IT IS 70 years ago but I can recall the 1945 general election with a vivid clarity that is as strong as my wedding day or the birth of my children.

In both the spring and summer of that glorious year, my generation saw the downfall of Hitler and the rebirth of democracy all across the Western world.

I was just 22 in 1945 when the British general election was called but because I came from rough circumstances and had foraged through rubbish bins for my tea as a lad, I knew I had to make my vote count. 

Moreover, because I had witnessed my sister’s horrific struggle with TB and death in a workhouse infirmary and because our nation didn’t provide affordable healthcare to Britain’s poor and working class, I knew that voting in that 1945 election was my chance — along with millions of other men and women from my generation who had been short-changed by austerity before the war — to say never again to illness, disease, poverty, inequality, homelessness and joblessness.

For me personally, like so many others, it was a momentous time because the economic and social injustices of the past were to be righted.

I knew as well as my friends and everyone from my generation that by voting Labour we had a chance to die in our beds from old age rather than in battle or from hunger in the slums we had once called home or from preventable diseases that felled the poor because healthcare was considered by the Tories to be a preserve of the rich.

The Labour government that I voted for did enormous good for the people of Britain and our national economy.

The 1945 Labour government eradicated slums, built hundreds of thousands of new homes, created the NHS, nationalised the railways, made education affordable, balanced the books and also was able to pay down the national debt.

Unfortunately, seven decades later and after five years of a Tory-led coalition, we are seeing so much that my generation fought to establish — from affordable housing, to a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work — eroded by an austerity imposed by a Tory government that punishes ordinary people and enriches the 1 per cent.

But what is most disturbing is the decline of the NHS as a public institution under this Tory government.

Britain, and especially her young, can’t afford another five years of Tory rule because, make no mistake, David Cameron and his cronies are out to obliterate the NHS an institution that protects the health of all British citizens regardless of their wealth, class or connections.

However it is not hard to see why the Tories are against the social safety network and, by inference, the NHS, which my generation fought so hard to create. Simply put they are ideological zealots who hate fairness and equality and worship the power unbridled capitalism gives to those of inherited untaxed wealth.

In the 1,820 days that Cameron has governed Britain we have seen thousands of front-line NHS staff made redundant.

Patients have suffered the longest waiting times for treatment in six years.

Moreover, in the past 12 months there has been unprecedented crisis at our A&Es where over a million people have been compelled to wait four hours or more for a trolley and ambulance bed or been forced to queue for ambulance services outside hospitals.

Each hour, day, month and year that Cameron’s Tories have governed Britain, patient care in our hospitals has diminished and added undue stress on our nurses and doctors whose talents to heal and save lives is being sorely tested by this government which believes that social services should be delivered by the private sector.

However the recent announcement by the NHS Supply Chain that it has agreed to privatise an enormous component of its services to combat a backlog of clients waiting for surgery or medical tests is not only disturbing, it is terrifying for someone who remembers life before there was a public NHS.

This agreement is worth £780 million and will be portioned off to 11 giant corporations which will oversee and perform heart, joint and other operations as well as orchestrate other types of tests and operate X-ray clinics and labs.

Selling off the right to perform operations, conduct tests, lab work or control mobile X-ray units won’t make healthcare more efficient or affordable, but it will guarantee that within the lifetime of our youngest generation health services will depend, not on the condition of one’s illness but on whether the patient has the ability to afford treatment.

I grew up in the slums of Yorkshire. I grew up in a Britain that afforded nothing to its poor and working class.

Yet we fought in our millions for this country’s survival against fascism during World War II.

We stood by out country because we believed in human rights, the rights of workers, unions and the right for all to have affordable healthcare.

This year’s general election is as important to this generation as 1945 was to mine because another Tory government would ensure that my past becomes Britain’s future.

It is imperative that everyone votes because being cynical about democracy today will guarantee the tyranny of corporate health care tomorrow

•  Harry Leslie Smith is the author of Harry’s Last Stand (Icon Books). Join Harry on Twitter @Harryslaststand.