Harry's Last Stand
The Postwar Promise Died Gradually, Then Suddenly
Harry Leslie Smith’s Past Became Our Present
JM Smith
"The relentless grind of neoliberalism in the dying days of Empire made me forget last week’s anniversary of Margaret Thatcher’s death. Dead now for these 13 years. Sadly, what she helped unleash—a modern state shorn of a functioning and generous social safety net—didn’t die with her."
Harry's Last Stand
The Britain We Came Home To
“Our man Attlee is taking back the mines and the steel works from the muckedy-mucks.”
JM Smith
"In Life on the Never, Never, my dad wanted to explore working-class hopes and disappointments in postwar Britain. In the late 1940s and 1950s, he had lived in that kitchen sink dramedy."
Lib Dem councillors say revamped bus station plans are “totally inadequate”
Harry's Last Stand
Keir Starmer: NHS Slayer
Harry Leslie Smith’s Past Became Our Present
JM Smith
Things have been falling apart in Britain since the era of Margaret Thatcher. State infrastructure has been starved of public investment so that it becomes inefficient, incompetent, and inadequate for the needs of society. This is neoliberalism’s grand plan: to privatise every aspect of the state,from healthcare to education.
https://open.substack.com/pub/jmsmith/p/keir-starmer-nhs-slayer?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
Harry's Last Stand
If We Did It Before, We Can Do It Again
The People’s Revolution for a Welfare State
JM Smith
"These reminiscences from my father’s working-class life — a personal history of the people’s revolution to build a welfare state following WWII — are important. They show in 2026 that if it was done in the past, we can do it again. The Green and Pleasant Land is the story of one family’s personal struggle."
Harry's Last Stand
Life on the Never, Never: Britain After the War
The People’s Revolution for a Welfare State
JM Smith
"I feel I am racing against time—but don’t we all, feel this, in 2026? It’s hard not to think that neoliberalism is racing towards a catastrophic denouement that most of won’t survive. So, we rush on. For me, I hope to have finished editing my father’s final works before neoliberalism reaches its epilogue."
Harry's Last Stand
Neoliberalism Severed Our Shared Human Condition
JM Smith
"Introduction
Our timeline is twisted; nothing feels real except the desperate circumstances of daily life. Neoliberalism has divorced us from the shared human condition. It makes our times more tragic and irredeemable because organised solidarity among workers, the vulnerable, and the marginalised is scarce."
Harry's Last Stand
Them or Us?
For Whom the Bell Tolls on Ultimatum Day
JM Smith
"I hear it, and you hear that ticking sound—a clock on the mantelpiece, in the hallway, or on the church tower.
Tick tock, like a metronome keeping a pianist to exact time, until 8 PM, tonight.
Then, at the toll of eight bells, in the dusk of the Eastern Time Zone, according to Donald Trump—who has taken on the role of Yahweh—the Iranian civilisation ends."
https://open.substack.com/pub/jmsmith/p/them-or-us?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
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."
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.
Harry's Last Stand
How Many Aprils Do We Have Left?
In the Age of Trump’s Whimsy
JM Smith
"Trump addresses his nation and the world tonight. This can’t be good and another is what it is scenario. Boots on the ground in Iran or a pullout of the USA from NATO are what the pundits are betting on. I have no clue what it will be, and probably nobody close to Trump does either, because the danger lies in the whimsy of his authoritarianism."
Bob Jamieson
Lichfield Live®
