Let’s unite to celebrate VE Day — then prepare for the challenge to come

Crowds bring traffic to a standstill in Piccadilly Circus
Associated Newspapers
WEST END FINAL

Get our award-winning daily news email featuring exclusive stories, opinion and expert analysis

I would like to be emailed about offers, event and updates from Evening Standard. Read our privacy notice.

Friday's celebrations of the 75th anniversary of VE Day are a moment to commemorate, with joy and gratitude, one of the great achievements in human history: the Allied victory in Europe and the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany on May 8, 1945. To this day we cherish the freedoms that were preserved by that military triumph. As battered and flawed as it may be, the international rules-based order that arose from the ashes of the Second World War has served humanity well. There is much to salute and to honour.

The paradox, of course, is that we shall be doing so in circumstances that more closely resemble the night-time curfew during the conflict than the exuberant street celebrations of 75 years ago. There will be no veterans’ march, no service of thanksgiving in Westminster Abbey, no neighbourhood parties.

Instead, we shall remain in lockdown, as the nation marks the anniversary with a two-minute silence at 11am, a virtual duet by Dame Vera Lynn and Katherine Jenkins at the Royal Albert Hall (without an audience), and a televised address by the Queen.

It is a British reflex to compare contemporary experience to the milestones of the war: Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain, the Blitz. So it is all but inevitable that the VE Day celebrations will become psychologically entangled with anticipation of the Prime Minister’s plan to disclose on Sunday the route-map out of coronavirus captivity.

Matthew d'Ancona

This is a temptation to be strongly resisted. There will be no moment of sudden emancipation, no “Big Bang of freedom” to quote one Cabinet ­minister. Instead, what lies ahead will be phased, often confusing and almost certainly frustrating in its incrementalism. If anything, the true (and underappreciated) lesson of VE Day for this particular crisis is that struggles rarely, if ever, conclude quickly.

The aftermath of an intense crisis is often as demanding and gruelling as what preceded it

As A J P Taylor writes in his study of wars and how they end, they tend to do so ­“raggedly”. Victory in the East, for a start, was not achieved until August, and the Allied treaty with Japan only signed in 1951.

As Martin Gilbert records in his masterly account The Day The War Ended, the street festivities were only part of the story of VE Day: those who had been wounded, bereaved, or traumatised by the war found that celebration was tempered by grief, pain and an awareness of the trials that lay ahead. As Silvia Szulman, a Jewish refugee in London, recalled to Gilbert: “Of course, we were glad the war had ended, but like the relief after surviving a hurricane or earthquake, our sense of deliverance was tempered by apprehension of how much devastation we would find.”

Roger Peacock, a former prisoner of war, recalled: “I felt nothing. I arrived home in the afternoon of VE-Day but the acceptance was intellectual, merely.” David Ben-Gurion, who would go on to found Israel, was in London and wrote a single sentence in his journal: “Victory day — sad, very sad.”

Much privation lay ahead of victorious Britain: shortages, austerity, psychological reconstruction. When the young JG Ballard, future writer of great dystopian fiction, came to England after years of internment in a camp near Shanghai, he discovered “the indirect rationing of simple unavailability, and the far more dangerous rationing of any kind of belief in a better life. The whole nation seemed to be deeply depressed.”

Ghastly as it is, this pandemic does not bear direct comparison with the Second World War, in which at least 75 million died. The lesson is more subtle: that the aftermath of an intense crisis is often as demanding and gruelling as what preceded it.

Though the Government’s scientific advisers are cautiously optimistic that the peak of fatalities has passed, they can give no guarantees that the contagion will not flare up again if we do not continue to observe a collective regime of social distancing and self-discipline — probably for many months.

The economic price of this virus will be stratospheric and its social costs higher than anything we have experienced in recent decades. As much as we must hope that the present spirit of solidarity and community outlasts the lockdown, we must also be vigilant against polarisation, political tribalism and the worst excesses of populism.

Hear more in this episode of The Leader podcast

So: let us celebrate tomorrow, as befits a great nation. And then prepare for the next stage of the immense challenge by which future generations will judge us, in our turn.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in