Fiftieth Anniversary of the end of World War II

Part of Road Traffic Reduction – in the House of Commons at 3:53 pm on 25 April 1995.

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Photo of Tony Blair Tony Blair , Sedgefield 3:53, 25 April 1995

It is my privilege to associate myself entirely with what the Prime Minister has just said and with his sentiments about the royal family. It is a time for our nation to speak with one voice of remembrance, of joy at a victory magnificently won and sadness at the loss of life necessary to achieve it.

We remember a triumph that is all the more unalloyed because it was a victory, not as much of nation over nation, as of good over evil. The fight against Hitler and fascism was, and indeed remains, the moral case for taking up arms.

I was born almost a decade after the war ended and it was my father's generation who fought it. On behalf of my generation, I say to his that we pay tribute to their sacrifice and bravery with humility and gratitude. We recall the courage of the troops who fought and, in their millions, died or were wounded. Some of them bear their wounds to this day.

We commemorate, too, the millions of men and women who never left Britain during the war, but who played such a conclusive part in it—the firefighters, the ambulance men and women, the nurses and the police—and who worked, often through the blitz and in as great danger as those at the front. We remember the factory munitions workers, Bevin's boys down the mines, and the steel and ship workers who placed production at full stretch in the war effort.

We reflect, not just on the great battles fought and the medals of honour granted, but on the countless small acts of heroism, which are often unrecorded and the memory of which may be effaced, but whose spirit won the war. The country at that time worked with one heart and one mind to one end, and succeeded. The solidarity of the nation persisted after the war in rebuilding the towns and the cities, putting people back to work, and creating the modern structures of a national health service and a welfare state capable of offering hope to heroes.

So what, at this distance of half a century, are the lessons of the war that we can learn? We learn about pride in our country—there are few nations, if any, that can claim without exaggeration to have helped save the world from tyranny. We learn about the strength of freedom and democracy as motivators of the human soul because we remember, too, today, not just ourselves but the millions in other countries—particularly perhaps those Jewish people in countries conquered by Hitler—who continued to resist, no matter what the cost. We learn about the fragility of peace and the utter catastrophe of modern warfare, which the years before and during the war amply demonstrate. We learn humankind's deadly potential, amidst progress, for regression to primitive barbarity. We know now that if we choose to appease evil as it grows, we shall in the end be forced to fight it when it is fully grown. We think that with all the knowledge of our modern world, such evil can never happen again, but that generation thought that it would never happen at all.

We fought the war, but we did not do so alone. It is right that we remember our allies, and thank them. One of the most moving stories of statesmanship in the war came in January 1941, when defeat for Britain was certainly possible. We desperately needed the help of America. Harry Hopkins, the emissary of President Roosevelt, was here. At a dinner in his honour in Scotland, he said: I suppose you wish to know what I am going to say to President Roosevelt on my return. And then, quoting from the Bible, he said: whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God". Hopkins then added: Even to the end". That was the spirit of those times.

There was no doubt that this was a war to save civilisation. At the end of the war, as within Britain, so outside it, nation co-operated with nation to set up the institutions of international governance to act as a bulwark against disunity and aggression—the United Nations, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and, later, the European Community. Amid all the cynicism about them, we should give thanks that there was the vision to build them and that, by and large, their role has been constructive and positive.

Let us hope that such a time of evil will not arise again, but let us never forget that it did. It confronted us with an intensity and menace unsurpassed in our history. Let us give thanks that we rose up against it, defeated it and so provided a future of hope for this generation and the generations yet unborn.