‘Let’s bring the sunshine back to Britain’

Over my 93 years of life  I have experienced many things from extreme poverty to middle class prosperity. I have known the terror of total war to the joy of peace returning to Europe on May 8 1945.

I have the known the loneliness and fear of being homeless as a child to the the wonderful satisfaction of being a home owner who could help his own kids up the ladder of life. 

As I was born in Barnsley in 1923 to rough and ready parents who provided me eternal love despite the bleak poverty of our surroundings, I became aware very early on that for most of us life is a hard grind when there is no social safety network and local councils are only concerned with their more affluent residents.

As a bairn, I was swaddled by hunger, disease and filth because I was born in to the working class at a time when Tories ruled this land for the pleasure of the well to do. But I also remember that no matter how much despair darkened the cobbled streets of my youth, there was hope because my dad belonged to a union. It  fought for the rights of its workers as well as the greater good of society. 

After the misery of the Great Depression devastated British society, leaving six million men out of work and forced children like me to feed ourselves from the rubbish bins of the rich, we vowed never again. But before we could repairs the inequality in British society, my generation took up arms to defend our shores against the threat of Hitler.

When we defeated the Nazis and buried our dead, my generation set this country on the right track by electing Clement Attlee. His Labour government delivered to Britain a welfare state with entrenched rights for trade unions and all workers in every industry.

No matter how far I travelled from the slums of my youth, I have never forgotten it was the social safety network created by a Labour government which has allowed my generation and the baby boomers to progress both socially and economically in our personal lives.

Some have called my generation the greatest but I don’t believe that is so or otherwise income inequality, poverty and war would now be exhibits in a museum.

My generation built a strong social safety network. We created universal health care and public pensions, and we built affordable housing and demanded that education was everyone’s right. We enacted laws to protect workers, families, our youth from misfortunes caused by power being concentrated in too few hands. 

Sadly my generation’s greatest achievement, the Welfare State, has become tarnished by the politics of austerity espoused by right-wing demagogues.  

But if we don’t return to the principals of social and economic justice that my generation established through the social safety network, my past will become your future. 

It is why I came to Bristol to tell the people of this great city that if they elect Marvin Rees as Mayor on May 5 they will ensure that every resident of Bristol, every small business owner, every worker, pensioner, home owner, renter as well as the vulnerable and homeless will be able to feel that that their local government works for them and not the interests of the few. 

Remember when Marvin Rees becomes mayor in Bristol, this city is lighting a beacon for every region in the country that has been blighted by the politics of fear and austerity. It’s time we bring the sunshine back to Britain and that starts with a vote for Marvin Rees.

Harry Leslie Smith has written several books about Britain during the depression, the war, and postwar austerity. Follow him on Twitter at @Harryslaststand.

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