Marking 80 Years of Freedom

Mother and Father

With the impressive VE Day 80 celebrations today and given my pride in my association with

veterans for five years as Royal British Legion Sussex County President, I cannot pass this day by without some reflection on the price paid by many of a now dying generation for European peace and freedom. These were our parents, our grandparents.

As my father said to journalist and Countdown Presenter Richard Whitely when he called to pick me up to take me to a service in Ripon Cathedral one lunchtime, “She was a war baby you know!” - (Gee, thanks Dad!) - yes he was right, I was three when the Second World War ended and most of my childhood remembrances are of my parents reminiscing with relatives and friends about their wartime experiences. But of course, that period was their youth and their generation suffered much deprivation fighting for the freedoms we now take for granted. It drew them all together and taught them how to manage without the many little luxuries that had often made life worth living for.

The commemoration service today in Westminster Abbey showed the importance of diversity and inclusion, of our humanity, of sharing and of peace, priorities no longer valued it would seem on the other side of the pond and somewhat under threat here. Being in his early thirties my lovely Dad was called up in late 1940, joining the Royal Scots Fusiliers stationed in Ayr. In 1985 he began a hand written notebook of his life which is mostly about his time as a soldier and I have been reading through it as the TV and radio fill the airwaves with VE Day memories.

Six months after war ended, returning from Germany, he was officially discharged to be reunited with my mother, me and the new baby. “It was good to be home for good,” he wrote, “and to see Gladys and Jean (who was three years old) and Philip (who was six months old) for the first time. A lovely little chap!”

Many years ago, though it is, I actually do remember him walking up the path to our front door, his kitbag on his shoulder. I remember him opening this intriguing sausage shaped bag and the little wooden train set, the present he had bartered for us with his cigarette ration and I love this photo of my Mum and Dad. How young they were and happy to be together. Knowing what truly makes life worthwhile is very important as is holding on to one’s values and it is worrying to hear people calling for us to opt out of Human Rights. These fundamental rights apply to us all regardless of nationality, sex, ethnicity, religion, language, or any other status and if we remove them because they are inconvenient then we take away everyone’s rights and make us vulnerable to tyrants and dictators.

I loved the spectacle in Westminster Abbey where taking part were many young along with old, men and women, global majority and white, making strongly the case for diversity. This is a case we must not be deterred from making. I managed to break a glass ceiling in the RBL in Sussex, and however uncomfortable the journey was at times it was worth it in the overall picture. We all have a voice and we must use it to make life better for others. It’s not about how loud you say it, but about what you say. Our veterans, then and now, know it is always about Service, not Self.