To not want to 'celebrate' VE

[Ramblethroughthebrambles]

I've been asked to take part in VE celebrations this week. I've politely declined. It feels OK to me to join in a solemn commemoration, with a focus on how to make sure this never happens again, but not a celebration of victory which all the UK events seem to be. I'm grateful for the sacrifices so many soldiers and others made and that we didn't become part of the Nazi empire. I completely get why people originally celebrated the end of such an awful war and its hardships. But celebrating military victory 80 years on doesn't sit right with me, especially given the conflicts in the world today. It seems to normalise military intervention and sends the message that military victory is a 'good thing' when often it's a result of failures in international diplomacy/ strategy / long term thinking. I'm not a complete pacifist and recognise there are times when military intervention is a necessary evil. But that doesn't make me want to celebrate it.

I never hear anyone else expressing this view in public. There seems to be an expectation that we'll all want to get the bunting out and have a tea party. So AIBU?

Thank you for sharing that x 🙏

Despite the word "Victory" I always assumed it was based on the celebration of peace being declared and the relief that the war (in Europe at least) was over.

I don't know if it was as much "hurray we won" rather than "thank God it's ended and we didn't lose".

I've never had a sense that WW2 is glorified - perhaps because I grew up hearing first-hand accounts from family and that makes it more personal.

I've never heard Remembrance being referred to as Poppy Day?

Do all the 'oh mer gawd.. this was ages ago.... why are you still going on about this...?!!'
Do you say the same when people talk about racism and apartheid? 'This was ages ago! Why are you still going on'?!

You have summed up how I feel about it. I remember my mum telling me of them being kids and hiding in hedges during bombing. I can't even begin to imagine the terror. The relief for this country when it was all over, must have been tremendous. I like to pay my respect to our fallen, as well as raise a glass to victory.

Me neither. Remembrance Sunday will also never lose its meaning.

I was heavily involved with VE50 in 1995! It was a very different tone. Many people in the their 70s & 80s talking for the first time about their war experiences. It balanced the joyful photos of Trafalgar Square. Lots of just went to work like normal at the canteen/hospital/war office/Bletchley Park type places.
Lots of remembrance that VJ was a long way off and that most people didn't necessarily know where or when people would return from overseas.
Lots of acknowledgement and fear about how Europe would be rebuilt and how to stop another world war happening again, rather than repeating the mistakes of WW1.
Each decade further away from any conflict just seems to simplify it and we get the rhetoric of the decade. I personally dislike 'hero' talk for conscripted men. They used to talk more humble, of duty, of doing the right thing, being traumatised or even youthful adventure and excitement. The hero word was never used and I don't think accurate to those I spoke to.

I don’t see it at glorification of war, very far from it. More like remembering to remember the horror - and the huge sacrifices made by all kinds of people, not just those who fought but those who endured the hardships and privations. I think it matters to keep it in people’s minds, especially for each new generation. Looking at footage of the time, it’s just unthinkable, unimaginable stuff that people just dealt with every day for six years!

It’d be a whole whole lot worse if the Nazis won

Very poignant 😔

Yes and majority of the country struggled with Covid lockdowns !

I couldn’t imagine what being bombed would be like

I always found it telling that the veterans don’t want to celebrate-one on the news just now said as the camera moved away from him “And don’t start another one!

I have never heard of Remembrance Day being referred to as poppy day.

Where i live i am involved with local community groups as well as the RBL. We have came together (6 groups) to commemorate and celebrate VE day. On Thursday there will be wreath laying ceremony at the War memorial then on Saturday an event. At the event there will WWII memorabilia and information boards on local men who served during the war, some not returning home. We are priviliged to have veterans still alive and are looking forward to attending. Also at the event there will be some childrens entertainment relative to the 40s and a local singer with a swing time set. There will be tables set up street party style and we will feed everyone.
We often get together to organise events such as this and our older residents in particular are looking forward to attending especially those who were children during the war.
I understand for some they feel unconfortable with a celebration, we are trying our best to do both.

Exactly. A lot of us with Jewish parents and grandparents who lived through the war definitely wouldn't be here if the Nazis had won.

I agree OP.
I think after this commemoration it should be laid to rest. It was 80 years ago.
It’s like the Victorians celebrating Trafalgar Day which continued until after the First World War (and they had yet another grim conflict and massive loss of life to commemorate). Too much celebrating and not enough reflecting on why we keep ending up in huge messes like this every bloody century (and doing more to prevent it).

We don't know we are born TBF.

It feels a bit mawkish, and to me it cheapens the sacrifices that those men and women made when you dress it up as some kind of festival.

I think commemorating is how it should be done but I think we need to spend our time looking forward as a country rather than looking backwards to relive the past.

It's nothing but propaganda. We might have won the war, but we definitely lost the peace. Britain has been on a very long downward trajectory since then. But it doesn't matter because we still get to put our bunting up and pretend that things are fine and dandy.

War should be a last resort. We should commemorate the immense sacrifice, but celebrate? No! We've learned nothing from it though, so perhaps celebrations are only to be expected.

Sheila Hancock's piece in the Saturday Guardian is well worth reading.

It celebrates that the war in Europe was over and victory was in sight. It celebrates the people who gave up their lives so that we didn't get overtaken by a fascist dictator.
As history seems to be about to repeat itself I think it's a good thing that they're teaching kids in school and we take pride.

It’s all turned a lot more jingoistic since most of the people who had adult experience of it have died.

I commemorate VJ Day in preference to VE Day for personal reasons, which hasn’t become such a 1940s cosplay opportunity mainly because most people seem to forget VE Day wasn’t the end of WW2 so don’t bother remembering it.

Sorry to say it, but it's one of the few things that the UK can "celebrate" these days, and that may be why there is so much jingoistic focus on it as a Victory.

Britain didn't win the war on its own though did it? I wonder how other Allied countries mark VE day. It appears to be quite low key, respectful and reverential elsewhere.

A visit to the Menin Gate in Ypres for the last post is just so fitting and reverential. Every night it's done.

And another to Dachau and Auschwitz together with the martyred village of Oradour sur Glane show the horrors, which are sometimes overshadowed by "celebrations" in Britain.

I say thanks to all who fought for our freedom. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them.

Just a long dressed up virtue signalling post about how forward thinking and anti-Colonialism etc you are

What even is there to discuss, you refused as is your right, end of

That is a truly disgusting post. Do you know how many millions of people died to give you the freedom you have today??? You would be living under a dictatorship speaking German and most of your Jewish/mixed race/ other minorities friends and ancestors would be dead.

You have totally lost it on the woke cool aid, or have become so despicably complacent you can not fathom the great debt we owe to those that paid such a heavy price for us.

Love this