Unfortunately, I missed Harry Leslie Smith speaking at the Labour Party conference but the truth and the electricity survive in this recording. The words which perhaps have almost more importance as a warning for Labour Party members than for the Tories are these:
As I stand here today, my heart is with all of those people from my generation who didn’t make it past childhood, didn’t get an education, grow as individuals, marry, raise a family and enjoy the fruits of retirement because they died needlessly and too early in another era of austerity, But my heart is also with the people of the present, who, because of welfare cuts and austerity measures, are struggling once more to make ends meet, and whose futures I fear for.
Harry Leslie Smith courageously declared in the Guardian last year that he would wear the poppy for the last time because he believed “the most fortunate in our society have turned the solemnity of remembrance for fallen soldiers in ancient wars into a justification for our most recent armed conflicts” and also that “today’s politicians in Britain use past wars to bolster our flagging belief in national austerity or to compel us to surrender our rights as citizens, in the name of the public good.”
Harry’s recent book, Harry’s Last Stand, is also well worth reading. Melissa Benn in her Guardian review, described it as follows:
A kind of epic poem, one that moves in circular fashion from passionate denunciation to intense autobiographical reflection … should be required reading for every MP, peer, councillor, civil servant and commentator. The fury and sense of powerlessness that so many people feel at government policy beam out of every page.”
Great stuff from Harry Smith and Little Jacob. I was there. The Audiance were clearly moved. Indeed a ‘Cradle to Grave’ moment, which Andy referred to..
Moved me to tears. It was the best speech at the cionference. Labour had better keep their promises . I am not happy with the cap on child benefit and welfare is a huge issue for me. Stop running after Tory policy, you hang on to my vote by a thread.
I use my NHS monthly to keep my self alive without it I’d be dead.
I was injured in an accident and then watched as labour sold off the NHS into private hands , I saw a private firm take over the cleaning of my hospital and with six month I has MRSA in a hospital that was literally stinking of urine bottle filled to the top, that were left on tables for days on end as the cleaners would not move them and nurses refuse to do it. My wife and two other laddies would come in take the cleaning tools and clean the ward , they’d remove all the urine bottles and then the nurses asked them to clean the other wards they refused
The ward then got MRSA and instead of me being back at work now I’m crippled because of the mess made by New labour only it was not knew it was a bog standard labour party as this one is now.
Today I’m paraplegic and struggling to cope with a spinal cord mess that came from MRSA.
Save the NHS yes by all means, but who is going to be the party to vote for to do that, Tories well no a labour party that sees the Tories as getting it so right they will copy it, I think not, Liberals well dear god no, UKIP I doubt it. the Greens well only if the NHS goes green.
We have five parties in this country and all are basically the same all scared of losing they copy each other , deficit has to be cut and do that we need cuts cuts cuts nobody has thought about growing the nation jobs, work, and success just cuts cuts cuts and it will come from welfare and the poor..
I thought it was the Tories who privatised the cleaning
yep it was only they called themselves New labour.
You’re saying labour hasn’t won an election in 40 years,maybe the public dont want us!
Yawn I try my best not to bother with you most of the time John