Don't Let My Past Be Your Future: A Call to Arms by Smith Harry Leslie

Author:Smith, Harry Leslie [Smith, Harry Leslie]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781472123466
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Published: 2017-09-13T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight:

Forsaken by an Economy for the Rich

In 2016, St Andrew’s Villas still look desolate and forsaken. What was once our doss still stands but it is now a mosque, which gives my soul much comfort. But its facade still holds the same melancholic dilapidation it exuded in the 1930s. Staring at it, I can hear the tormented cries of those who once inhabited rooms underneath its roof – abandoned pensioners, soldiers and families all thrown overboard by a society more interested in catering to the whims of its elite class. This place was a ground zero, if you will, for my family because it was on this street we took the full blast from the Great Depression. My family lost so much of themselves here; hope, trust, love. Almost everything that made us human was abandoned here.

There are fewer buildings on the street but what stands looks forlorn, neglected and ashamed. It hurts to see that poverty hasn’t disappeared from this neighbourhood. Penury still clings to St Andrew’s Villas.

Unless Britain returns to a more progressive politics, so many streets, towns and regions will remain shrouded in the sadness of people’s lives truncated by economic events beyond their control. No good came from Britain re-electing David Cameron’s Tories into government in 2015. Their small working majority delivered not only more austerity and financial deregulation but also the Act that paved the way for the EU referendum and now Brexit. Surely, the last six years should have instructed everyone that Tories don’t make social policies to assist those without advantages.

I am not going to pretend it doesn’t pain me to return to this street and see my old haunt. Coming back here is always difficult because it is just another unmarked graveyard for my childhood. The omnipresence of hopelessness gives me a lump in my throat and makes me want to shout out into the damp atmosphere, ‘Try as you might austerity, you didn’t break me.’ But I know that isn’t true because the Great Depression did bust me up spiritually, emotionally and mentally. Were it not for the creation of a more progressive society after the war, and my luck in finding the love of my life in 1945, I would never have survived to be almost a hundred years old. No, without those two things I would have perished from the damage done to my spirit as a lad. I would have been destroyed by the rage fuelled by drink and joblessness that I saw overcome some of my younger relatives.

I worry what will happen to young people today who are being assailed by both austerity and the consequences of Brexit because for them there is little hope for a brighter tomorrow. I think there is a gathering storm of fury building up in our younger members of society and, if it is unleashed, it will not be pretty. Unless we are careful, the decline in truthful reporting and sincere politicians will help fuel the risk of mob rule and mob violence.

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