80th Anniversary of Victory in Europe and Victory over Japan

Lord Shinkwin Excerpts

Friday 9th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shinkwin (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Lemos. I also congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Peterborough on her important maiden speech.

The noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Swansea, invited us to consider the possibility of a Nazi victory. He was surely right to do so, for it is when I reflect on the horror of what so easily might have been, but for the immense sacrifices of those who fought and died only 80 years ago so that future generations might be free, that I begin to appreciate the scale of the debt—the personal debt—which I owe them. The fact is that, like my childhood orthopaedic surgeon, a refugee from the Nazis who took refuge in Britain, we would both have been Untermenschen: he for being Jewish and I for being disabled. It is a sobering thought that, had the Nazis won, as they so nearly did, both of us would have been destined for death simply for the crime of being.

On a more positive note, quite apart from the tremendous technological and medical advances of the last 80 years, who could deny that society has changed for the better in so many ways as a result of the freedoms won for us then? Yes, it is still work in progress, but we are closer to equality of the sexes than we have ever been. Only three days ago, I had lunch with the senior partner of an international law firm. She is a formidable business leader. And it is remarkable that, in less than 100 years since truly equal suffrage was introduced, this country has already had three women Prime Ministers, the first just over 50 years after that long overdue change was made.

2025 is a year of milestones for equality. It marks 60 years since the first Race Relations Act, 30 years since the first Disability Discrimination Act and 12 years since the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act gained Royal Assent. All were important milestones for equality, and all were impossible without the victories we remember today.

Equality is a crucial value, which the wartime generation did not have the luxury of enjoying, so focused were they on survival. We know the world was such a different place then, when inequality was written into the fabric of society. But, just as they would not necessarily have recognised the relatively recent concept of equality, I do wonder whether all in our society today recognise or even accept the validity of the wartime generation’s values, the values that so many of them, as we have heard in today’s debate, fought and died for: of respect for life; of caring with compassion for those in vulnerable situations, whether through old age, disability or poverty; of respect for authority within the rule of law; of fairness and fair play, as the noble Baroness, Lady Amos, mentioned; and, crucially, as the Minister mentioned in his opening remarks, of patriotism, of belief in Britain.

I worry that some of the post-Cold War generations actually believe they are entitled to freedom; that payment for freedom does not have to be made in blood; that the so-called peace dividend is permanent; and that the value of knowing right from wrong, good from evil, is an anachronism, so desensitised and compromised has our society become by the fluid relativism where anything goes.

In conclusion, for their sake and with abiding gratitude for the sacrifices of those who helped secure victory in Europe and victory in Japan, I hope I am wrong. But, unless we increase our defence spending, as other noble Lords have advocated, I fear that those generations in particular are about to relearn a brutal lesson from the likes of Putin and Xi Jinping which generations before them learnt 80-odd years ago from the Nazis: that the value of freedom is truly appreciated only when we are at greatest risk of losing it.