Seize your destiny

Anti-austerity campaigner and war veteran Harry Smith urges students at Manchester University (March 11) to register and use their votes as part of the No Vote, No Voice campaign

For me politics is personal because in my lifetime the defining moments in our country’s history have been decided by elections.

I have always seen free and fair elections as the corner stone of a functioning society. There is no question I am partisan when it comes to politics because my experience as boy growing up in the slums of Yorkshire taught me that if power is held by the few, the many will suffer a lifetime of misery.

But my belief in democracy is so strong that I am able to respect all those who make the effort to have their voice and their convictions count regardless of their political stripes.

I am not going to lecture you and hector you about the war dead from my generation who sacrificed their lives for democracy and freedom. I know every generation has a responsibility to their ancestors their contemporaries and their decedents.

Moreover,  I didn’t come here to tell you that your generation doesn’t have the same gumption as mine because that would be a lie. I know you have that same gumption and that same thirst for social justice as my generation did because I see examples of it every day when I watch you go to work or listen to your struggles to get a higher education or get by in this hard scrabble world 21^st century world.

Simple truth

I only came here to tell you a simple truth, if you don’t register to vote your society will die along with your hopes and dreams for a decent life for yourselves and for your offspring.

I am here to tell you that you won’t have more than a ‘bread and dripping’ life if you don’t register to vote. I know this because I am not a historian but I am an eye witness to history as I turned 92 last month.  Yes, I maybe very old but I can still remember what it is like to be young and live through austere times.

In fact, I was around your age in the winter of 1945 as I was 22. World War Two was in the fag end of its days but there was still time for that conflagration to kill me or my friends before it was extinguished in May.  I had been a member of the RAF since 1941 and asides from the Blitz, V1 and V2 attacks my war had been relatively good.

However my luck was about to change as my unit was ordered to cross the Channel and deploy to newly liberated Belgium where we were to commandeer former Luftwaffe airfields and act as an Air traffic control battalion just to the rear of combat.

My unit and I landed in Ostend in late February and by May we had travelled through devastated Belgium to emaciated Holland and into a defeated and grim Germany where the dead seemed to outnumber the living.

During those months when the armies of the world clashed on the land, the sea and the air by day and night, I observed an endless torrent of displaced persons, concentration camp victims and homeless civilians struggle to survive on freshly turned battle grounds.

1945 was truly a remarkable frightening and glorious moment to be alive, young and on the winning side of history.  I have never forgotten the devastation, the hunger, the misery that I witnessed while my RAF unit barrelled through Europe as the struggle between light and darkness reached its bloody end. However despite the sadness that blossomed all around me; hope for a better tomorrow also germinated on those killing fields.

You see in May 1945, the Second World War ended and a General Election was called. At that time I was both callow and cynical because I had been raised in the rough and ready streets of Barnsley Bradford and Halifax and had seen the cruelty of war.

Like today

My generation was much like yours today because we were cynical about politicians and distrusted elections as they only seemed to maintain our misery and insured that we were denied healthcare, affordable housing, a proper education and a chance to make decent lives for ourselves.

As for me I was jaded by my society because I had suffered horribly during the Great Depression. My eldest sister died of TB in a workhouse and my childhood was encompassed by the trinity of poverty: hunger, homelessness and despair. My family lived for 1o years on the door step of starvation. As a boy I foraged through rubbish bins for me tea like an animal. I was forced like millions of other bairns to become a child labourer at the age of 7.

While children of the well-to-do, played games I worked a beer barrow and delivered ale down despair-filled cobbled streets to austerity ravaged adults who longed for a short respite from their diminished lives, which were being suffocated by the Great Depression.

So at war’s end I was not going to be swayed by the words of politicians because as my mates would say they all talk a load of bullocks. But my generation did realise a simple fact of life that if you sit on the sidelines of your life, others will decide for you whether you win or lose.

So many from my generation resolved to vote in that 1945 General Election because we wanted to  create a more equal Britain – a more liberal world and a decent future for our children, where merit mattered and the class system was history. So when I voted for the first time I, like most everyone else of my generation, I voted for the future. I voted for justice, I voted for democracy, I voted for the right of everyone to a decent standard of living and the creation of the NHS.

I am not saying that voting will cure all of our problems whether they are economic or social. But I am telling you it is the first step in creating a better world for yourself and your children.

In fact this election may go down as the most important election of your generation like 1945 was for mine. So, it would be a great misfortune for your future, and Britain’s future to not participate in something that will make a difference for good or ill to your lives. Regardless of your political beliefs your personal beliefs or convictions you must register to vote.

Then you must go on Election Day and vote with your head, your heart for a new tomorrow.

Some have called my generation the greatest but I think your generation will be the greatest because you will finish the job my generation started. I wish all of you a long and happy life, seize your destiny by voting and being engaged with your society.

Thank-you and good night.  Please remember for everyone sake No Vote, No Voice.

• Join a Harry on Twitter @ https://twitter.com/Harryslaststand