Meeting of the Parliament 08 May 2025
Eighty years ago today, after monumental sacrifice and suffering, Nazi Germany was forced into unconditional surrender. However, that was not the end of the fighting in Europe. The battle of Slivice did not end until 12 May and the battle of Odžak in Bosnia did not end until 25 May. Across Europe, for weeks after VE day, people still fought and died in the struggle against the remnants of Nazism. Today, we remember them as well. As the First Minister said, there were three more months of suffering in Asia before Japan was defeated. Nonetheless, the greatest moment in the history of Europe was the absolute defeat of the Nazi empire on 8 May 1945. It is now more important than ever to remember that, given, as Jackie Dunbar highlighted, that experience is fading from living memory.
I will never forget what my gran told me about surviving the Clydebank blitz—how the children were taken to the bottom of the tenement close, how every adult left to fight the fires and how every window was shattered. There was an inescapable orange glow because everything was on fire. In that whole community, just 12 buildings were left undamaged at the end of that 48 hours. My church was hit—the building took a direct hit from an incendiary and was destroyed. It is so hard to imagine now—bombs falling on Clydebank. What an incredible privilege it is to live in Scotland in this era, when that kind of conflict here is unfathomable.
The First Minister mentioned the contrast between the loss and the joy that were felt by so many families, and Patrick Harvie mentioned that, for entire nations, that joy was short lived because the iron curtain then fell. I add to that the experience of the Spanish exile community here in Scotland and across Europe. Nazism was defeated in 1945, but it would take 30 more years before fascism was defeated in Europe, with its end in Spain. I also want to remember the Scots who volunteered to fight against fascism in Spain before we were forced to do so against Nazi Germany.
Nazism was defeated only through unimaginable sacrifice by our armed forces, our allies and resistance movements across the continent. It was years before we fully understood the scale of the Holocaust in particular—the attempted extermination of Jews, disabled people, LGBT people, the Gypsy Roma Traveller community and other so-called undesirables. When we learned of that, we said, “Never again.”
The United Nations and the European Union were established on that commitment to peace, but attempted extermination has happened again across the world. It is happening now in Israel’s genocidal assault on Palestine. We also have a war of aggression in Europe that is being fought against free and democratic Ukraine by Putin’s fascistic Russian regime.
Douglas Ross recognised the tension today between reflecting on evil and the suffering that it caused, and the joy at its defeat. Today is a day for both of those. It is a day for us to remember those who were lost, to celebrate the freedom that their sacrifice won and to recommit to the fight against rising fascism today and the fight for freedom here and now.
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