We all owe so much to that extraordinary generation who fought for our freedom

Kate and William arrive at Westminster Abbey

Last week I touched on the terrible What If, what might have happened if Nazism had defeated us. Watching this week's series of programme on the 80th anniversary of VE Day, culminating in yesterday's moving service from Westminster Abbey, really brought home to me, born 13 months after peace was declared in Europe, just how much we all owe that extraordinary generation who got us through the war. More than 70 of them were at the Abbey, men and women from all the services, including two codebreakers from Bletchley (without whom).

Most of us devoted followers of the Drone will be of a certain age but few will be old enough to remember the sheer joy of the moment Churchill announced victory. My earliest memory is of the dreaded ration book and occasionally clutching it for dear life when sent to a local shop by my mother. Mum had a way with her instructions; it had to be 'good' bacon and 'nice' cheese. 

Homes until I was about eight were rented and the first one was lit by the sort of Victorian gaslight that is no doubt terribly fashionable in north London today. We had a radio with a vast battery that weighed a ton, or so it seemed, and  when it died had to be taken to be exchanged.  No television of course and we watched the Coronation in 1953 at a neighbour's house, everyone crowded into a small sitting room trying to get a glimpse of a flickering black and white picture on a screen about the size of an iPad. But we had a phone when few others did and always a car of various types and in varying conditions.

I vaguely remember the London Smog in 1952 because I was not allowed out (not even to get some 'nice' cheese). The capital was a dirty place in the main but it was all we knew. And it was great because we lived in a free country, full of bomb sites maybe and everything monochromatic but free nonetheless. Later we moved to the spires and rivers of Cambridge and then returned to the beautiful Antrim coast line.

It would have been so very different but for two game-changing events, the miracle of the armada of small boats and the evacuation from Dunkirk of 338,000 British and French soldiers in May 1940 and, barely two months later, victory against all odds in the air, the Battle of Britain.

We can thank Lord Beaverbrook for the latter; his oldest and closest friend Churchill had persuaded him to take the role as Minister of Aircraft Production and he began making planes the way he produced Expresses, by inspirational leadership, throwing convention out of the window and, if needed, a bit of bullying. It worked when all logic seemed that the disparity in the number of fighter planes meant we didn't have a chance. Just 640 planes in Fighter Command v 2,600 for the Luftwaffe. 

When the Beaver took over at the beginning of May 1940 the Germans were bombing the Supermarine factory in Southampton, a short blast across the channel from occupied France. So he closed the factory and began outsourcing; parts of the Spitfires and Hurricanes were made in anonymous barns, bus depots and civic halls up and down the country and then assembled somewhere ready for flight.

Somehow it worked and then it was down to the young pilots, some hardly out of school and barely shaving. Thanks to The Few, Hitler was forced to abandon Operation Sea Lion, invasion by sea, and we lived to fight on to victory. And if we had lost? This is what my imagination tells me:

The odious Oswald Mosley would have been installed as Hitler's leader in Britain surrounded by fellow fascists such as the country's richest man, the Duke of Westminster, long-term lover of Coco Chanel who became a full-blown Nazi agent, appropriately codenamed Agent Westminster. The Duke of Windsor would have been returned by his pal Adolf from exile in the Bahamas to take the role of titular monarch, sitting smoking in Buckingham Palace over which the Swastika flew. There would be a system of gauleiters, Nazi placemen ruling the regions like modern day regional mayors.

Democracy would be for the history books (which by then would probably have been confiscated or undergoing major revision); newspapers would be vehemently controlled as would be all school teaching. Gradually the German language would become the lingua franca and Churches would either follow the Nazi diktat or be closed. All factories would produce whatever was needed to sustain Hitler's European domination.

The British Empire would eventually have fallen to Germany and this country's 370,000 Jewish population would be reduced to a few dozen, those who had somehow escaped the Gestapo purge, rounded up and sent to death camps in remoter parts of Britain. Churchill would have been executed and no doubt members of his Cabinet including Beaverbrook. 

Scary? You bet but that was what lay in store (or worse) had we lost. Most of the schoolmasters who did their best for me had served in the forces, many wearing their regimental ties. That is why we are so grateful to those frail men and women, now in their 90s and some well past the 100 mark, who were at the Abbey yesterday. They were part of our salvation as were members of nearly every family up and down these islands. It didn't matter how or what they contributed, either in the fighting forces, driving ambulances, ARP wardens, firefighters or fire watchers, radar operators, digging for coal or breaking the Enigma code. They all did their bit.

But it was not a Bit, it was a Lot. And it's why we are all free to enjoy the country we live in 80 years on. 

*****

Spotted in the Abbey: Lady Starmer wiping away a tear; David Cameron appeared to be the only chap wearing a tailcoat (maybe he thought it was time for chapel at Eton; Boris Johnson looking a total disgrace with hair out of the scarecrow dressing-up box and a suit and shirt that had probably seen too much activity in the back of a car; Lady May suddenly looking old; John Major seemingly getting younger; Angela Rayner scrubbing up rather well, and Truss showing her daft face there with her poor long-suffering husband Hugh.

And Kate, Princess of Wales, she really is very beautiful isn't she?

*****

We have a new Pope, an American. How soon before Trump takes the credit?  

ALAN FRAME

9 May 2025