Meeting of the Parliament 08 May 2025
It is my distinct privilege to offer the Liberal Democrats’ respects to the fallen in our armed forces and in armed forces across the world; to the dead in our civilian population and across the world; and to the victims of the Nazi Holocaust—something that we have heard a lot about this afternoon, and rightly so.
I was reflecting on what this 80th anniversary means in Germany, and I heard a fascinating radio interview with a German diplomat who was asked that question. He explained to the interviewer that, in Germany, the date is seen as a commemoration of liberation, because it was a liberation of normal Germans from, in the words of Churchill,
“the odious apparatus of Nazi rule”.
On dates such as this, we often forget the brave Germans who stood up against Hitler within the Third Reich and those who, for want of freedom, died under its regime. Today, I am thinking of those brave people, such as Sophie Scholl and Pastor Niemöller.
We are also thinking today of our brave Scottish communities who, in a singular national effort of determination, pulled together for the war effort.
I asked the First Minister about the Polish airmen. I grew up in a farming village not far from RAF Leuchars in Fife, and there was a shed at the bottom of our garden that still had telephone lines and a fireplace for the three Polish airmen who had lived in that shed for three years. Even then, there were still signs of our collective war effort.
Just last week, in the communities of Lerwick and Scalloway in Shetland, there was a commemoration of the Shetland bus. As part of that operation, merchant navy vessels took troops, ammunition and weaponry to and from the Norwegian resistance. I pay tribute to all of them.
Each of our communities played its part in certain ways, but each of us—as the First Minister very movingly told us—will have personal reflections on this 80th anniversary.
I think of my grandfather and his three siblings in particular today. His older brother, Dick, was a German linguist and, as such, became an interrogator in prisoner of war camps. His younger brother, David, who was a commander on HMS Sikh, was, sadly, killed on a troop transport, which was sunk north of Tobruk by a Stuka dive-bomber. My father is named for him, such is the enduring memory of his loss.
Their sister, Joan, was awarded an MBE at the age of 23 for her service to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in the Norwegian legation that evacuated the King and the Government from Oslo as the Wehrmacht rolled in. She walked overland to a resistance farmhouse, led by Frank Foley, and was eventually evacuated by submarine. Sadly, she died in 1945, just after the San Francisco conference that set up the United Nations. Her plane disappeared over the Atlantic, and we still have a letter in my attic from Anthony Eden expressing grave concern for her loss.
It was my grandfather who taught me everything about freedom and sacrifice. He served as the lieutenant commander on a destroyer in the north Atlantic. He was one of the last surviving witnesses of the sinking of HMS Hood by Bismarck, and he lived to tell the tale. I have 19 hours of audio of his seafaring stories, which I treasure.
We have heard a lot about Winston Churchill’s remarks from the balcony of the health ministry on this day, 80 years ago. He gave a very short speech, and much of it has been quoted, but these lines have not:
“My dear friends, this is your hour. This is not victory of party or of any class. It’s a victory of the great British nation as a whole. We were the first, in this ancient island, to draw the sword against tyranny.”
With those words, he closed out a war that had endured for six years. He ushered in a long peace, and it is a long peace that it is incumbent on decision makers and parliamentarians like us in chambers such as this to safeguard for future generations, and we must also recognise those who draw the sword against tyranny in places such as Ukraine today.