they stay the same.

My Beginnings in Britain before the NHS.

Stop the Fascists not the boats.

Chapter Eight: Recovering in a plague hospital at the epicentre of Covid

Happy Hundredth Birthday Dad-It was the journey not the arrival that mattered.

Run Rabbit, Run: Harry Leslie Smith on the first year of World War Two

"Our revels now our ended," Or the Oncologist called.

The Show Trial by the News Media Must End Against Corbyn. Our Democracy Depends On It

Love Among The Ruins Valentine's Day 1945-1999

Harry Leslie Smith's Past Must Not Become Our Future. We should remember his 100th birthday on February 25, 2023.

We have reached a tipping point in the Refugee Crisis. Not acting is to make us no better than the evil, the West says it is always combatting.

The 2023 Housing Crisis is as grim as 1923s. The 1% are making history repeat itself to our doom

Three years of Covid makes cancer survivors more anxious about CT Scan check ups.

Let's Hope, We Can Look the Future in the Eye and Tell Them, "At least we bloody tried to stop our healthcare systems from being privatised by the 1%."

Being Slaves to our History Drove us into a cul-de-sac

Davos 2023 a coven for feudalism 2.0

Harry Leslie Smith's 100th birthday is Feb 25th Pass it on!

Democracy Ends with private healthcare.

Our Times will be defined by how we reacted to Covid.