The rebel who drew me under his spell and left me in awe
I ONLY met Harry Leslie Smith once but the mark he left on me, as on many others, was indelible.
The writer, activist, war veteran, socialist and “world’s oldest rebel” as he called himself, drew me under his spell with tales of his life, which ended this week after 95 remarkable years.
He spoke so eloquently and honestly about the horrors of Great Depression poverty he endured as a child, the Nazis he fought as a young man and the refugees he was trying to save in his old age, that he left me in awe.
When he spoke of his life going full circle under the current austeritydriven Government and warned “don’t let my past be your future”, it left a lump in the throat.
Another straight-talking old rebel, Baroness Trumpington, also died this week, but her life could not have been more opposite to Harry’s as she was born into wealth and privilege, and was a career Tory.
Yet certain traits united them. She, like him, was loyal to her party, fought Hitler as a Bletchley codebreaker and put in decades of public service, never missing a sitting in the Lords until her retirement last year aged 95.
Plus she took no crap, even from her own. She often stood up to Margaret Thatcher when the male cronies around her wilted, and famously shot two fingers at one of them, Lord
King, during a peers’ debate.
Both were patriots in the widest sense of the word who loved and cared about their people. And I’d love to know what they thought of the man who is promoted, mostly by himself, as today’s ultimate political rebel, Boris Johnson.
I’d like to think Harry would utter his quote about the decent world his generation fought for “being swept away by the greed of the 1%”, and say he was referring to sharks like Johnson.
And that the Baroness, who once on Have I Got News For You expressed horror at the prospect of Johnson becoming Tory leader, would call him the worst kind of disloyal chancer.
If so, who could argue? British politics has reached a sad state when Johnson is considered to be the ultimate principled maverick. Compared to some giants of the past he is a selfserving lightweight who would sell his partner, party and country down the river at the slightest prospect of personal gain. Sorry, make that has.
A shyster of the highest order who has been allowed into high office due to the cowardice of weak Tory leaders. Watch new footage from a BBC documentary about his time as Foreign Secretary, tossing back at the country’s Director of Europe a speech he’s about to give in Paris because it doesn’t have enough gags, and you will wince.
His open duplicity over Brexit has been disgraceful, yet he’s now demanding to be part of any leaders’ TV debate on it, when he’s merely a backbencher who leads nothing but his own agenda.
There is no comparison between the likes of old school characters like Harry Leslie Smith and Johnson. One lived through history and tried to deliver lessons from it, the other hi-jacked it and tried to mis-sell it to gullible people.
I know which rebel history will judge as the real thing.
Politics is in a sad state when Boris is seen as the ultimate maverick