If you listen to or watch the news today, you will find that the most important matter to report is that, apparently, we won World War II 80 years ago.
That is not news.
That is jingoism.
It is also quite absurd. I've been around long enough to recall maybe sixty VE days now, and to have known many people who were in the armed forces in WWII.
One of my grandfathers died as a result of that war and has a war grave. And when I was young, no one celebrated VE Day as it is now.
Perhaps back then, people knew the price that had been paid.
Perhaps people also understood at that time how big the fascist threat had been and that it was more important to think about how to prevent it from ever happening again than to celebrate the military victory, which had been necessitated by the failure to address the conditions that gave rise to fascism.
But then, what happens now is not a celebration. It is an enactment put on for current political purposes. It is all part of the 'bread and circuses' routine now beloved of all politicians who want to distract us from the fact that most people in this country are being exploited. The trouble for them is that growing numbers of people are now aware of that fact, which is why support for fascism is again increasing, including in significant numbers here in the UK this time.
There is, then, nothing to celebrate today.
Instead, we should note that we have not learned the lessons of history.
And we should note that the Tories and Labour are now marching to the far-right's drumbeat as they offer ever more extreme policies of hate in their stupid desire to emulate its racist and oppressive agendas.
Eighty years ago, we won a victory in Europe. Today, we are losing the fight against fascism at home, and those leading the celebrations are responsible for that. I find nothing that makes me want to wave a flag in that fact.
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It is important to remember that Britain fought the WWII to try to hang onto the remnants of the empire. This country did not fight the war to combat fascism. Chamberlain attempted to appease Hitler because he didn’t see a problem with what Hitler was trying to do.
Matthew, I have to disagree, As in all things there are different views.
The cause of the war was in Europe. I don’t see evidence to deny that. Chamberlain had little sympathy for Hitler but felt an overwhelming need to avoid another war. The ‘Great War’ with 750,000 dead from the UK alone and millions elsewhere was only 20 years in the past. Public opinion, with a few exceptions, was on his side in this.
Hitler insisted that Sudetenland Germans belonged in the Reich. Many felt that was reasonable and not worth a war to prevent it. When the following March Hitler took the rest of Czechoslovakia, Chamberlain imposed conscription and said we -and the French- would guarantee Poland’s western border.
Much of the Empire was already independent -Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa -and independence for India was on the cards, obstructed by Conservatives.
Millions of people in the Empire volunteered- for differing reasons. That is not to say they many didn’t have issues with Imperial rule.
I have seen contemporary documents which people say winning a war would so deplete British power that the Empire would not continue for long but the priority was the war in Europe. These voices were few but informed. And so it proved.
There was an alternative, still occasionally heard today, which was that Hitler though the British Empire a ‘good thing’ -Aryan rule etc He did think that. The argument was his main antagonist was communist Russia and he would go to war with them and destroy Communism. But it would be a titanic struggle which would exhaust each of them while we preserved our strength. I don’t need to say that was a Right Wing view.
A few on the left believed we should go to war if Germany took on Russia.
With the fall of France, victory looked a remote possibility. It was a war of survival once the voices calling for a ‘deal’ were over ruled.
My father was in the Army from 1940 to 1946, including being one of the first support troops to land after D-Day.
Funnily enough my oldest sons maternal grandfather, then aged 4 saw the fleet he was on assembling in the Thames Estuary.
When my mother died and we cleared the house we found his medals, still in their original packaging
My mother was in the Auxiliary Fire Service and watched Bristol burn when fire watching on Purdown.
Neither showed any urge to celebrate it and indeed its only recently that VE day seems to have become an ‘Event’ If we were to do anything I suggest that rather like Remembrance Day something more sombre would be appropriate
Agreed
My father was a fire watcher when he was in the sixth form and at university, during the war.
[…] politicians can, apparently, senselessly celebrate the past, without thinking about what it means. But worrying about the future is beyond their comprehension, and pay-grade, so small-minded are […]
Exactly what I have been thinking. This “celebration” has been thrust at us for days, and if present-day fascism is mentioned I haven’t noticed.
I find the UK’s obsession (and I think it is that) with ‘its finest hour’ increasingly odd.
Stranger still is the fact that when I grew up in England, in the 1960s-70s, only 20 years or so after the actual war, it definitely did not have the media, etc attention that it does now.
Agreed
Thank you for addressing something I have long felt.
The best way to publicly remember the sacrifice of the dead and to honour that sacrifice is to work harder at preventing new wars and adding to the numbers of the fallen.
A few plastic poppies and the odd bugle call here and there never did anything for me and have not stopped the slaughter. The real tribute to the fallen is PEACE.
VE day is pure theatre.
BTW – my VE credentials are that my grandfather on my father’s side who was an RSM came home shell-shocked in WW1 and had nightmares until the day he died and had what we call PTSD today; I lost an uncle serving in WWII in Europe as a teenager and his brother had a close call in a shell hole in the desert whilst he was playing the guitar with a mate – he got blown out of the hole and his best mate just disappeared off the face of the earth.
Alas, agreed!
My recollections from the 40s include no food banks, no begging, evident policing by consent with officers on the beat, locally accessible police stations, no trolleys in hospital corridors etc., no/very limited child hunger etc.
Inevitably with a large emotional factor, it seemed/was that the citizenry, and their children, were treated with some respect and not extravagantly exploited. Yet, nationally we were financially poorer then and recovering from socio-economic post-war disruption.
Recently, we seem to be in an era of false friendliness and real exploitation by those with obvious and submerged power.
I am listening to Radio 3 (my usual refuge, though sadly no longer the home of classical music it claims to be: Friday night is particularly awful) and it is cramming every reference to our “victory” it can (while continuing to ignore Gaza and the rise of the far right in many countries, including our own).
I have parted ways with Radio 3, as well
While I agree with the sentiment of this article, in terms of how the media and Government are pushing today as a celebration, I would just like to say that we are nearing the time where no one alive was actually involved in WW2, so I think there is an importance in recognising this day. Still 80 years is a rather arbitrary number, but 100 might have very few alive who were around as adults.
It is a distraction, and incoherent – the Government pushes the line that Russia is bad invading Ukraine, but agrees that Israel can do whatever it wants in Gaza. A previous iteration of this Government happily helped invade a sovereign nation despite there being no WMD. It sends a Carrier to parade around the Pacific to “willy wave” at China, but encourages more business and investment from them. It stands by whilst a large part of the Kings domain is threatened by its neighbour.
Is Keir’s head just empty? What does he think about? What is his overall vision?
There is a classic Mitchell and Webb sketch with them both dressed as SS officers, discussing all the great things they are doing, then one of them ponders why they have skulls on their collars, and ends up posing the question – “Are we the baddies?”. Will Keir ask himself this question sometime soon please?
I am old enough to remember a bonfire being lit in our street on May,8th, 1945 to celebrate the end of the war in Europe. Now maybe it’s my memory, but I can not for the life of me remember such a hoo ha taking place in any year since, as is being made this year. Bread and circuses certainly describes it accurately.
Thanks
Led By Donkeys new video – brilliant. Actually nearly had me crying, because when old fellas like that are gone , the first hand memory goes too, and fascism can break through another chink in the armour. (my dad was a night fighter pilot, crazy group of young men)
https://youtu.be/lw4ZjhOukwU?si=XUOSZB9-Upd6cdO3
Now on the blog
Excellent post, thanks.
I would say that the ‘dancing about with flags’ phenomenon (that’s been brought to a new level by Starmer/McSweeney and co) is all about insecurity. Insecurity of the fractured socio economic nature, and especially governing a multinational state.
It always needs to be remembered and emphasised that the UK and (hence Starmer ‘dancing with union jacks’) is a state that is made up by three countries (England, Scotland and Wales) and the ‘province’ of Northern Ireland.
The union jack and plastering it on things (and also putting ‘UK’ on things such as the lamentable ‘UKCA’ mark) – is imposing ‘late unionism’ – a sticking plaster – on a country that is already falling apart at the seams.
Academics call this phenomenon ‘muscular unionism’ – and what I call ‘dancing around with the union jack’ – reached the absurd level that a few years ago under the Johnson government ‘Lord’ David Frost denied the existence of England, Scotland and Wales – it was only ‘the UK’! Again, by doing all this and going to all these efforts, the insecurity of being in a multinational state for ‘hard unionists’ is tangible.
Labour’s victory last July was seen as a ‘last chance’ for many. However, see the collapse of the ‘Labour resurgence’ in Scotland, and the hugely encouraging recent polling for Plaid in Wales (and levels of support for Welsh independence at the level that polling for Scottish independence was when the Edinburgh Agreement was signed in 2012 – just two years before 2014 indyref).
So they put up more flags (plus Starmer with lots of military people in camouflage in the background)!
It’s all a bit pathetic.
I’ll never forget Stramer live on BBC during the Covid time, talking about something from his own kitchen. I have no idea now what he was talking about but flags in his kitchen I’ll never forget. He was polling well behind Johnson at the time, so I imagine they told him he had to go all patriotic. And there were virtually 20 or more large Union Jacks in his kitchen – on his cupboards, fridge, table…. It was really hilarious and pathetic at the same time. I remember thinking at the time – who are you – Labour leader or local skinhead.
I cannot celebrate the ‘Glorious Dead’ of our victory in Europe that liberated the Nazi death camps; a holocaust that we were not exposed to via the internet on a daily basis! VE Day’s morally bankrupt sentiment is unconscionable, at a time when the UK continues to actively facilitate the Israeli war machine with the weapons to obliterate Gaza, and the reconnaissance flights to enable targeting of what little remains in the strip.
This Morkish Celebration’ is particularly sickening as both main political parties continue to stoke the ongoing genocide being perpetrated by Israel in their determination to totally exterminate the Palistinian people, both in Gaza and the West Bank! There is no excuse for us to condone this crime against humanity as we witness the consequences in graphic broadcasts. How can any people of conscience see the distressing evidence of the indiscriminate slaughter of innocent children, and civilians being deliberately starved to death in Gaza? This is no time to celebrate!
How can we remain oblivious to the cruel hypocrisy of our government’s outright complicity in this well publicized vile atrocity? I hope all of these cowardly government ministers will be publically disgraced and that our warped leaders will face the most severe justice possible in the Hague for their significant role in the war crimes of the rogue apartheid Israeli state. I very seriously doubt that this will transpire, but I am in no doubt at all that the VE Day celebrations will outlive the depravity of our century!
At work, we had a two minute silence at 12pm today. Far better than the ‘celebrations’ taking place.
Thank you to Richard and the community.
Dad, his dad and his brother and their cousins (in WW2), and my godfather served with the RAF.
When dad and my godfather joined in 1964, they worked with senior officers and NCOs who had served in WW2. Other than for training purposes, the veterans rarely talked about the war. Neither did they omit the role of the USSR and even China, the latter fighting Japan since 1931.
Dad recalls a remembrance Sunday c. 1970 and the cabinet and shadow cabinet, with a couple of exceptions, displaying their medals. These politicians were not like Starmer.
My parents, godfather and I recall the remembrance Sunday where Johnson turned up drunk, unkempt, wearing a jacket and trousers that did not match, and put his wreath upside down. From lunchtime, the BBC diverted attention with a smear against Corbyn and switched footage to the previous year’s ceremony, so that Johnson would be spared embarrassment.
Dad is compiling material for donation to the archives.
Thanks
More than my lot, I think
But I will be honest I have so many great uncles I have no idea what many of them did
Thanks for this post. I have successfully avoided all the flag waving celebrations.
I agree with Kim Sanders Fisher that this celebration of victory and the end of a genocide rings hollow, when that which was never to happen again is happening now, before our eyes.
Our choir was invited to sing at a VE Day ‘party’ and I duly joined in. It was full of elderly people waving flags over their cakes and tea. Some looked a little bemused but enjoyed singing the ‘old songs’. But I could not join in the singing of Land of Hope and Glory I’m afraid. I tried thinking of my dad who survived Dunkirk and D day but I couldn’t sing “ God who made you mighty make you mightier yet “ and “Hope” and “Glory” didn’t fit this country in any way at all.
I have long given up on such jingoistic nonsense that is a legacy of empire.
My parents never celebrated the ending of the war in Europe as my dad was in Burma fighting the Japanese. My father rarely talked about anything that had happened to him in the war.
He had actually joined the RASC before the war and drove lorries as well as being a dispatch rider. He was sent to France and was at Dunkirk. Then he came up to Hull and helped to clear all the bombed buildings so any German planes flying over would not know how badly Hull had been hit along the docks.
He was sent to Nigeria to train soldiers and take them to Burma. The bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on my mother’s birthday, and everyone was terrified about what the repercussions would be in the far east.
When that war was over, my dad accompanied his men back to Nigeria to explain to the families what had happened to those who did not return. When he returned to England in 1946 he was demobbed as they had enough soldiers, even though that had been his job before the war.
I remember in the early 50s we had a German family living in our house for over a year. I also know that two of my dad’s friends whom he exchanged cards and letters with were Japanese bird watchers. My parents knew the war wasn’t ordinary people’s faults.
Thank you for sharing that.
I do appreciate such stories.
I am sure I wrote that in paragraphs!
You did. And they do get through, but not on the version you see.
Well said. I’ve had to search the Internet for this post as I am uncomfortable with how it is marked and you and some of the commenters have voiced my thoughts well.
I find it highly distasteful and jingoistic. Like another comment, it should be marked with grave solemnity, with much awareness of the lack of peace elsewhere and this countries part in it.
As said you and others voice it far better than me.