Victory in Europe and Victory over Japan: 80th Anniversary

Dave Doogan Excerpts

Tuesday 6th May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dave Doogan (Angus and Perthshire Glens) (SNP)]

Eighty-five years ago, we saw the forces of fascism rise up to threaten democracy and freedom in Europe—forces of darkness that would seek to control, oppress, subjugate and exploit the people of these islands if they prevailed. But they did not prevail. We owe our current reality to the bravery and heroism of those who gave their lives in order that we may maintain the way in which we continue to live our lives.

In Scotland, generations were lost and villages and towns were hollowed out of their breeding-age men who were barely men at all, often in their productive prime, who were sent to die in a foreign, distant place among the deafening and unrelenting roar of mechanised warfare, seeing their friends and neighbours die and drawing their own last breath desperate for a kind word, a mother’s soothing touch or an absent reassurance before a short life slammed shut. It was a far cry from the cheerful “Boy’s Own” adventure “We’ll be home soon.” Nobody got home soon.

Many did not return at all, and many of those who did would never be the same again, because that is how it is with wars in the past. There was a legitimate desire to lock it away in a box, out of sight, which was nice if they could manage it, but many could not. Many families saw the slow heartbreak of husbands who were irreparably damaged—either physically or psychologically—and the distant, silent fathers who returned, never quite able to access the men they were before the war.

Total war has a long tail, and it is still visible on these islands 80 years later in society and the economy. Indeed, the war debt to the United States was fully repaid only in 2006. If the war stores had not been evacuated from Coventry to the Perthshire hills between Almondbank and Methven, I would not have got a job there in 1989, and I can guarantee that if I had not worked for the Ministry of Defence, I would not be standing here today.

Scotland stood tall in those darkest of times militarily, economically, industrially and culturally, just like our neighbours in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and in Norway, Denmark and the low countries. Scotland’s shipbuilding, coalmining, locomotive manufacturing, agricultural output and production of steel were all pivotal to the war effort. While young men fought, an army of older men and women toiled in the factories and the fields, equipping those at home and those in peril defending their homeland.

Scotland’s industry and geography made it a target for the Luftwaffe. The first aerial combat above the United Kingdom in the second world war happened in the Firth of Forth, where the Luftwaffe targeted Royal Navy ships anchored off Rosyth. While London’s horrendous blitz raged on for eight long months, towards the end of that period the Clydebank blitz lasted just two nights, but on those two nights in March 1941, the Luftwaffe killed 1,200 civilians, injured a further 1,000 civilians and destroyed 8,500 homes in that town.

Eighty-five years ago in Europe, we saw the forces of fascism rise up to threaten our freedom. Then the superior forces of freedom and liberty rose higher still to crush fascism down where it belongs. Eighty years after the end of that war, autocracies are still alive and well in our world today. To honour those who paid for our freedom with their own lives, we must remain forever alert to the fragility of our freedoms. We owe them all so much, and the absolute least that we can do to acknowledge their selfless sacrifice is to never, ever forget that liberty and vigilance go hand in hand.