Harry's Last Stand: How the world my generation built is falling down, and what we can do to save it

By Harry Leslie Smith

‘As one of the last remaining survivors of the Great Depression and the Second World War, I will not go gently into that good night. I want to tell you what the world looks like through my eyes, so that you can help change it…’

In November 2013, 91-year-old Yorkshireman, RAF veteran and ex-carpet salesman Harry Leslie Smith’s Guardian article – ‘This year, I will wear a poppy for the last time’ – was shared over 80,000 times on Facebook and started a huge debate about the state of society.

Now he brings his unique perspective to bear on NHS cutbacks, benefits policy, political corruption, food poverty, the cost of education – and much more. From the deprivation of 1930s Barnsley and the terror of war to the creation of our welfare state, Harry has experienced how a great civilisation can rise from the rubble. But at the end of his life, he fears how easily it is being eroded.

Harry’s Last Stand is a lyrical, searing modern invective that shows what the past can teach us, and how the future is ours for the taking.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Icon Books Ltd
• Release date: Jun 5, 2014
• ISBN: 9781848317277

Reviews for Harry's Last Stand

[davidwineberg · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Full (vicious) circleHarry Smith has a lot to say, and thinks he might have little time to say it. He is in his 90s now, and has lived through the worst grinding poverty of the Depression. He saved himself by joining the Royal Air Force in World War II, where he finally had a real bed to sleep in, real clothing, real food every day, and a purpose. And despite the discrimination of the class system, he did all right. For someone with precious little education, he is remarkably well versed in history, politics, sociology, pop culture and social media. He knows exactly what’s going on and going down, and seems totally comfortable handling the issues of the day.The entire book is based on this premise: “After it was done and the war won, the politicians promised us that no one in this country would face that type of unemployment and helplessness ever again. So I really don’t know why the Western world wants to go back to those bleak, unhappy times without a murmur of real dissent.” He piles on the evidence of the shrinking of programs, the rise in living costs, the disappearance of opportunity and of hope. Expensive schools, expensive healthcare, and massive subsidies to business are the wrong way to build a country, except for the rich, who get richer from it. He is very clear that austerity is the wrong solution to a bad situation. Just as it was in the Depression.Smith writes with precision and clarity, dancing between the present and his own past with ease. It gives the book a needed lift and makes it a fast-paced read. His obviously left-leaning insights are not new, but his fears are different from the usual political dross. His views are not dimmed by age. Neither is his grasp of the issues. He sees things much more clearly than most of our elected officials. He has perspective from direct experience. And having lived most of his life in Yorkshire and Toronto, is frustratingly familiar with all our governments’ failures.He would like to see more participatory democracy, more restrictions on the ultra rich and their corporations, more of the common man in government, and most of all, a welfare state (safety net in the USA) that made such a gigantic difference to life in the UK after the war. Margaret Thatcher disassembled much of it in the UK, as Ronald Reagan did in the USA. The result is corporations running the world, increasing debt everywhere but corporate bank accounts, and struggles reminiscent of the Depression. He has been witness to the greatest transfer of wealth in history, from tax dollars to corporate coffers. For him, we are coming full circle in just his lifetime, and that is nothing to be proud of.David Wineberg

[sheamuspatt · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Harry's Last Stand is part autobiography, part call to action for social democrats. Harry, who passed away just last month (November 2018) was born a few years after the Great War, suffered in poverty during the Great Depression, and served with the RAF during World War II.He then was able to raise a family in relative luxury due to the welfare state implemented in Britain and other western countries which provided all citizens health care through the National Health Service, state funded education and housing for those in need.The main message of this book, though, is that the advances that the welfare state afforded its citizens are being lost through the austere policies of governments in the past few decades. Harry's criticism of the politicians who led this attack on the gains made in the post war period are biting. He sees through their admonitions that such changes were necessary, calling it out for what it is, those with power and money turning back the clock to a period when their money bought them power.This is a book that every social democrat should read. It takes the reader through one person's experience of dire poverty through a period when everyone's needs were being met, and back into a period when those most disadvantaged are again being left by the wayside by our governments who once looked after them.