The optimistic internationalism of VE Day risks being trampled by saccharine exceptionalism

Funny that, just watched Woody Allen's Manhattan. Dianne Keaton "The Natzis are marching today, we should debate them". Woody "Yeah, we'll go down there with some bricks and baseball bats".

'... the oil crisis delivered a fatal blow, before Murdoch and Thatcher swept in to flog off the ruins, wrapped in nostalgia, tradition and the flag.' The other thing which did it, at almost the same time, was the Falklands War. It was one of the vanishingly few times when I thought Thatcher was very largely right; but my sense was that the notions of wartime spirit and 'Britannia (splendidly and courageously!) contra mundum' experienced a sharp resurrection from that time on, and has never gone away since.

Briliant, Meic as always. A pity the replies you jave received seem to me to say more about the responders thsn the subject! Please let’s have some less self-regarding discussion.

Mike what you really trying to say? Maybe truth be told you and other 'narrow cybernats' just could not stomach all the Union Jacks yesterday and the shared memories of 'British people' and certain home truths that will no matter how much 'yessing' and bus rides the reality is it's no go for an 'Independent Wales' and a referendum would be a n embarrassing train crash, fin! Time to wake up Cymru Game Over as the Land of our Fathers becomes more and more West Britain complete with Union Jacks. Time to get a life boyo! Have you any links to relatives who fought and died in WWII? For one day i can put up with Union jacks and soak up some history and enjoy the vintage dressing up even that of Russian commemoration ofMay 9 via RT. An older generation were prepared to fight and die for freedom, our younger generation today more talk the talk and not walk to fight back as against 'wind farm' green capitalist colonialism of which post CV there will be much more as well as more 'holiday homes' and can you work out why? More important what you going to do about it? One word again MONDRAGON. Gethin.

Jan should be nominated for a St David Award, its too late this year but she really deserves some official recognition. https://gov.wales/st-david-awards/nominate

The only actual peoples of Europe who 'embraced' (your word) internationalism after the War were those Stalinised populations who didn't dare spout anything but the Kremlin's 'General Line.' The Western view of this was that vast swathes of the continent had been locked in a chilling grip of iron, in which popular opinion had little significance other than as a target for suppression bythe KGB and by all the numerous associated 'Vichy'-Soviet Stasi-type organisations in their Soviet colonies. Liberated territories gratefully banded together in the West under NATO'S American-sponsored military umbrella, but otherwise the populace of each liberated country naturally reverted to their old, familiar, familial cultural roots. Déraciné intellectuals of course were already contriving a European power-bloc of Democratic Centralism to - perversely - rival the Soviet model, and in so doing exploited- and fomented - increasing popular resentment of a rich and successful American ised world; and thus began the neo-liberal policy to wean people off their inconvenient tendency to love hearth and home more than any foreign parts of the world, all in order that the march of internationalism and Globalism could be accelerated and expediently achieved without the distraction of consulting the populations of the countries about to be sidelined and ultimately abolished. Well I know how we in Wales feel about our little country, so I don't see why our neighbours should feel any different. So your sweeping and lofty characterisation of English popular sentiment, on the occasion of the VE Day Commemoration, as something contemptible that only thick and sordid simpletons could possibly share really is a bit much. These would be the same people comfortable Liberals see working for a miserable pittance that lets you afford your various astronomically expensive trendy indulgencies - and these are also the same people very likely to lose their jobs and livelihoods as a consequence of this absurdly extended virus lockdown, which seems increasingly more political than epidemiological in it's motivation. There seems to me to be far less risk of another lunatic Hitler arising at this time, than there is a real prospect of some neo-Stalinist coming to power who is prepared to force a general reset of society and politics according to ideals he would enforce, at any price, upon the already hard-pressed people: So be careful what you wish for, as 'the road to Hell is paved with good intentions,' and intellectuals like you are just as dangerous as the ordinary people, who only want the land that gave birth to them to prosper and prevail, so that they have a good home - not a kind of way-station for refugees, nor a despised and neglected satrapy of any foreign power! Unless you really do want to equate the country and the people who followed and those of us who still admire the wartime Churchill and what that leader and that people achieved - in concert with many othe nations be it remembered - with a cruel egomaniac like Hitler and a people deluded and dragooned into a cult of sadism and death, then you should desist from flinging about loose accusations of 'fascism.' It wasn't Europe that liberated itself, it was Britain alone until the populous USA joined the fight back, and that should be remembered. (And I don't forget the essential role of, in particular, the Russian people, in case you'd like to twit me with that.) So it is no more than a stock left-wing insult to make a sneaking suggestion of there being some valid comparison between our VE Day and the rise of a ranting Hitler at his Nuremberg Rally. And remember that most of your returning GIs were heartily glad to return to the US, and to be rid at last of an alien Europe, even if they had often made friends there with the local people . The 'exceptionalism' they harboured in their hearts was that of course America was a different place and a different way, and why shouldn't they feel good about themselves, having done their duty and survived to return home? This is not to deny that a sense of national pride can easily - humans being what we are - turn cancerous and become a burgeoning arrogance. All our actions need to be held to a moral standard. Nevertheless, the alternative to feeling good in your own skin and in your own land can be dangerous as well; the condition too often produces the sort of self-hating enemy of all patriotic sentiment who must be meddling abroad to the detriment of concerns at home. It isn't political mantras and ideological name-calling we need but humane fellow-feeling, wherever possible. I deplore your simple-minded muddling together of patriotism and jingoism, especially on this Day of Commemoration for our victory in a just war. As our great scholar andCymro Merêd believed, patriotism is loving your own country, not hating another. He knew that Germany - and Stalinist Russia for that matter - had perverted the love of Nation to criminal ends. But in his wisdom he would not judge any country's patriotism except by it's best traits. So less of the political clap-trap, if you please. Sweeping utterances such as claiming that all good impulses are 'being trampled to death in the stampede of saccharine and sentimental exceptionalism that pretty much drives our entire public discourse these days' and ' The past, or at least a bastardised version of it, is a religion on this foggy little rock' are just your spin. What justifies your implying people on the right of politics can't act as good neighbours? And where would Wales be - subject to the same maritime and insular clime as England, but somewhat wetter - without it's own very live sense of it's past; and how do we respond when any Englishman dismisses and derides our hiraeth for our great days? If Wales were a Power among the nations we might as easily go to the bad as any other, but we believe, hopefully rightly, that we are a decent people and would always remain so. It behoves you, then, to make the same assumption on behalf of our individual English neighbours, whatever your political stance. I am heartily sick olf the Left imputing bad faith to everybody except themselves, and flinging about 'Fascist' and 'Nazi' as idle insults. These are dangerous words, and used indiscriminatingly are tantamount to verbal terrorism. It is not the sort of irresponsible language that the readership of any respectable journal should tolerate.. But thanks for the stimulus in the midst of boredom. Keep well.

Without the coronavirus, we might in 2020 have had the mental space to have an opportunity to, with the decade containing the 100th anniversaries of the First World War having passed, and the 75th anniversary of VE Day arriving in 2020, to begin to have a more balanced historical view of the two world wars. Instead, the same cliches have been revived again, and propagated in a fossilised form to another generation. Not that we would have done so anyway, without SARS-CoV-2 we'd still be arguing about the Brexit transition period.

Er...Quite partial to abit of winsome frou-frou myself. My father was in the British Army during WW2 and my grandfather was a war correspondent in S.America for WW1. My father was rescued at Dunkirk, and fought in Burma, Italy and at the end, in Germany. I think he would have celebrated VE day as would've my Mam. Just saying.

Remembering those who died protecting our way of life is of course the right thing to do. However, dwelling on victory and basking in pride will - as the saying goes - only lead to our fall. As a country we live with our heads stuck in the past, it's time we looked at the 'now' and prepared for a better future far more.