80th Anniversary of Victory in Europe and Victory over Japan

Earl of Dundee Excerpts

Friday 9th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Dundee (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Peterborough on her excellent maiden speech.

With thankfulness, in commemorating our victory 80 years ago, I also join your Lordships in regretting the Second World War: its pain and suffering, its crimes against humanity and its tragedy of loss of life by millions of soldiers and civilians.

Briefly, I will touch on three points: deterrence against aggression afforded by defence alliances; the support of democracy by human rights institutions; and current outreach and education opportunities to strengthen international communities.

The first of these, such as NATO’s deterrence, has, of course, so far been of limited benefit all the same, for since its intervention in 1949, conflicts and wars, human misery and destruction have persisted almost unabated.

The present concern is to bring peace to Ukraine in Europe, Gaza in the Middle East and Sudan in north-east Africa. The Government are to be commended for their current support in Ukraine. However, can the Minister tell us what further measures they intend to adopt to encourage lasting peace? Equally which actions will they now follow up in Sudan? Does she agree that, not least in view of the United Kingdom’s popularity and respect dating from Sudan’s successful years as a British protectorate, along with the United States and others we should launch further peace initiatives, including any such to enable the Taqaddum civilian movement to gather more strength and influence?

In spite of its inability to prevent these conflicts, we are still hugely indebted to NATO. Along with its nuclear capability, its defence alliance continues to be pivotal in preventing a third or major world war, while it offers hard-nosed deterrence to safeguard human freedoms.

For, unlike previous ad hoc military concordats between nations, or the unsuccessful international attempt of the League of Nations, instead it provides a brilliant combination of soft and hard power military defence; this is both effective and unprecedented: protecting freedom and democracy within nation states. Thus by 1989, as a Cold War legacy, it had assisted the release of central and eastern European states from totalitarianism.

After 1947, for winning over the United States to join NATO in the first place, much credit ought to go to the Attlee Government; it also should to a number of British diplomats, some later on to become Members of this House, such as Gladwyn Jebb, Derek Inchyra and Roger Sherfield, who himself also helped to persuade the United States to deliver the Marshall Plan in 1948.

Owing to their common pursuit of these aims, human rights institutions, therefore, remain closely associated with NATO in any case. These include the United Nations, the ECHR and the Council of Europe, of which affiliation of 46 states I am a recent chairman of its committee for education.

Their shared human rights purposes have no doubt been forged by the catastrophe and experience of the Second World War. As the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, recalled, this was presciently expressed as early as January 1941 by President Roosevelt, who proposed four fundamental freedoms to which people “everywhere in the world” should be entitled:

“freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear”.

This leads to our current challenge and opportunity. As Roosevelt implied, that is to reach out to international communities and to enable the four freedoms within them. Eighty-four years later in 2025 we are now in a much more convincing position for this to happen.

For will the Minister, when she winds up, perhaps agree that: collectively we have the consensus and solidarity of both G7 and G20 countries to advance that agenda; we have the digital technology to achieve useful and immediate outcomes; and increasingly, whether from British Commonwealth states or from those in the third world and elsewhere, we have the context and invitation of co-operation and partnership to become involved?

Following the United Kingdom’s recent G7 presidency commitments given in 2021, can the Minister also say what plans the Government have, along with other operators, to co-ordinate the international delivery of relevant education and employment initiatives, otherwise at risk from financial cuts?

As we commemorate the Second World War victory today, and recall all those who fell in that conflict, including our own family members, whom most of us born later never knew, yet whose legacy and memory we now cherish, we may perhaps share a simple thought and resolve together: this is, that ever-strengthening deterrence against aggression must serve to protect human freedoms in all places and worldwide.