RAF veteran and political activist dubbed ‘world’s oldest rebel’ Harry Leslie Smith dies at 95 after one last beer
- RAF veteran Harry Leslie Smith, 95, was taken ill in Ontario earlier this month
- His son John took over his father’s account posting updates from his bedside
- After a fortnight of ailing health, Mr Smith died this morning, his son said
- His death has prompted an outpouring of grief among Labour Party figures
Harry Leslie Smith, the political activist and second world war veteran who survived the Great Depression, has died in Canada, aged 95 – after sharing one last beer from his hospital bedside with his son.
Mr Smith, who rose to fame in 2014 after giving a powerful speech at the UK Labour Party’s convention, was hospitalised in Ontario, Canada since November 14.
While his father was unwell, his son John Smith took over his Twitter account, which has more than 254,000 followers around the world.
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Harry Leslie Smith, the political activist and second world war veteran who survived the Great Depression, has died in Canada aged 95, after sharing one last beer from his hospital bedside with his son
At around 8:30 GMT today, John Smith tweeted: ‘At 3:39 this morning, my dad Harry Leslie Smith died. I am an orphan. #istandwithharry’.
Hours earlier, he had tweeted saying Harry had ‘a good night’ but appeared to be ‘very tired’.
Mr Smith had been touring the world’s refugee hotspots when he fell ill before his flight back to the UK, his family two weeks ago.
After a fortnight of ailing health, the veteran activist, who once told then prime minister David Cameron to ‘keep your mitts off my NHS’, finally succumbed having sipped on a final beer with son just a few hours prior.
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Born in Barnsley, South Yorkshire, Mr Smith served with the RAF in Germany and in recent years campaigned on behalf of the NHS.
Mr Smith survived Britain’s post-First World War recession in abject poverty and spent much of his later life campaigning to ensure others did not experience the same, his son said.
The nonagenarian documented his fight for social justice in a podcast called ‘Harry’s Last Stand.’
Besides healthcare and refugee advocacy, Mr Smith had written several books since turning 87.
At the age of 91, Mr Smith broke into the political mainstream with a barnstorming speech at the Labour Party conference, where he described life in Britain before a national health service, and the squalor he and his generation endured post war.
While offering medical updates, John opened up about the closeness he shared with his father, writing: ‘Since my brother Pete’s death, 9 years ago, I have been at Harry’s side and never absent from him for more than a day.
‘We laughed, we argued, we learned from each other. I became his friend while still letting him remain my dad.’
RAF veteran Harry Leslie Smith is critically ill in a Canadian hospital. His son John has been tweeting from the 95-year-old’s bedside about his condition following a fall yesterday
Besides healthcare and refugee advocacy, Smith has written several books since turning 87
On hearing that Mr Smith had died, Jeremy Corbyn said: ‘We will all miss Harry Leslie Smith – he was one of the giants whose shoulders we stand on.
‘A World War Two veteran who dedicated his life to fighting for our National Health Service, a peaceful world and for countries to meet their moral responsibility by welcoming refugees.’
Former Labour leader Ed Miliband tweeted: ‘Very sad to hear of the death of Harry Leslie Smith. He was one of a kind who never wavered in his fight for equality and justice. We should all carry his passion, optimism and spirit forward.’
Former Labour leader Ed Miliband tweeted: ‘Very sad to hear of the death of Harry Leslie Smith. He was one of a kind who never wavered in his fight for equality and justice. We should all carry his passion, optimism and spirit forward’
The political commentator grew up in poverty in Barnsley, Yorkshire before serving in the RAF in World War II
Labour MP Jonathan Ashworth wrote on Twitter: ‘RIP Harry Leslie Smith will always remember this wonderful speech on the NHS you gave at Labour Conference.’
Labour MP Luke Pollard also paid tribute, tweeting: ‘RIP @Harryslaststand. Harry Leslie Smith came to #plymouth ahead of the 2015 General Election.
‘He was old and frail but full of life. His encouragement and positivity was a true inspiration. RIP Harry’
Harry Leslie Smith: Labour Party Conference speech in Manchester, 2014
Harry Leslie Smith’s NHS Story
‘I came into this world in the rough and ready year of 1923. I am from Barnsley and I can tell you that my childhood, like so many others from that era, was not an episode from Downton Abbey.
Instead, it was a barbarous time. It was a bleak time. It was an uncivilized time because public healthcare didn’t exist.
Back then hospitals, doctors and medicine were for the privileged few because they were run for profit rather than as a vital state service that keeps a nation’s citizens fit and healthy.
My memories stretch back almost a hundred years, and if I close my eyes, I can smell the poverty that oozed from the dusky tenement streets of my boyhood.
I can taste on my lips the bread and drippings I was served for my tea. I can remember extreme hunger, and my parent’s undying love for me. I can still feel my mum and dad’s desperation as they tried to keep our family safe and healthy in the slum we called home.
Poor mum and dad. No matter how hard they tried to protect me and my sisters, the cards were stacked against them because common diseases trolled our neighbourhoods and snuffed out life like a cold breath on a warm candle flame.
I still remember hearing while I played as a child on my street the anguished cries that floated from a window on my boyhood street. They were the screams from a woman dying from cancer who couldn’t afford morphine to ease her passage from this life.
No one in our community was safe from poor health, sickness and disease. In our home, TB came for my oldest sister, Marion, who was the apple of my dad’s eye. Her sickness and his inability to pay for medicine broke his heart.
Tuberculosis tortured my sister and left her an invalid that had to be restrained with ropes tied to her bed. My parents did everything in their power to keep Marion alive and comfortable but they just didn’t have the dosh to get her to the best clinics, doctors or medicines.
Instead she wasted away before our eyes until my mother could no longer handle her care and she was dispatched to our workhouse infirmary where she died 87 years ago. Mum and dad couldn’t afford to bury their darling daughter. So like the rest of our country’s indigent, she was dumped nameless into a pauper’s pit.
My family’s story isn’t unique. Rampant poverty and no health care were the norm for the Britain of my youth. That injustice galvanized my generation to become, after the Second World War, the tide that raised all boats.
In 1945, at the age of 22, still in the RAF after a long hard Great Depression and a savage and brutal war, I voted for the first time.
Election Day 1945 was one of the proudest days in my life. I felt that I was finally getting a chance to grab destiny by the shirt collar and that is why I voted for Labour and for the creation of the NHS.
Today my heart is with all of those people from my generation who didn’t make it past childhood, didn’t get an education, didn’t grow as individuals, didn’t marry, didn’t raise a family and didn’t enjoy the fruits of retirement.
They died needlessly and too early. But my heart is also with the people of the present, who are struggling once more to make ends meet, and whose futures I fear for.
Today, we must be vigilant. We must be vocal. We must demand that the NHS will always remain an institution for the people and by the people.
We must never ever let the NHS free from our grasp because if we do your future will be my past. So I want to say loudly and clearly: Mr Cameron, keep your mitts off my NHS.’
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