LONDON — British World War II veteran and political activist Harry Leslie Smith has died at age 95.

Smith had built a strong following with his calls for social justice and his warning that a greed-driven society was failing those in need.

His son John said that Smith died Wednesday morning. He had been hospitalized in critical condition in Canada after a recent fall.

Smith was an outspoken human rights activist who had come to prominence in recent years with his advocacy of the National Health Service and the need to protect refugees. He was also a strong critic of Britain’s austerity program.

He argued that greed and globalism were stripping away the advances wrought by his generation, which had survived the Great Depression and World War II and built a more just society.