80th Anniversary of Victory in Europe and Victory over Japan

Baroness Coffey Excerpts

Friday 9th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, it is 80 years since World War II—a global war that touched every continent and many countries—came to a juddering halt with the deployment of nuclear bombs. Fortunately, we have never seen that again. The noble Baroness, Lady Hunter, spoke eloquently about the liberation of people from their inhumane treatment in Japanese prisoner of war camps, and my noble friend Lord Minto eloquently described the horrors of parts of the Holocaust and the liberation of a variety of camps. Of course, that was not the reason why we had gone into the war in the first place. It was our treaties, to try to save other countries and to defeat the tyranny that we saw rising.

For what it is worth, I think it is still relevant and important to make sure that we commemorate more on this day of remembrance and that we remember the ultimate sacrifice paid by many people, not only on these shores but around the world. That reminder is useful; it is about the celebration of the end of the war and the coming of peace. That is why it is critical that these events keep going in the summer, as a reminder that peace is worth working for, wherever it is in the world, and to do our bit to try to end conflict.

Recently, I was in Kenya and visited the Kakuma refugee camp. People are still arriving there. It was set up 30 years ago or so for the Lost Boys of Sudan, yet people are still arriving from the conflict in Sudan. I am conscious of the work the Government are continuing to do to try to bring peace there, but it is something we all must bear in our minds.

We have a visual reminder of how Parliament was affected by World War II. At the other end, on the outside of the Chamber, the entrance was never repaired. It is a deliberate reminder to Members of Parliament as they walk into that Chamber. I am very much touched by other very visual reminders of what happened in that time. Think of Coventry Cathedral. I grew up in the city of Liverpool, which suffered the Blitz very badly. I appreciate there will be other people here who were there. It so happened that my paternal grandfather was not deemed fit enough to go to war but, instead of being a shipbuilder, he rebuilt homes that had been bombed throughout Liverpool, and in the restoration afterwards.

If any of your Lordships have not been to a particular village in France called Oradour-sur-Glane, I strongly recommend it. The horrors of what happened to that village—the murder of people in the church—is why the French made sure it has been untouched ever since the day it was liberated. There is still a car there. It is a very visual memory of why we cannot afford for this to happen again, and yet we know it does.

My noble friend Lady Laing referred to the 50th anniversary. I remember it as a celebration of great joy, with both my parents and my sister. We were in London enjoying it. That was particularly the case because so many people were still alive who had been through it. I remember my father talking about his joy at the celebration of the end of the war. He had been evacuated but his brother got a bit homesick, so they ended up going back to Liverpool. He enjoyed the fact that the shelling had stopped. My mother had come back from India just ahead of the war. Her father was in the Army, her brother had been in RAF bombers, her sisters were in the Land Army, but her dad did not come back for several years afterwards because he was still in Egypt. So, family life did not get back to normal straight away. She remembers the pain of the rations that went on for many years. Nevertheless, in particular we should recognise that a few years on from that the Cold War began. That was also very telling, after the shock of World War II.

There is still peril in our shores today. I am thinking of the pariah countries my noble friend referred to earlier. I was the Minister in charge of the decontamination of Salisbury and I still remember, of course, the murder of Dawn Sturgess. I can honestly say that the people of Salisbury were very scared about what was happening in their city. The impact it had and what we had to do to rebuild were quite extraordinary.

We need to continue to press for peace and to support the institutions that were formed, but we also need to make sure that Parliament keeps them true to their mission, not the mission creep. In the alliances and conversations that happen in those institutions—the G7, and the G20, which the US hosts next year—it is important that we continue to make sure we search for peace, not appeasement, but also that we continue to respect, celebrate and commemorate, and avoid conflict in the future.