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?

You honestly think a country with a generous welfare state, no capital or corporal punishment, the most generous abortion time limit in the world, LGBTQ rights and equal marriage, and great maternity rights is ‘far right’?

Yes because of propaganda. The Allies were the right side.

I think VE Day has become a kind of intergenerational touchstone memory of a time contemporary Britain feels was its best historical moment, on the winning side of a ‘good’ war. And precedes things that have confused Britain’s sense of itself, like immigration.

The BBC is not a state broadcaster. We don't have one.

This is pretty an important thing to note in light of the question of whether we should celebrate VE Day.

Despite being a leftie, I think it's right we should celebrate VE Day and also to celebrate that others are free to disagree and write openly on a public forum today.

i also think it’s right to realise their are many complex issues and emotions arising from the history of the War.

I think you’ll find for the vast majority in the country it was just another day with no celebrating/commemorating or other acknowledgment of VE Day.

YABU. Have some national pride for goodness sake.

It’s not a celebration, it’s a commemoration. War is always bad, but the liberation of Europe - delivering it from Nazi occupation - and ridding us all of the Nazi tyranny is a cause which we should be proud of and never forget. Nor must we ever forget the millions who died, particularly servicemen and women.

Not least that they secured a freedom which means 80 years later we enjoy a peace and quality of life that generation could only have dreamed of. It’s important our children understand this.

THANK YOU!!

Absolutely where I'm at with this - thanks for phrasing so succinctly @Figgygal

@Suffolker

I completely agree but it feels like something that can’t be easily expressed without being criticised as being ‘anti-British’ or unpatriotic.

That's exactly why I posted here. I find it difficult to articulate my view IRL without being misinterpreted as being dismissive of the sacrifices people made or critical of others wanting to recognize this. I wondered if there was a silent but substantial minority who felt similar to me and it seems there is. It's been helpful to have so many responses.

This is all so navel-gazey

I don't understand. How is asking AIBU not navel gazing? It's a thread where people ask others for reactions to what they've thought / done...

I don't particularly care if there's never another bunting and jam event or anything big on TV, although I think things like the flypast that can be seen from all over London (where my family were both evacuated from and bombed) are still probably not a bad thing to have, along with church services and so on. After all, they are entirely optional, no one has to pay attention if they don't want to.

I don't understand how people can look at VE day and see the celebrations then and now as somehow just celebrating war rather than the end of a war. Scale back events as the decades go by, sure, but rewrite history as if somehow we're now all so wise now and can see that war is bad and people then couldn't? It's insulting and naive. Do people think somehow that we who have never experienced a world war are somehow less likely to start one than our great-grandparents? I think it's probably the other way round.

I'm not saying you should participate at all, but I don't think these anniversaries are only for people with military links. It was a world war, people in countries all over the world were being bombed and were terrified of invasion. It was not something that was only experienced by people with family in the armed forces.

As I said, I think military intervention is sometimes a necessary evil and I agree we ended up in a situation where there were no obvious alternatives with WW2 (though who knows what might have happened if the Versailles Treaty had been handled differently or Chamberlain had taken a different approach earlier). But surely that doesn't necessarily mean we continue to have celebratory events? Yes we can be grateful for the outcome but so many died, and military historians suggest some of the extremes of the allied bombings towards the end of the war which led to the victory were unnecessarily cruel. Surely it's better to use anniversaries as opportunities to commemorate, recognize the sacrifices and harm of war and remind politicians of the importance of thinking long term about international relations in order to avoid both the kind of horrors that led to WW2 and avoid armed conflict where possible. From other posts it sounds as if significant numbers of veterans have said something similar.

As this thread shows, many people do seem to approach 'celebration' in a thoughtful and nuanced way. However, some events seem to be framed in a way that either glorifies war or minimizes it as something fun to re-enact, which is absolutely not what is needed at this point in history.

Hindsight is always 20/20, what was done was done but it was certainly not done without long consideration or a great deal of controversy.

The group who remember WWII may be diminishingly small but they are still with us. Had it not gone to war in 1939, there is a high chance that we would be in a very different country and world by now and not necessarily for the better. The UK gave a lot more than just lives to stop the war machine, it lost an empire, it's global position, and put itself in a huge amount of debt and the changes in our whole society from millions of children growing up without fathers and father figures in formative years left deep scars and changed some things for the better too. Even our cuisine changed. But this is a drop in the ocean to the price that was paid. Post war the people were exhasted, hungry, and angry, it took decades to start to recover, we still haven't fully recovered even now, we live with it's effects. That's why people remember and why the want to remember because to have freedom in societies you have to make sacrifices, most families made the ultimate sacrifice, that is worth remembering for some even if others don't agree. If that means some people want to go out and fly some bunting and have a party, or quietly stand and think of loved ones, or just go live their life, that is up to them.

You do as you please but please let others choose to commemorate, celebrate, or ignore as they wish.

I put up Union Jack bunting and lit a candle at my village war memorial. Of course i don’t support unnecessary military action but what other recourse was there against the Nazis? For many countries, the WW2 posed a direct threat to their very survival not just their sovereignty.

So much gratitude for those who made the ultimate sacrifice.

VE day to me marks the end of immense suffering.

But surely when something evil happens, celebrating the end of it is exactly what you do want to do? You can surely see there's a difference between celebrating that and the thing itself?

YANBU. My parents grew up in a city that was badly bombed during the war, and had some horrific experiences. Their experiences massively shaped the rest of their lives and ours as well, and the war has always felt very real to me. I feel completely out of step with most other people I know who are much further removed from it, and I don’t like what feels like the fetishisation of the 1940s. A lot of the “celebrations” just brought back trauma for my DM in particular, and I guess her emotions affected me. I am planning on doing something that is much more about remembrance of the toll of the war took on people rather than treating it as a reason to party.

OP I’m ambivalent.

My grandparents all lived through that war and my Dad was born soon after it…all the GPs doing their bit but my paternal grandfather said it was an utterly shit time and he was glad to put it behind him. My dad had a ration book all through primary school, so Grandad and Nanny grew vegetables in their back garden and kept chickens or they would have struggled with food poverty. So the years after the war weren’t brilliant. My grandparents died in the 1990s.

My own thoughts are, it’s 80 years ago. On the one hand yes, let’s commemorate freedom from oppression but on the other hand, do we have to make so much fuss?

I’ve barely heard of it tbh I’m sure it wasn’t as big a deal when I was at school. In any case my DC’s school is making a big fan fare about it so I’m sure she’ll teach me tomorrow after school

My mum was 11 when the war ended. She has very strong memories of VE day.
My grandmother never spoke about the war and would walk away or turn off the TV if it was mentioned. She was deeply traumatized by it and just wanted to forget it ever happened.
I think it's important to mark
Armistice Day but that's it.
It's all too ukip/reform for me. I loathe the obsession we have with it.

It sits badly with me.my own father ,stepdad and grandfather fought.none wanted to talk about it.The Nazis were a dreadful group of people. However we seem to have been dining out on this victory for ever!
Putting up bunting and tea parties seem to miss the mark somehow. There has only been 1 year of world peace since

You’re not alone. The BBC had a woman who had worked on bomber planes during the war. After the flyover the interviewer said something like “your face lit up when you saw the planes”. The woman corrected her to say these are planes that caused devastation. She was then asked why it was important to have these events to mark VE Day and she said “well…since you’ve asked me I’ll tell you that it does feel like this is glorifying war” and went on to say how horrendous all wars are. They were a bit flustered by her not saying how wonderful it all was.

I feel uncomfortable that such jaunty celebrations are planned for our village when so many of them voted for the far right last week.

I see nothing wrong with celebrating the resulting peace and freedom with have now. I think some posters are mistaking it for a celebration of the events themselves when it isn’t. I still think this is a navel gazing thread - if you don’t want to celebrate then don’t, but virtue signalling about how concerned you are about the victims of Dresden etc is just 🙄