Meeting of the Parliament 08 May 2025
Today’s motion reminds us of the hundreds of thousands of members of the UK forces and the tens of thousands of civilians whose lives were lost in world war two. Beyond those deaths, the war caused up to 85 million deaths worldwide—about 3 per cent of the global population at the time. That number includes the 6 million Jews and the millions of others who were exterminated by the Nazis. An estimated 40 million to 60 million people were displaced.
However, mere statistics are not enough to truly comprehend the scale of what had to be done to defeat Nazism and fascism, the sacrifice of those who fought and the scale of the impact on the millions of lives affected. I honestly do not think that I can begin to imagine the emotional release that must have come—including in households that were, as the First Minister described, still suffering their own personal grief while the celebrations began—when the announcement of VE day was made.
In the wake of such suffering, VE day led to new beginnings. In recognising that they had fought together and survived together, people decided to rebuild their society together, with a welfare state and a national health service—an astonishing legacy for that generation to leave us—the creation of international institutions of peace, a framework of international law, human rights and what eventually became the European Union.
However, it is important to remember that VE day was not the end of the story for those who were still enduring war in other parts of the world, or for East Germany, which went from Nazi to communist control. It would be decades before that country would achieve freedom and join a peaceful and democratic family of European nations. It was not the end of the story for the gay men who were liberated from Nazi concentration camps but re-imprisoned by the allies.
We must also remember that the struggle to defeat fascism remains our responsibility today. We see an expansionist war against Ukraine being rewarded on the world stage and the horrific images of genocide from Gaza. We see the brutality of immigration detention camps and imprisonment without trial in countries that claim to be democracies. We see far-right ideology growing around the world and the arrest of Nazis in the UK only yesterday. We hear prominent voices in major political parties seeking to abolish our fundamental human rights and tear up the astonishing endowment that the post-war generation left us. As we see the UK Government celebrating VE day on the same day that it announces an agreement with a US President whose ideology is indistinguishable from fascism, we need to remember that appeasement never works.
I will end with the words of Ken Turner, 98 years old, as he sat in a Sherman tank. Mr Turner served in world war two, as did the tank. In a video that was posted on social media yesterday, he said:
“I’m old enough to have seen fascism the first time round, and now it’s coming back.”
After driving that tank over a Tesla and crushing it, he gave this message to Elon Musk:
“We’ve crushed fascism before and we’ll crush it again.”
Ken gets it—he knows what had to be done and the cost of what had to be done—but Ken also knows why it had to be done, and he knows that it must still be done. Let us never forget what Ken has reminded us of.
15:57