I expect it’s not a very common playground game these days but ‘British and Jerries’ was something we used to play at school. Then again it was the 1960’s and we were the generation that all had parents fight in the Second World War. And of course, there were still bomb sites from the Blitz that hadn’t been cleared or rebuilt on. One school ‘playtime’ I remember literally everyone picking sides and recreating the Normandy landings to the Battle of Arnhem in the space of 30 minutes. It was hard enough getting anyone to want to be the Germans and of course when we English suggested it to the Welsh kids they said ‘Get lost! We’re more British than you are’” And they were. Genetically, if not so evident by the lack of bright blue face paint.
The British still after all these years judge themselves by World War 2. Almost obsessively in some cases. Dads Army, The Dambusters, Dunkirk (1958) Dunkirk (2017). The Brits are rightly proud of their ancestors who fought in the 40’s. But so are the many other nations, many of who suffered occupation, sieges, devastation and had to choose between resistance or keeping your head down.
For your Tomorrow
This week the Victory in Europe celebrations have reached the 80th anniversary landmark and not too many of the actual participants are still with us. At the Kings Square memorial service, they read the Kohima Epitaph, as they always do, “For your tomorrow, we gave our today.” And concluding “We will remember them”.
But how are we remembering them? How do we now remember the sacrifice and victory of that generation? This week we lit up the town hall red, white and blue, the Legion organised a remembrance service which councillors attended, and the mayor laid a wreath, and the Museum organised a fete in Blake gardens with bunting, flags, exhibitions and 1940s music. The sun shone on all the hundreds that attended.
Blue Remembered Families
For the post war generation, it was easy to remember because we lived with it.
My dad, Wilf Smedley, was on aircraft carriers on the Arctic convoys, in Malta on VE day and his ship was at the Japanese surrender, my mum made munitions and was bombed on St Patricks night along with the 90% Leeds-Irish workforce in her factory. My Uncle Walter, who I never met, was shot by a sniper actually at Kohima and my uncle Watson was torpedoed by a U-Boat. Presumably after he’d left Leeds. But the point is we all had families who had members who did this, who went through this and told us about it. So, remembering was easy.
That was 80 years ago. What have we learnt?
The world that they fought for is being re-set as if none of that actually happened.
Many people were surprised when after VE day they held a general election and war time leader Winston Churchill in fact lost. VE Day was 8 May 1945 yet on July 5th 1945 there was a massive Labour landslide and Churchill was gone. People may struggle with that, but historians don’t. The people wanted change. The world before the war wasn’t what they were fighting for – that was the world that had caused the war. They wanted a new world. A world where the state took care of everybody from cradle to grave. That’s why we have a National Health Service. That’s why we nationalised industry to give people jobs and that’s why we built council houses, to give people homes. Jobs, homes and a health service fit for heroes.
Defeat of Fascism…or was it…?
The main victory in 1945 was the defeat of Fascism. That evil system based on racism, scapegoating minorities, over stating nationalism and denying democracy. So on the 80th anniversary of 1945 it’s pretty astounding that the British people have just voted in their thousands for the most right-wing political party in post war history. But it’s too easy to criticise Reform Uk. So I’ll do that for a minute.
Reform send themselves up to be honest. This is the party that says it will sack all the diversity officers on the councils they’ve just taken over, only to find there are none. People have tried to claim they’re a fascist party. But only 12 of them are actually being investigated so far. And that’s for promoting or retweeting neo fascist material, anti muslim hate or sharing content from holocaust deniers. Give them time. I’m sure they’ll settle in. Although a couple have already resigned and others become independents.
Make yourselves ‘Great’ again…
And of course, the Make Britain/America/Wherever Great Again cult are doing this across the world. Nigel Farages great hero (Trump I mean, not Putin, but good guess) has already instigated the biggest upheaval in post war defence yet seen. Although Trump declared that VE day would now reflect how it was in fact America that won it saying ‘We won both wars, nobody was close to us in terms of strength, bravery or military brilliance’. Which of course is news to the other 27 Nations that were part of the Allied coalition.
The point is that the USA came in quite late to both world wars. The lesson to be learned from both is collective security prevents wars. Isolation and division encourages them. After WW1 the Americans pursued a policy of isolation and the League of Nations that was set up to prevent wars was powerless. After WW2 they set up the United Nations and later NATO. Trump seems to think he’ll make America great again by going down the isolationist route again.
1945 was a new beginning
We’ve remembered the triumphs of 1945 badly. Over a million council homes were built from 1945 to 1951. From the 1980s that all stopped and surviving council houses are now like gold dust and we have a housing crisis. In the years following 1945 we had a health service that genuinely saved a generation for the future. Today It’s rapidly heading in the direction of ‘only for the rich’. And the European unity that Churchill and others all saw as the hope for the future has been shattered by Brexit.
People do want Change
People do want change and probably we’d find that what we built in 1945 would be the kind of change most people do want. And British people are not Fascists. Even if you look at the election results last week -when only part of the country actually voted -and then it was the more usually right wing areas voting the actual total numbers of councillors across the country are Labour 6,000 Tories 4,465, Lib Dems 3025 Greens 865 and then come Reforms 677. Theres different elections this year. Cities. Left leaning areas. Let’s see what happens then. If there’s one thing we fought for in 1945 its democracy. And choosing who represents us is part and parcel of that…even if we get it wrong sometimes…..