80th Anniversary of Victory in Europe and Victory over Japan

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Friday 9th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords we have heard some very fine speeches, and I shall use my brief five minutes for a personal memory, first, and then reflections on where it has all taken us and where it is taking us now.

First, I was in fact there on the glorious, crowded day of 8 May—there are fewer and fewer of us who can say that. My father had returned from three years away in the desert and Italy. He took me that morning to the top of the park, where we watched the parade along the Bayswater Road and the generals going by waving from their open cars. General Alexander was by far my father’s most favoured and admired leader and general. My father had come back unscathed, but I am afraid this was not the same for my wife’s father, who was killed in that war in the last days, along with all three of his brothers—in fact, an entire family more or less wiped out.

Later that day, my father had to go back to work somewhere in Whitehall, which was very odd, because it was supposed to be a national holiday. Of course, although he never told us or mentioned it, he was not working just in Whitehall; he was in fact in Mr Churchill’s War Rooms by St James’s Park, where the war was still being run from, staffed by a continuous duty roster of which he was part. I discovered this only some 20 years later, when the Cabinet Office released photos of him and his colleagues at their desks in the War Room, which was not open to the public until several decades later—or even its existence admitted. Years later, when I happened to be working in the Treasury, in an absurdly large office, I arranged to go down three floors in the lift to those rooms, which were still frozen in time, with my father’s desk there, and I noticed two lumps of sugar in the drawer, reflecting the shortage world that we all lived in and have long since forgotten.

Anyway, that was the end. There was a little sign on the wall saying that, on the morning of 15 August—VJ Day—two Japanese Zeros had been shot down in the Philippines; heaven knows what they were doing there. It was then blank—empty. The weekend roster was cancelled. It said, “This office is closed as of today”. It was the end of an era.

It is worth reflecting that our fathers and forefathers had learned a lot about peacemaking. They knew what people seem to have forgotten today: if peace is built on temporary factors or quick deals, it is worse than useless. It is no use getting assurances from pariah nations that intend to go straight back to aggression afterwards. The clear lesson from Ukraine about which we have all talked is that something will have to change inside Russia itself, which is now a pariah nation, if we are to get another 80 years—or eight years, or even eight months—of peace.

The foundations of peace have to be learned from 1945, now even more than then. In this age of drones and digital, war is now totally against civilians. It is not entirely the front line at all. The defence of civilians must be the total approach, not just a military matter, including in Ukraine. A vast amount of diplomatic effort is needed to get the whole world to grasp what is now at stake. The UN will of course have to be rebuilt, built on or replaced. Ukraine will have to be rebuilt, certainly with Russian funds.

Even the 56 nations of our Commonwealth are not united in seeing and understanding this. We should be concentrating much more on getting not just Europe but Asia and the vast Commonwealth network agreed on a common course and a common stance. I welcome the India deal that has just been reported, which, despite the obvious problems, shows that the growing Commonwealth is alive, networking and very much part of the settlement that we are working towards for the future. I also welcome the US deal. I hope that it will last more than 24 hours; it should do, but we have to work on that as well. Finally, I hope that the new Pope will bring a dose of wisdom to a volatile America.

So perhaps there are some slim grounds for optimism beginning to emerge, particularly if we pay attention to those lessons from 1945 on how to build lasting peace. Let us hope, let us learn and let us remember.