Victory in Europe and Victory over Japan: 80th Anniversary

Frank McNally Excerpts

Tuesday 6th May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Frank McNally (Coatbridge and Bellshill) (Lab)]

As with so many towns and villages across the UK, brave residents of my constituency, including my own grandparents, were involved in all aspects of the war effort. Our towns and villages answered the call for service—service that took so many forms. Early in the war, Coatbridge hosted the Polish 1st Field Artillery Regiment for a short time after the evacuation of France. So warm was the hospitality offered by the locals that the regiment later adopted Coatbridge as the mother garrison, and the town’s coat of arms was emblazoned on their regimental standard.

Despite their own hardship and struggles, local people in my community and across the Monklands area engaged in whole raft of activities to support the war effort, including knitwear drives, charity concerts and cinema galas, to extend support not just for our own efforts, but to aid others, including the Russian Red Cross Society. Nowhere was that deep sense of common cause more apparent than in the support offered by the women in Coatbridge to the women of besieged Leningrad. I think those women would be frankly ashamed of the actions taken today by Putin in Ukraine.

When reflecting on these years, it is impossible not to think of our own families and the roles that they played alongside their neighbours and friends. They were ordinary people engaging in extraordinary acts. I think of how privileged I was to hear their stories and to reflect on those that went untold. I think of my maternal grandfather, Edwin Simpson, who fought with the RAF and whose wings I am privileged to carry with me today, along with his squadron photo taken at RAF Yatesbury in Wiltshire in 1944—a crew that spanned the country and the Commonwealth. I think of my paternal grandmother, Ethel McNally, who spent the war as a crane driver and was more than a little irked when after the war she was replaced by returning service personnel—something she never tired of shouting about.

The role of women has been well-discussed and will be throughout this debate. At the war’s conclusion, the provost of Coatbridge town council recognised women for their role in the war effort in munitions and weapons factories, which were themselves dangerous environments. In the same message, the provost told of how the armed forces had saved the world for democracy, with their courage, steadfastness, tenacity and grit. Provost Pirie’s tribute is all the more moving as he had lost his son Lieutenant Sydney Robertson Pirie of the 1st London Scottish Regiment just one month before VE Day.

The Minister mentioned parties, some of which lasted days in Bellshill and they were well documented locally. No level of gratitude can be enough to thank those who served and who died, including the hundreds whose names live on the memorials throughout my constituency, for the peace that they secured in 1945. We honour those who died and those who lived in that greatest generation. We commend their service and their sacrifice.