Tag Archives: ve day

Once the local elections are over, commemoration of the 80th anniversary of VE Day on May 8th – the end of the second world war – will provide a focus for public attention and local celebrations.  Many of us will be caught up in ceremonies, street parties or receptions.  I will be singing in a commemorative concert in Westminster Hall (with Mike German, Joan Walmsley and 100 others in the Parliament Choir; do listen to it, broadcast on Classic FM).  

The government and the media will want to make this a patriotic occasion.  What additional twist should Liberal Democrats add to this?  I suggest that we should emphasise what Britain and its American ally declared they were fighting the war for: for political and democratic values, for an open international order and for social democracy at home – all values that are now being challenged by President Trump in the USA and by populists in Britain and in other democratic states.

I’ve just re-read President Roosevelt’s ‘Four Freedoms’ speech, and the Atlantic Charter that he and Winston Churchill signed on a warship off Newfoundland in August 1941.   Together these set out the shared aims for which the UK and the USA fought the war.  Roosevelt’s speech to Congress on January 6th 1941 declared that:

 We look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

The first is freedom of speech and expression–everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way–everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want–which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants-everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear–which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor–anywhere in the world. …

The world order which we seek is the cooperation of free countries, working together in a friendly, civilized society.

Five months before, Roosevelt and Churchill had signed the ‘Atlantic Charter’ – drafted by the British, revised by the Americans – which set out their shared aims in the war.   ‘…their countries seek no aggrandizement, territorial or other; they desire to see no territorial changes that do not accord with the freely expressed wishes of the peoples concerned; … they desire to bring about the fullest collaboration between all nations in the economic field with the object of securing, for all, improved labor standards, economic advancement and social security;….’