They’re all at it (Queen to address nation as part of VE Day 75 celebrations, 29 April): people of normally peerless judgment are helping turn the sod of the government’s VE Day celebration.
As one who regards that celebration as contemptible, am I letting my country down? I’ll have no one claim greater appreciation than my own of those who fought in the second world war. They were of course my parents’ generation, and emphatically not my own, which nonetheless likes to delude itself that “we” did it.
I do not lack a sense of history, but rather marvel at the emasculation of the subject in schools, resulting in an abject failure to look at how fascism grew, who nurtured it and how. Nor do I fail to see why our government wants us all to have tea in the street, listen to Churchill recordings, and watch films of celebrations 75 years past. It means that we’re all in it together, doesn’t it? And “it” is everything going on at present – Covid-19, lack of personal protection equipment. Let’s not dwell on talk of inadequacies, but do what we do best – refight a 75-year-old war that other people did the work for.
Far from being sour when I stay out of doorstep renditions of We’ll Meet Again, I’ll put on some other music and refuse to be used by the real enemy – those who even now are letting our heroes in the care homes and the NHS work at risk of their own lives.
Peter Millen
Huddersfield
• After a decade of Tory rule, we have had the Windrush scandal, the Grenfell Tower tragedy, the Brexit shambles and now the Covid-19 disaster. These are all consequences of the absence of state custodianship of the basic needs of the people. Austerity measures sapped the nation’s ability to respond to threats to our wellbeing. Public services, especially the NHS, were starved of necessary resources – all to protect the better off.
If the great admirer of Churchill has any sense of what is needed now, he needs to heed the message of 1945. It was about building a fairer society with a stronger state so that social cohesion could happen in the aftermath of tragedy.
Dr Tony Morgan
Cambridge
• Let’s try to remember the real lessons of the second world war. These are not summed up in “Dunkirk spirit” or “we stand alone”. They were the themes of 1940 and how to stay in a war. We need the themes of 1945: “working with allies”, “international cooperation”, “having a vision for the future”. These were how to win a war. There is a national overfocus on 1940. It’s time the outlook of 1945 replaced it. The outlook of international cooperation. The outlook of victory.
Martyn Whittock
Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire
• Keith Lowe (The VE Day commemorations have been scaled down. That’s a good thing, 29 April) suggests we should use VE Day to consider what it is we are remembering – and forgetting. This “celebration” plays into a jingoistic narrative of winning wars, which coincides neatly with the metaphor of fighting a foreign virus. A far more appropriate commemoration is presented by the centenary this October of the installation of the tomb of the Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey. We should remember all those who have died working to protect us from a pandemic that can never be overcome, but must be managed through proper funding of public services.
Nicola Grove
Horningsham, Wiltshire
