80th Anniversary of Victory in Europe and Victory over Japan

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Friday 9th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, it is an honour and a privilege to be one of the winders in this debate, a debate that is of huge significance as a reminder of what has happened in the last 80 years, what happened in the years before World War II, and the issues that we need think about in 2025.

The noble Lord, Lord Ricketts, talked about the importance of personal stories. We have heard today so many personal stories of very different types, most recently from the noble Baroness, Lady Ramsey, whose personal stories were incredibly interesting and help us think about how we respond to some of the other contributions today. My noble friend Lord Wallace asked how we find a way of talking to young people about World War II. We are getting to the point, as several noble Lords have said, when there will no nobody who fought in World War II left to celebrate future commemorations.

Unlike, I think, almost anybody else speaking in the debate today, as a child my parents never talked about the war. They did not ever suggest that I watch Remembrance Sunday. Yet, somehow, I would run home from mass on Remembrance Sunday because I wanted to watch the service from the Cenotaph—I do not know what drew me to it. In those days, there were still veterans from World War I parading; now there are very few even from World War II. What do we need to do to help young people understand not just the past but the present—and the importance of peace for our generation and beyond?

My noble friend Lord Wallace talked about education, as did my noble friend Lady Benjamin. She and the noble Baroness, Lady Amos, rightly challenged us to think about not just British service personnel, not just what we did on the home front, but the support and the actions given by our Commonwealth friends, particularly those from the Caribbean. The noble Lord, Lord Howell, talked about Commonwealth contributions, as did the noble Lord, Lord Boateng and the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Sentamu. They all reminded us of the contributions that have been made by the Commonwealth.

The noble Lord, Lord Sahota, reminded us that we need to think about those who volunteered to work with the British Army, because it is so easy, when we commemorate VE Day, to think about Europe but very much from a British perspective. The Commonwealth mattered. Without our Commonwealth partners and allies, could we have won the war on our own? It is vital that we remember the contributions not just of British service personnel but of those from the Commonwealth, and to think about whom we were fighting with and whom we were fighting against.

This week, the first week of May, is a week of many commemorations. In the Netherlands, the celebration was on 5 May. In the United Kingdom, we celebrate on 8 May. The United States would normally be celebrating victory in Europe as well, but I read earlier in the week that perhaps Donald Trump now prefers to think simply about victory, losing the sense that the transatlantic relationship mattered vitally in World War I and in World War II. I hope that the United States remembers that. We certainly do, and it is vital that as we think about the future, we still work closely with our partners and allies in the United States.

We are celebrating VE80—the 80th anniversary of victory in Europe. We might have celebrated the 75th anniversary had it not been for Covid. If we had been celebrating in 2020, “celebration” would probably have been the correct word. We may also have said “commemoration”. Would we have talked about “re-membering”, as the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths of Burry Port, suggested? I am not so sure.

In 2025, on the 80th anniversary, we cannot simply think about what happened when the allies won, when we had peace in Europe, and a few months later, victory over Japan, because in the last three years we have seen the global situation change dramatically. The Russian invasion of eastern Ukraine in February 2022, the terrorist attacks in Israel on 7 October 2023 and the current situation in Kashmir mean that the world in 2025 is unstable and uncertain.

Yesterday, my new leader—I am a Roman Catholic —Pope Leo, on being elected, suggested that evil will not prevail, and he wished us all peace. In the beautiful service yesterday in Westminster Abbey, the Gospel reading also reminded us, “Blessed are the peacemakers”, and the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York stressed the importance of peace. That is clearly what we all hope for, yet in 2025 we cannot just assume that peace will prevail.

Those of who grew up in post-war Europe assumed for much of the post-war period that the future would be peaceful. Today, 9 May, is the 75th anniversary of the Schuman Declaration, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering. That was intended to make war among signatory states, particularly France and Germany, materially impossible. For many years now—over 70 years—war between the signatory states of what were the European Communities has looked to be materially and in every other way impossible.

But war in Europe has not gone away. We saw it in the 1990s in Bosnia, a conflict which I do not think has been mentioned today. There are mothers in Bosnia who are still looking for the limbs of their children who were killed during the war. So, war never went away in Europe, but in the last few years we have begun to realise the significance of peace and rebuilding security in our own region, with the war in Ukraine.

Several noble Lords have stressed the importance of defence expenditure. I realise that the debate today is being wound from the Government Front Benches by the noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, not by a Minister from the MoD, but I very much hope that she will take the message that has come from across the Chamber of the importance of understanding that, if we want peace, we nevertheless need to take defence seriously.

As the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, in his excellent opening remarks pointed out, in 1938 we would not have been ready to take on Hitler—we would not have been capable of doing so. I echo the words of many noble Lords that defence expenditure needs to be increased and pick up on the point that the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, raised, about the possibility of a European defence mechanism. As we prepare for what will hopefully be the next 80 years of peace, we need to do so in close collaboration with our nearest partners and allies, on this side of the Atlantic, this side of the Channel and beyond.

Today we commemorate victory in Europe, but we also need to be vigilant to ensure that we retain peace in Europe and can move forward, so that our children and young people can learn about war as history, not as the present.