Victory in Europe and Japan: 80th Anniversaries

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 20th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, we on these Benches warmly welcome this Statement. It is clear that the Second World War continues to cast a long shadow. Names of the fallen are etched in stone in every parish of this country. The conflict transformed our society, not just in the families scarred by the conflict but by accelerating the role of women in the workforce or in military service, through the migration of our fellow subjects from across the Empire to help rebuild these war-torn islands, just as they had helped to defend them, and in the technological advances made in the face of adversity. In the secrecy of Bletchley Park, this country quietly invented the computer, helping to break codes and ciphers, foreshortening the war by some two years. In the desert of New Mexico, scientists from around the world invented a weapon so terrible it brought an end to the conflict in the east and still forms the linchpin of our defence today.

That past is not so distant. Here in your Lordships’ House sit the grandsons of our wartime premier and his deputy, the descendants of many others who rendered distinguished wartime service, and a young boy who came here, like thousands of others, as a refugee on the Kindertransport. Later today, in Grand Committee, we will continue to discuss plans for a memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, one of the greatest crimes against humanity. This afternoon in this Chamber, we will discuss the European Convention on Human Rights, part of the international determination that the atrocities and violations of the 1930s and 1940s must never happen again.

But that recent past begins to slip from living memory. The Holocaust Educational Trust is doing brilliant work capturing the testimony of the last survivors, using modern technology to digitise them, so that future generations can interact with them as though they were still among us. Just this week, we lost 105 year-old Group Captain John Hemingway, the last of the few to whom we owe so much for defending these islands in the Battle of Britain. The Prince of Wales and the Prime Minister led the tributes from the nation, which remains humbled by their service. At the commemorations this summer, there will be fewer and frailer veterans. Can the Minister say what plans there are to put them at the heart of the proceedings, so that we can renew our thanks to them and hear their stories while we are still able to?

The Minister and I were both born closer to the end of the Second World War than to today; that gap grows ever wider for us all. But, for children born today, even the events of this summer will not form part of their consciousness. I am pleased to see mentioned in the Statement the work being done by the National Theatre, the Imperial War Museum, the National Lottery, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and many more. What else are the Government and their arm’s-length bodies doing to ensure that the lessons of the Second World War are passed on to future generations?

It is sadly clear that those lessons are as relevant today as they ever have been. The scourge of antisemitism continues to poison minds in this country and others. Extremism and intolerance are once more on the march. Only yesterday, Hungary, a member state of the European Union, banned Pride marches taking place in its country. The Statement which follows this one is about the return of conflict to the European continent, and of the siren song of isolationism. It is clear that we need to remind ourselves and our friends of the lessons of the last century.

Just a few steps from the Minister’s office in her department is the room from which Winston Churchill addressed the crowds on VE day, 8 May 1945. He told a war-weary but jubilant nation

“this is your hour. This is not victory of a party or of any class. It’s a victory of the great British nation as a whole”.

He asked them:

“When shall the reputation and faith of this generation of English men and women fail?”


This summer, let us make sure that we uphold that reputation, renew that faith, and give thanks to all those who fought for the freedom that we cherish today.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I welcome this Statement. I encourage the Government to make as much as possible of this, as an opportunity to explain to our younger generation and educate them on the implications of what we were fighting for in the last war.

Like others, I have taken my grandchildren to the Imperial War Museum, and I was happily surprised to see pictures of my parents-in-law in uniform in the display on Bletchley. I will be taking them to the Western Front at Easter, where we will walk over the areas where in 1918 my father, as an 18 year-old in the Highland Division, fought. It is ancient history for our grandchildren, but it is highly relevant to them.

I hope the Government will make this very much a commemoration of an allied effort. In our commemoration of World War I, I felt that the then-Government tried too much to make this Britain versus Germany. We had Polish squadrons in the RAF. We had Belgian squadrons in the Bomber Command. We recruited Caribbean people who served as ground crew. We had Polish divisions. I have had many conversations in Saltaire with elderly Poles who fought in the Eighth Army, who then came to Britain after the war. We had French divisions on British soil. We had a Czech brigade. We had people who went back to work in the resistance in Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, and elsewhere. We had Poles and Ukrainians who came here in large numbers as displaced persons and refugees after the war, whose grandchildren have almost forgotten about that. We also had 2.5 million people in the Indian army. We underplayed that in our commemoration of World War I. Many of their descendants now live in this country and are British citizens, as indeed are many of those who volunteered with the RAF from the Caribbean during the war. All that needs to be explained to the younger generation, in all its diversity.

I hope the Minister has already got her tickets for the Parliament Choir concert. I hope that all other Members of the House—those who will not be singing—will be there on 7 May for an excellent concert, for which we are already rehearsing.

We also need to educate our younger generation on the parallels between where we are now and where we were then. The Russian attack on Ukraine is motivated partly by a claim to be able to defend Russian minorities in other countries. That is what the Germans were doing in Czechoslovakia in 1938. We might even wish to remind the public that steps towards European integration after the war, in which Ernest Bevin and Winston Churchill played a large part, were absolutely part of preventing war again in western Europe. We need a sober recollection of the dangerous world we live in, the changing threats we face, and the values which we and our democratic neighbours must defend.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Twycross) (Lab)]

My Lords, it is really positive that we can have a united voice on what will be hugely significant anniversaries, not least because, as the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, outlined, very sadly, this will be one of the last significant anniversaries where we have veterans who fought for our freedom still alive. [Interruption.]