80th Anniversary of Victory in Europe and Victory over Japan

Lord Lemos Excerpts

Friday 9th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lemos (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Peterborough on her maiden speech. I share many of her interests and concerns, so I look forward to working with her. I am honoured to be the chair of English Heritage, in which I obviously declare my interest. English Heritage takes pride in looking after the Cenotaph in Whitehall and many other war memorials on behalf of the nation. English Heritage’s job is not just to look after places and buildings; we are also stewards of our national memory, what we as a nation choose to remember and what we cannot forget.

All this week the Cenotaph has been draped in the union flag to celebrate VE Day. Last night, on VE Day, Dover Castle was lit up in red, white and blue, visible on a clear night from France. In 1940, long before VE Day could ever be anticipated, the evacuation of British troops from Dunkirk was planned from the bomb-proof tunnels built beneath the cliffs at Dover. Years later, in 1944, Operation Fortitude was also planned from the tunnels at Dover Castle. This was the deception strategy to convince the Nazis, erroneously, that the allied landing would take place at Pas-de-Calais, when in fact the troops were going to land in Normandy. We cannot imagine what those naval officers were thinking throughout the war, but courage and commitment would have been uppermost in their minds.

Not far from your Lordships’ House is the Belgian gratitude memorial on Victoria Embankment, created to thank the British people for sheltering thousands of Belgian refugees during the First World War. Gratitude and thanksgiving resonate powerfully on VE Day. The bodies of the soldiers who died in the First World War never came home; they fought and fell on a foreign field. Many were buried anonymously, and their loved ones had no graves to mourn them at home.

The first Cenotaph in Whitehall was unveiled for London peace celebrations on 18 July 1919. Designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, it was a temporary structure of wood and painted canvas built in 11 days for parading troops to salute their fallen comrades and celebrate victory. The Cenotaph made a deep and immediate impression on the public. Within the week, the Cenotaph had been visited by more than 1.25 million people and was 10 feet deep in flowers and wreaths. The Times commented:

“The Cenotaph is only a temporary structure made to look like stone, but Sir Edwin Lutyens’ design is so grave, severe and beautiful that one might well wish it were indeed of stone and permanent”.


It was soon decided that the Cenotaph should be rebuilt as a permanent memorial in Portland stone. The enduring Cenotaph was unveiled by King George V at 11 am on 11 November 1920—the second anniversary of the Armistice. In the same ceremony, the remains of an anonymous British soldier exhumed from a war cemetery in France were interred at Westminster Abbey to form the Tomb of the Unknown Solider.

That sequence of events, now so little known, changed the way our nation remembers. The surge of public national mourning for the lost but not forgotten has meant that the Cenotaph has become the centrepiece of our national commitment to remembrance. The Cenotaph is a permanent monument to all those who died on the battlefield defending this great country, but it also has an unshakeable place in our shared national identity. If I can put it like this, the Cenotaph is the nation’s commitment to the insistence of remembering.

On VE Day, we celebrate victory in the Second World War: our nation’s finest hour. We commemorate the courage and commitment shown at Dover, throughout the country and in many countries to achieve that victory. We commemorate the profound, heartfelt gratitude of all those who were spared and saved. We commemorate the insistence of remembering both the living and the dead. Memory is something we have, not something we have lost.