80th Anniversary of Victory in Europe and Victory over Japan

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Friday 9th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow so many excellent, wide-ranging speeches, and particularly to follow the moving contribution from the noble Baroness, Lady Meyer. I, too, add my thanks to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Peterborough for her thoughtful maiden speech. I, like others, am looking forward to hearing more from her in the future.

On VE day, Eisenhower and Montgomery allowed a number of senior military, including my grandfather, an air marshal responsible for Second Tactical Air Group under Eisenhower, to come back from Germany to London to participate, just for one day—so I know he was here in London celebrating, which, I have to say, is more than my grandmother knew. I know because there is a biography of my grandfather. I also know that, on that particular day, our family were marking an empty chair in the room: joy tinged with much sadness. However, it is important not to see this as marking just a single day. We cannot and must not ignore what came before, what came after and, indeed, what threatens us now. We live in a historic continuum that we must learn from, or we are in danger of repeating the mistakes and errors that lead too easily to war.

Today, I am wearing the Royal Flying Corps brooch given to my grandmother, Nan, by my grandfather, that same Air Marshal, Sir Arthur Coningham, but always known as “Mary” from 1916 onwards, a distortion of “Maori”, because he grew up in New Zealand. He, aged 16, left school in 1911 and worked on a sheep station until war started. He joined the Anzac 5th (Wellington Rifles) Regiment on 10 August and was in Western Samoa before the end of August. Gallipoli followed, which he was lucky to survive, and then he headed to England to join the RFC in 1916.

A distinguished aviator, he learned over the trenches in the First World War the importance of land-air interaction. His theory of tactical air was first fully deployed at El Alamein when, as an air marshal, he worked for Air Chief Marshal Tedder, but he learned his craft in World War One and in his service in the Middle East between the wars. He had only two brief spells back in England in the entirety of that period. His land-air tactical principles are still used today. In fact, in the USA military they are known as “Coningham’s Keys”, the keys to victory. He used them in Italy after D-Day and all the way up to 7 May 1945.

I think he would have been particularly proud that one of his descendants, who today specialises in this area, works in our military. His brother Vincent was blown up guarding Belfast docks and very severely injured. After some years, he was able to return to the law and became a noted KC in Australia. His stepson, Lieutenant Howard Frank, was with the Grenadier Guards en route to Market Garden and died on 10 September 1944. My mum, then aged 10, was traumatised by the death of her beloved brother, and it affected her mental health for the rest of her life. The noble Baroness, Lady Meyer, said that there was no mental health support available for veterans. Nor was there for the public, either. As children, we lived and relived her horror of commemoration and the consequences of his death.

I spoke about a continuum. Those of us with relatives in military service, with frequent deployments and threats today, feel much, I think, as my grandfather’s family felt throughout the first half of the 20th century.

The noble Lord, Lord Coaker, talked about deterrence and how we must always call out authoritarian behaviour. Martin Niemöller—he of “First they came for the communists”—which, by the way, the Americans changed to “the socialists”, completely missing the point that it is the people you do not like who you should speak up for—was key after the war, not just with the German community; he went around the world teaching people how to learn to speak up.

Many other organisations founded as a result of the Second World War have been mentioned, but I have not heard anyone mention the Council of Europe. Churchill founded it, with its European Court of Human Rights. It is one of the most important checks and balances to ensure that individual freedoms are protected. Despite differences about individual definitions of human rights, if we do not have the ability to call out other nations, we will not listen and learn.

I shall end by quoting briefly Edward Blunden’s mourning poem, “V Day”:

“And all their actions rise to future fame;


Be theirs sweet peace, dear love, kind rain and sun.

The life for which they marched and sailed and flew,

Reunion, restoration, freedom, deep and true”.

Today that freedom is at risk. Those who gave their all in the 20th century would be horrified if we were to lose that freedom again.