Meeting of the Parliament 08 May 2025
We are gathered here to mark a solemn and significant anniversary: 80 years since victory in Europe day—that moment on 8 May 1945, when, after six long and harrowing years, the guns across Europe finally fell silent.
We remember the 380,000 members of the UK armed forces—among them were 57,000 Scots—and the more than 67,000 civilians who paid the ultimate price during the second world war. Each life lost was a son or daughter, a brother or sister, a neighbour or a friend—ordinary people who were called on to do extraordinary things. Today, let us pay tribute not only to those who fell but to the living who bore the scars, those who returned home wounded in body or soul and those whose lives were forever marked by the trauma of what they had endured and witnessed.
Let us also honour the brave souls from across the Commonwealth and allied nations, whose shared sacrifice helped to secure the fragile peace that we have enjoyed in the decades since. We are indebted, too, to the on-going work of Legion Scotland and Poppy Scotland, whose efforts—such as the moving national commemorative concert that was held in Edinburgh on 6 May—ensure that that legacy of service and sacrifice is never forgotten. Scotland’s salute to VE day, which is supported by the Scottish Government, stands as a fitting tribute not only to those who served but to those who continue to bear the consequences of war.
As members across the chamber have said, today, it is also our duty to speak honestly. VE day did not mark the end of all war or the end of suffering. Just months later, the world witnessed the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, when two nuclear bombs were dropped on civilian populations, ushering in a new and terrifying chapter of human conflict. Tens of thousands of lives were ended in an instant, and generations continue to suffer from the after-effects. Those strikes were not distant events. They remain a living warning. That terrible power still exists in our world today. The nuclear threat did not die with the cold war. It lingers in arsenals and doctrines, and it whispers into conflicts that grow more complex and dangerous by the day.
That is why we must not only remember the past but learn from it. Indeed, 100 years ago, the Spanish philosopher George Santayana wrote:
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
One hundred years later, we see that grim warning being made real. War once again rages on Europe’s borders in Ukraine. Civilians suffer, families flee and children grow up to the sounds of missiles, not music. The echoes of the past resound. The echoes of the worst atrocities of man’s inhumanity are deafening to those who are suffering in Gaza, where people have been starved and bombed to death, lives have been extinguished and graves have replaced hospitals and schools. Some call it a modern-day genocide.
Let us be clear: to honour the memory of the fallen is not only to look back, but to strive to stop war happening again and to speak out on the issue. We must ensure that “Never again” is not just a phrase—albeit a truly great phrase—that is carved on memorial stones, but a principle that is carved into the hearts of our politics and our people. Each and every one of us must strive to build a world that is free not only from war, but from the conditions that make war possible: poverty, oppression, hatred and silence in the face of injustice.
Today, as we correctly honour the sacrifice of those who fought and died for our freedom, let us not be content with ceremony alone. Let us ensure that we do not sit silently in the face of today’s atrocities. Let VE day’s 80th anniversary be not only a moment of remembrance, but a call to conscience. Let us not only speak with gratitude for peace but work with urgency for justice, and let us not only honour the sacrifice of the past but act to prevent the suffering of the future, because remembrance without action is remembrance unfulfilled.
16:23