80th Anniversary of Victory in Europe and Victory over Japan

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Friday 9th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)]

My Lords, 80 years on, we all celebrate a glorious victory, and we perhaps forget that, had there not been a victory but a defeat, we would have been subject to an evil tyranny, and there would have been more Oradour-sur-Glanes on our own territory. That is one thing we must remember.

There were massive consequences in the world as a result of that victory. Two superpowers emerged. It led to the end of empire. For us in the UK, there were profound social changes, including the enhanced role of women, and also enhanced expectations of the role of government, which led, for example, to the National Health Service, to make a land fit for heroes.

I was born just before the outbreak of war. I have distant memories of the Blitz, the destruction of houses in front of my own house and a school just behind it, the Blitz in Swansea, which led to the obliteration of the city centre described so well by Dylan Thomas in “Return Journey”. I do not remember it but I was told I was taken to an Anderson shelter—no relation—and put in a little cot in the shelter, which later became our coal shed. I do remember the blackouts, barrage balloons, air raid sirens and, particularly, my little Mickey Mouse gas mask, which I treasured. I remember also learning to say, “Have you any gum, chum?” to the American soldiers who were billeted close to us. I remember the returning soldiers and, particularly, a friend of the family, Fred David, shinning the pole in front of Swansea Guildhall.

It had been a total war in terms of the number of countries, many already mentioned: not just those in the Caribbean, not just Ghana, but countries such as Norway, which included relatives of mine. We think first, of course, of the total national effort of our own service men and women, but I join my noble friend Lady Warwick in mentioning the role of women at that time. I recommend to your Lordships Chris Mayhew’s book, One Family’s War, in which his mother, a matriarch in Norfolk, asked all members of the family, as they set off to play their parts in the war, to send her a letter every week—not intended for publication. There is as an immediacy about it, and it sums up the spirit of the country very well.

Later, I joined in collecting for the Royal British Legion. I tried to help the Normandy Veterans Association—hence the casket in the Royal Gallery of sand from the Normandy invasion—and a forgotten service, the Merchant Navy Association, too easily forgotten, alas, but without whom we would not have survived.

I remember so many processions and parades, including a wonderfully diminutive Jewish lady in my city who carries, with great difficulty, the standard of the Jewish ex-servicemen. We bow before the memory of those wonderful people.

“At the going down of the sun and in the morning


We will remember them”.

There is a great kaleidoscope of memories. Young men in those sheepskin jackets racing to scramble; submariners and those shivering in the landing craft before setting sail for the Normandy beaches; those in the Arctic convoys to Murmansk; but also those, particularly women, who served on the home front in so many vital services.

The list is endless, but the story glorious. The memory is not just in wonderfully kept cemeteries or the glorious stories of heroism and sacrifice, but also in the togetherness of that time. We bow our heads in their memory. Yes, we shall remember them, but the best way, surely, of remembering them, is to strive to promote those values for which they fought, and for which so many gave their lives.