Harry's Last Stand

"Years of economic turmoil wore away our common courtesy."
JM Smith

"It seems like forever now that I’ve been piecing together and editing my dad’s The Green and Pleasant Land. The first volume is done, aside from some tinkering. This gives me a sense of enormous relief because I am always concerned that my health will pack right in before this job is done."

https://open.substack.com/pub/jmsmith/p/years-of-economic-turmoil-wore-away?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

#HarrysLastStand #HarryLeslieSmith #JohnSmith

Harry's Last Stand

The Right to Be Moved by Beauty in an Age of Brutality
JM Smith

"Neoliberalism diverted humanity from the path towards freedom that was initiated by the Welfare State. Now we are hostages to a time of seemingly insurmountable cruelty. It’s unnerving to live through this, where ordinary citizens face economic collapse while the better-paid live out gilded age fantasies."

https://open.substack.com/pub/jmsmith/p/the-right-to-be-moved-by-beauty-in?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

#HarrysLastStand #HarryLeslieSmith #JohnSmith

Harry's Last Stand

Living in Fight or Flight
Poverty’s oldest symptom
JM Smith

"The only way I can describe this tiredness over the last three months is the moment before anaesthesia takes hold, when your arms and legs feel weighed down. I think it’s a response to living in a constant state of fight or flight. It wears you down. Hopefully, it will pass. I’m finding it harder to tread water."

https://open.substack.com/pub/jmsmith/p/living-in-fight-or-flight?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

#HarrysLastStand #HarryLeslieSmith #johnSmith

Harry's Last Stand

The Way We Live Now
JM Smith

"Capitalism has always dehumanised the vulnerable, the poor, and the disabled. For a while, we tamed the ideology of the oligarchs through a welfare state, reforms to taxation, and democratic institutions. That is history now, and what comes next is a further diminishment of ordinary struggles. We are rushing into the high beams of catastrophe."

https://open.substack.com/pub/jmsmith/p/the-way-we-live-now?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

#HarrysLastStand #HarryLeslieSmith #JohnSmith

Harry's Last Stand
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Normal Was Built On Neoliberal Quicksand
JM Smith

"The sun is out today, but March wears spring as if it were winter. It’s been too bleak for too long and grinds my bones. These last six years have gnawed at us like crows on a carcass.

On this day six years ago, there was intermittent rain. I watched it splatter against the window from my hospital bed."

https://open.substack.com/pub/jmsmith/p/normal-was-built-on-neoliberal-quicksand?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

#HarrysLastStand #HarryLeslieSmith #JohnSmith

Harry's Last Stand

Imagine If "Socialist" Britain In 1948 Was Treated Like Cuba Is In 2026
JM Smith

"This morning, while editing The Green and Pleasant Land, I found myself thinking about what-ifs. It occurred to me that if the world of 1945 had had an American president like Donald Trump, Britain’s Welfare State might never have been allowed to take shape."

https://open.substack.com/pub/jmsmith/p/imagine-if-socialist-britain-in-1948?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

#HarrysLastStand #HarryLeslieSmith #JohnSmith

Harry's Last Stand

Without Moral Fibre
JM Smith

"The times we live in would make a very good movie or novel to get stuck into on a rainy Sunday afternoon. But living through it is not so pleasant, at least for the likes of us. The line from King Lear comes to mind:"

“As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport.”

https://open.substack.com/pub/jmsmith/p/without-moral-fibre-d45?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

#HarrysLastStand #HarryLeslieSmith #JohnSmith

Harry's Last Stand

The Cost-of-Living Crisis: Fear, Anger and Shame
How a permanent crisis is reshaping everyday life
JM Smith

"Last night, I stood behind a woman at a grocery store whose bank card was declined at the cash register. She didn’t have much to buy; it looked like her dinner. I wanted to pay for her but couldn’t. I knew my bank account was almost tapped out. I still needed to buy a loaf of bread."

https://open.substack.com/pub/jmsmith/p/the-cost-of-living-crisis-fear-anger?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

#HarrysLastStand #HarryLeslieSmith #JohnSmith

Harry's Last Stand

Cuba’s Hunger Spring
Sanctions, Siege, Silence, and Western Moral Surrender
JM Smith

"Outside, snow covers the first day of spring. The thaw that must come feels desperately far away.

Inside, television news is unrelenting propaganda against Iran and Cuba. It’s a bodyguard of lies to protect the status quo. The tone shifts back and forth from reasonable to hysterical like a good-cop/bad-cop routine."

https://open.substack.com/pub/jmsmith/p/cubas-hunger-spring?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

#HarrysLastStand #HarryLeslieSmith #JohnSmith

Harry's Last Stand

“Are You Having It or Not?”
In the Shadows of the Welfare State
JM Smith

"On her first day in Britain, Friede encounters a country still shaped by war, scarcity, and the uneasy beginnings of something new, a social democratic Britain.
Before you is another chapter from The Green & Pleasant Land, which Harry Leslie Smith was working on at the time of his death."

https://open.substack.com/pub/jmsmith/p/are-you-having-it-or-not?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

#HarrysLastStand #harryLeslieSmith #JohnSmith #SocialDemocracy