World’s oldest rebel
Remembering a hero who used his life story to fight injustice and poverty
WITH a twinkle in his eye, he christened himself the “world’s oldest rebel”. A normal bloke, a miner’s son from Barnsley, Yorkshire, doing all he could - he said - for as long as he had left to campaign for a better future for the world’s have-nots.
But the tributes paid to 95-year-old social justice advocate Harry Leslie Smith, following news of his death yesterday morning after developing pneumonia, were a reminder that this determined, compassionate man and his effect on all who heard him speak was very far from normal.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, reacting to his loss, said he was: “One of the giants whose shoulders we stand on.”
And however much he might have protested with characteristic modesty, Harry knew full well he could make a difference – which is why he persisted until the very end.
Speaking and writing on causes ranging from anti-austerity and saving the NHS to the plight of refugees, Harry toured the world, using his pension as funding.
He wrote numerous books and even defied his advancing years by recording a podcast and setting up a Twitter account @Harryslaststand, attracting more than 250,000 followers.
His son John announced Harry’s death to his many fans on his Twitter account – and sent it trending.
He wrote: “At 3:39 this morning, my dad Harry Leslie Smith died. I am an orphan. #istandwithharry.”
Harry campaigned by using the best tools at his disposal – his own story.
He told of a childhood spent in abject poverty and his bitter fight against fascism in the RAF during the Second World War.
In his final days in hospital in Ontario, Canada, where he was visiting John, he supped his last beer and told doctors: “I am not ready to die because I have too much work to do.”
His mantra was summed up in his most famous speech, given at the Labour Party conference in 2014, which left his audience in tears.
He said: “I’m not a politician, a man of the elite, or a financial guru. But my life is your history and we should keep it that way.”
After his impassioned address, Harry was embraced by the then Shadow Health Secretary now Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham.
The conference in Manchester was Ed Miliband’s last as leader. He was replaced by Corbyn the following year.
Harry was born in 1923 and knew poverty from a young age. With his coal mining father unemployed,
Harry worked at age seven as a barrow boy for a beer bottler in Bradford, supporting his parents and sisters.
He recalled: “I remember extreme hunger. It was a barbarous, black and uncivilised time.”
He spoke of an era when “public healthcare did not exist” and “doctors, medicine and healthcare were for the privileged few”.
One of his sisters, Marion, died aged 10 after contracting tuberculosis.
He recalled her roped to her bed in agony because their parents couldn’t afford morphine. She was buried “nameless in a pauper’s pit”.
He joined the RAF as a young man and spent several years in Germany as part of the Allied occupation force.
He met his future wife Friede, who
As a young man, I fought fascism. Now I must do the same because of Trump HARRY LESLEY SMITH GIVES HIS OPINION ON US PRESIDENT
died in 1999, in occupied Hamburg. They returned to Yorkshire together then emigrated to Canada in the 1950s and brought up their three sons there with Harry forging a career in the I oriental carpet trade. t was after the death of their middle son Peter in 2009, aged 50, that Harry began his campaign work, as he struggled with his loss and the world dealt with the aftermath of the financial crisis.
He said: “By 2010 my grief was uncontrollable and I knew the only way I could expiate it was through writing about my early life.
“I needed to let people know that the economic and political storms coming our way, I’d seen them before.”
Harry first drew attention to himself in 2013 when he said he would not be wearing a poppy on Remembrance Sunday because he felt it was being used as a symbol to promote current conflicts.
Backing the NHS became a cornerstone of his campaign and “Keep your mitts off my NHS” became his slogan.
He was devastated by the growing poverty he witnessed once again in Britain. And, equally, by right-wing insularism he saw around the world.
He said: “As a young man I fought fascism and now, as a very old man, I must make another stand to oppose fascism because of Donald Trump.”
He added: “I cannot sit back in good conscience while the world my generation built is left to turn feral in the hands of right-wing populists and indifferent capitalists…”
The refugee crisis also consumed him and in recent years he toured refugee camps.
It was to be his final challenge.
In one of his last interviews, he said: “On my 95th birthday, I will toast my longevity with a sherry and declare that my last stand as a human being was to not go gently in the good night.”
Harry, you certainly did not...