Harry's Last Stand

It is not only heat domes we live under- but the threat of a never-ending fascist dome.
September's heat dome broke during the early morning of this month's 8th day. I've known hot Septembers, but not the heat I experienced last week. It was humidity fit for Havana and not for the crisp shores of Lake Ontario at this time of year.

https://open.substack.com/pub/jmsmith/p/it-is-not-only-heat-domes-we-live?r=12u3ju&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

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Harry's Last Stand

The Fight against the Cost of Living Crisis begins with remembering our past was working class.
Harry Leslie Smith in the last years of his life taped a series of discussions where he spoke about how the 21st-century world was slipping into the darkness of austerity that would make it as hard for the ordinary person as the 1930s were for ordinary people back then.

https://open.substack.com/pub/jmsmith/p/the-fight-against-the-cost-of-living?r=12u3ju&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

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Harry's Last Stand

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.
Free at the point of use, universal public healthcare was once democracy’s strongest castle wall. It protected, for decades, our civilisation from the predatory nature of oligarchic capitalism.

https://open.substack.com/pub/jmsmith/p/junior-doctors-and-consultants-are?r=12u3ju&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

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#JohnSmith #NHSSOS #health #fascism #HealthCare

Harry's Last Stand

Eye's Wide Open The Art and Life of Peter Smith, son of Harry Leslie Smith as written by his wife.
My brother Peter, has been dead for almost 13 years now. His death had a profound effect on both my dad and me. His death, along with my mum’s death in 1999 was the catalyst for initiating Harry’s Last Stand. Now my dad, my mum and Peter are dead.

https://open.substack.com/pub/jmsmith/p/eyes-wide-open-the-art-and-life-of?r=12u3ju&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

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Harry's Last Stand

Covid is the Elephant in the room that just won't leave and it is shortening our lives and pleasures.
Since 2020, my passage of time has been counted in years and the medical procedures, operations and scans I've undergone for cancer, heart disease and newly discovered illnesses.

https://open.substack.com/pub/jmsmith/p/covid-is-the-elephant-in-the-room?r=12u3ju&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

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Harry's Last Stand

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 the Before Times, the ending days of summer had a last of Christmas week weary sentimentality to them. The gentle sadness that came on the winds that carried the cries of cicadas at the end of August is a memory for us not to return.

https://open.substack.com/pub/jmsmith/p/ours-is-the-only-era-that-has-come?r=12u3ju&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
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Harry's Last Stand

In 2023 we are losing our democracy to neoliberalism and fascism.
I am feeling a bit down this weekend because I am awaiting the results of a CT scan of my lungs, which was done this past week. I've got an I can't be arsed mood from it this Saturday. I was supposed to finish an essay, but instead, I am posting this video of Harry Leslie Smith on ITV's Calendar program

https://open.substack.com/pub/jmsmith/p/in-2023-we-are-losing-our-democracy?r=12u3ju&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

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Harry's Last Stand

"Fight for the welfare state or austerity will bury democracy." Harry Leslie Smith 1923-2018
In the 1920s, Harry Leslie Smith was shunted from one cold, dirty, overcrowded hovel to the next, fleeing by night when his father could no longer pay the rent. Nearly a century on, little has changed for many working-class families.

https://open.substack.com/pub/jmsmith/p/fight-for-the-welfare-state-or-austerity?r=12u3ju&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

#HarrysLastStand #HarryLeslieSmith #JohnSmith

Harry's Last Stand

I look at the Before Times as if they were ancient history. But I know everything I've live led me towards socialism as the only answer for society.
On Thursday I must travel to another city for a CT scan at 10 at night. The healthcare system is so overwhelmed you take your diagnostic tests when and where you can.

https://open.substack.com/pub/jmsmith/p/i-look-at-the-before-times-as-if?r=12u3ju&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

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Harry's Last Stand

Sorry, Captain Tom But Tomorrow Wasn't A Good Day And Some of That Is On You.
This week two years too late, BBC's News Night revealed that Hannah Ingram-Moore, the daughter of the late Captain Tom Moore famed backyard stroller and author of the memoir Tomorrow Will be a Good Day had cast shade on her dad's legacy.

https://open.substack.com/pub/jmsmith/p/sorry-captain-tom-but-tomorrow-wasnt?r=12u3ju&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

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#HarrysLastStand

#HarryLeslieSmith 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.
Both are long dead, but today is my parent's 76th wedding anniversary. During their lives, my parents were able to celebrate together fifty-one wedding anniversaries before my mum died at the age of seventy-one from cancer, in 1999.

https://open.substack.com/pub/jmsmith/p/harry-leslie-smith-recounts-life?r=12u3ju&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

#JohnSmith

Harry's Last Stand

I am not an expert in broken healthcare systems, but I am one of its victims.
The energy-efficient light bulb in my bathroom has begun to flicker, fade and hum. It casts more shadow than light. Hotel rooms behind the Eastern Curtain in the 1980s were once lit like that- a fluorescent Soviet noir hue.

https://open.substack.com/pub/jmsmith/p/i-am-not-an-expert-in-broken-healthcare?r=12u3ju&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

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Harry's Last Stand

Failing to humanely end the refugee crisis spells the end for caring democratic societies-all roads lead to authoritarianism now.
There is no wind in the willow's sentiment to this August. Each day has been pitiless with news of some fresh atrocity or disaster unleashed by our self-created climate crisis.

https://open.substack.com/pub/jmsmith/p/failing-to-humanely-end-the-refugee?r=12u3ju&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

#HarrysLastStand #HarryLeslieSmith #JohnSmith #refugees #politics

Harry's Last Stand

Your birth right is a functioning Welfare State, because it was your ancestors: blood, sweat and tears that built it.
In 1948, it was still a long road to paradise for Britain’s working class despite the foundations of the the Welfare State being laid with the creation that year of the NHS.

https://open.substack.com/pub/jmsmith/p/your-birth-right-is-a-functioning?r=12u3ju&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

#HarrysLastStand #HarryLeslieSmith #JohnSmith
#WelfareState

Harry's Last Stand

Until Human Voices Wake Us & We Drown, Living During A Time Of Covid.
During that first year of COVID-19, I began writing letters to my dead father to explain what had happened to my world since his death. It was an examination of my life and his in during the time before Covid and what was to become of his “Last Stand” in a society transformed by a plague.

https://open.substack.com/pub/jmsmith/p/until-human-voices-wake-us-and-we?r=12u3ju&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

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#HarrysLastStand

2023 is a new gilded age where renters are in danger of becoming a permanent underclass.
Today was rent day. If you are like me where over 50% of your income goes to keeping you housed-everyday feels like rent day. Keeping housed is as precarious as treading water in the North Atlantic after your ship sinks.
Affordable housing is extinct in Britain, Western Europe, Canada and the USA for the average wage earner.

https://open.substack.com/pub/jmsmith/p/2023-is-a-new-gilded-age-where-renters?r=12u3ju&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

#HarryLeslieSmith #JohnSmith

Harry's Last Stand

The Greatest Crisis Humanity Faces is the Crisis of Denial in the Age of "Global Boiling."
As I write this it's early morning. There are only a few swigs of July left in its bottle. The dregs of it- taste brackish. It's from all the crises we've met over the last while- that defeat us, one by one. Hypocrisy and the crisis of denial are the greatest crisis we face.

https://open.substack.com/pub/jmsmith/p/the-greatest-crisis-humanity-faces?r=12u3ju&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

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Harry's Last Stand

2023: Destination Dystopia

This cost-of-living crisis was a sucker punch. It was delivered by the 1% because they don’t want anyone getting above their station through proper wage increases. We didn’t expect or deserve it. But rising prices for food, accommodation, heating, and commuting knocked the wind out of many because incomes weren’t allowed to keep pace.

https://open.substack.com/pub/jmsmith/p/2023-destination-dystopia?r=12u3ju&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

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Harry's Last Stand

The Green And Pleasant Land Sampler-A Memoir of Why The Welfare State was Founded And Why We Must Rebuild It Again.
The Green and Pleasant Land was unfinished at the time of Harry Leslie Smith's death. I've been piecing it together from all the written notes, typescript & index cards. The entire work is over 600 pages long.

https://open.substack.com/pub/jmsmith/p/the-green-and-pleasant-land-sampler?r=12u3ju&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

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Harry's Last Stand

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.
The Green and Pleasant Land was unfinished at the time of Harry Leslie Smith's death. I've been piecing it together from all the written notes, typescript & index cards. It's brilliant. Here is another sample chapter from it. Tomorrow, the first 25k words of it will be up.

https://open.substack.com/pub/jmsmith/p/as-i-approach-the-last-breaths-of?r=12u3ju&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

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