Home UK WWII veteran and activist Harry Leslie Smith dies

WWII veteran and activist Harry Leslie Smith dies

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Activist and WWII veteran Harry Leslie Smith has died at the age of 95.

The Labour campaigner was taken ill in Canada following a fall earlier this month, and his son John had been keeping followers updated on his popular Twitter account.

"At 3:39 this morning, my dad Harry Leslie Smith died. I am an orphan," he wrote.

Mr Smith, who was in the RAF during WWII and lived through the Great Depression, had become a vocal advocate for socialist policies, arguing neo-liberal forces had degraded the welfare state built during his lifetime.

Nicknamed the "world's oldest rebel", he rose to prominence after making an impassioned speech in support of the NHS at Labour's 2014 conference, calling his childhood, before public healthcare, a "barbarous time" and criticising government austerity.

Mr Smith had devoted the latter years of his life to visiting refugee hotspots around the world, documenting the suffering caused by displacement in the hope that his age and following could create a "rallying cry" for action.

Born in 1923 in Barnsley, Yorkshire, he grew up in poverty after his coal miner father became unemployed, watching his sister die at the age of ten, and turned to writing in later life after working as a carpet trader in Toronto.

In his first widely-shared essay, he wrote that he would stop wearing a remembrance poppy in protest at politicians who "use past wars to bolster our flagging belief in national austerity".

He went on to write several books and tweeted about politics and his youth in post-war Britain to a following of 230,000.

He described his book Harry's Last Stand as a "rallying call", telling the younger generation of the need for a "social safety network" giving all the right to good housing, further education, healthcare, a living wage and dignified old age.

"I am not a historian. But at 91 I am history, and I fear its repetition," he said.

Mr Smith's son tweeted that he would "follow in his footsteps" and "endeavour to finish his projects", including publishing some of his father's later writing.

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In a tribute on Twitter, former Labour leader Ed Miliband described the activist as a "passionate fighter for justice right to the end of his life".

He added: "We should all carry his passion, optimism and spirit forward."

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