Victory
in Europe, the end of the Second World War is remembered in the West
on 8 May. In Russia, and former Soviet states, Victory Day is
remembered on 9 May. The present conflict between Ukraine and Russia
has had the President of Ukraine implying that in war, Russia
designates the conflict as a Special Military Operation, anything
goes and he has openly threatened to attack the Victory day
‘celebrations’ taking place in Moscow.
Politicians
and ‘leaders’ who, in May of 1945 or thereafter, may have
channelled the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, who
returned from a meeting with Adolf Hitler, the German Chancellor,
after signing the Munich Agreement, waving a piece of paper and
proclaiming peace in our time! Would have been either naïve,
disingenuous or lacking in understanding in understanding of
capitalism and its determination to seek competitive advantage and
the increase of power and profits through any means possible. As the
American General Smedley D. Butler wrote, War is a racket!
We
now have an additional conflict added to the ones now currently
taking place. To Ukraine-Russia, USA-Yemen, USA-Iran (possible future
one), Israel -various Middle East states, Pakistan and India, both
nuclear states, have just engaged in escalating tensions.
A
search of Wiki shows that major conflicts between these two states
took place in 1947-48, 1965, 1971, 1999 and now 2025. There have been
many minor skirmishes along the way.
Since
1945 there have been many other serious or minor conflicts taking
place all across the world. ‘Peace’ and ‘capitalism’ put
together is an oxymoron. Who seriously believes that real peace will
ever descend upon the world whilst the exploitative profit chasing
capitalist system continues to exist?
The
below is from the Socialist Standard May 1985.
‘VE
Day in Britain was a typically bright and sunny late spring day,
cloaked in a certain air of unreality. It had been obvious for
several weeks that Germany was collapsing and that the war in Europe
was drawing to a close. Hitler was dead and it was just a matter of
time before the end. Over the radio came a stream of announcements in
German, accompanied by martial music, that were later revealed to be
false messages put out to spread confusion in a Germany that was
sinking into chaos. In fact the choice of day was bungled. It had
been intended to announce the final surrender on 9 May—the day the
surrender was to be ratified at a stage-managed ceremony in
Berlin—but the news was leaked by an American reporter and so the
Western powers celebrated a day earlier.
People
went through a repeat performance of 1918. Church bells were rung,
floodlights were turned on, there was dancing in the streets and
street parties, and the usual crowds outside Buckingham Palace. The
mood was more realistic than in 1918. Just as in September 1939 there
had been an absence of the hysteria of 1914, so in 1945 there were no
wild expectations. People had at least learned enough to realise that
this was not going to be a World Fit for Heroes and there was a
complete absence of the Hang the Kaiser type of nonsense, the
overwhelming feelings were of relief and concern about what lay
ahead. After all, the first World War had only ended 27 years before,
so people in early middle life could clearly remember what had
followed it: a brief period of full employment and a slump that
lasted, with fluctuations, until 1939. During all that time there
were never less than a million unemployed, which served to keep down
workers' wages, and even those who were children in the 1920s had
vivid memories of the heroes of yesterday, often minus limbs, singing
and playing for money in the streets. In 1945 prophesies were rife
that there would be a couple of million unemployed, and war with
Japan still had some time to run.
Wartime
censorship was still in operation and decisions which were to shape
future events hidden from the public. People who had grown up with
the concept of an "Empire on which the sun never sets" had
no idea that in not much more than a generation only a few distant
outposts would remain. And while Hamburg and Dresden were in the
past, the dropping of the atom bomb was still to come: an event that
would make total annihilation a possibility. But perhaps the most
important unknown fact was the deterioration of the relationship with
Russia.
This
latter was to present the authorities with one of their most
difficult problems that of convincing people that those gallant,
smiling heroic soldiers were in fact a menace to be feared. But they
had had practice in such things in 1941, when they had to undo the
propaganda efforts of the previous two years. From the signing of the
Non-Aggression 'Pact with Germany just before the outbreak of war,
through the invasion of eastern Poland and the attack on Finland, the
Soviet Union was portrayed as a tyranny. The British Communist Party
opposed the war and the Daily Worker was suppressed.
When, in June 1941, the Germans invaded Russia, a complete change
around took place. The propaganda machine was turned on full blast
and for four years everything Russian became not only fashionable,
but admirable. Russian faces looked down from hoardings and out from
our news papers and magazines, Russian tunes poured from the radio,
with dance-band singers trying to sound like Cossacks. while Russian
films drew long queues to the box office. Russia was portrayed as a
kind of democracy, different from the West but still a democracy.
Joseph Stalin was really a kindly old chap who smoked a pipe and had
a sense of humour. The purges and show trials were portrayed as being
aimed solely at Nazi Fifth Columnists. The Daily Worker was
restored and used the same strip cartoons that had opposed the war to
support it.
But
on VE Day the public were blissfully unaware of this and Russian
flags were carried with the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes. The
media—newspapers and magazines, radio and films—consciously
sought to create a feeling that the war had blown away much that was
stuffy and stale and that we were about to emerge into an exciting
new world. This had started quite abruptly at the end of 1940 after
the collapse of France and the beginning of the Blitz. With no
introduction or build-up, just as if they had turned on a tap, the
authorities started to talk about a new world. This was not the crude
old stuff of the 1914-18 war, but much more subtle. Committees were
set up and reports were issued covering every aspect of the economy.
The most famous was the Beveridge Plan which, even from a capitalist
point of view, hardly merited the claim to be "the hope of
salvation for the future of the people of this country". However
the propaganda machine pushed it until it became part of modern
folklore. Planning Boards were set up for the development of town and
country and to prevent the ugliness of pre-war urban sprawl. The
bombing had laid bare large areas of the City of London and grandiose
schemes were drawn up to lay these out with wide boulevards and open
up a vista of St. Paul's from the Thames, with gardens and walks. But
capitalism does not allow some of the most expensive land in the
world to become flowerbeds. The result can be seen today in the
City's forest of gigantic office blocks.
Alongside
this, throughout the war, every effort was made to encourage
discussion and education as a morale booster, and to allay the
boredom of the troops who during the build-up to D Day had been kept
in comparative inaction. Radio programmes like the Brains
Trust and the lunch-time concerts in an empty National
Gallery were part of this, as was the effort of the Army Bureau of
Current Affairs, who sent out fortnightly pamphlets to Army units for
discussion. One result of this was to produce a swing to the Left in
political thinking, which helped to produce the Labour victory at the
1945 General Election.
During
the war a political truce had prevailed and government was by
coalition, on VE Day the truce was still intact but behind the scenes
it was breaking up. Party leaders began to make veiled political
speeches and after VE Day a General Election was called. This took
place on 5 July but the count was delayed until 25 July to allow time
for postal votes from the Armed Forces to come in. It was a quiet
affair conducted on an out-of-date register and it resulted in a
sweeping Labour victory. This was greeted by exaggerated hopes and
fears. The Left saw it as the beginning of socialism which would
sweep away the problems of the world, while some of the sillier
Tories feared that they would be dispossessed, or at least lose their
savings. Neither fears nor hopes were justified as all the Labour
government could do was to run the country in the interest of the
British capitalist class. Not that they had the slightest intention
of doing anything else.
The
Conservative Party were badly shaken by their defeat. For twenty
years they had had things their own way; they had undoubtedly lost
touch with grassroots feelings and their organisation had become
obsolete. After a period of sulking because the electorate had had
the cheek to throw them out, they began a steady climb back. They did
what they would have shunned before the war and went out on to the
streets. We were treated to the sight of top Tories slumming and
ex-Cabinet Ministers were prepared to debate with anybody. They even
found a few Tory working men who could be relied on to drop their
aitches at the right place and address Tory women delegates in
flowered hats as "mate". They went over big with the
well-heeled delegates at the annual conference. Once they began to
pick up again, the Tories dropped all this kind of stuff.
The
Labour government began with a massive programme of nationalisation,
which they called socialism, and found it difficult to get the
British economy going again after the war. They gradually became more
and more unpopular. Fascism had been discredited during the war but
was soon to rear its ugly head again.
There
is no doubt that many men coming back from active service were
determined that their children should grow up in a better world and
that what they saw as the errors of the past should not be repeated.
Unfortunately it was the inevitable workings of capitalism with which
they were dealing. Slowly this political interest faded and for some
years, once the immediate post war shortages had eased. things on the
surface appeared much improved. Mass unemployment did not appear for
many years and during the "never had it so good" era many
people thought that the world had learned how to deal with such
things as slumps. There were other problems of capitalism,
principally the chronic housing shortage. People had jobs but nowhere
decent to live. Love
on the Dole was
replaced by Cathy
Come Home—and In
Which We Serve by The
War Game.’
Les
Dale
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