Sir John Major’s Interview on VE Day Anniversary – 8 May 2025
The interview with Sir John Major broadcast on BBC Radio 4’s the Today Programme on 8 May 2025.
NICK ROBINSON
Our next guest is the last Prime Minister to have been born while the fighting was raging. He was Prime Minister when the country marked 50 years since VE Day. On the programme yesterday, we had President Biden, the last US president to have lived during the war who emphasised the need not just to remember on this day we celebrate the defeat of the Nazis in Europe, but to remember and learn, learn the lessons of history. Biden warned about the threat now to democracy, the risks of the absence of American leadership and what he called modern day appeasement.
I have been speaking to Sir John Major about his reflections on this VE Day.
SIR JOHN MAJOR
I doubt we’re ever going to see anything quite like it again, because when we come to the natural next occasion, it will be 100 years, and sadly, the whole core of the occasion, which is the veterans, will no longer be with us. So I think it is a very unique occasion. I, of course, was only two when the war ended, and don’t have any direct memories of it, but I do recall my parents talking about it later and I recall one thing I think my mother said at the time, that VE Day must have been the most joyous day in the whole history of our country. I think that is probably true, and what people perhaps didn’t focus on then was what came after – the sheer change between before the war and after the war in the lives of so many families, the sheer difficulties that there were to face when you had a country that was all but bankrupt, if not actually bankrupt, where you had rationing on food still for another eight or nine years to come. People had no concept of how life would change and it was a very tough few years following VE Day.
NICK ROBINSON
Earlier this week, on the Today Programme, we presented the programme from Coventry, the city that suffered the most during the war. You, I imagine, want people to remember that as well as the victory.
SIR JOHN MAJOR
I do and for a very special reason. Coventry was bombed to non existence, it was a ruin and later, of course, we bombed Dresden in a similar fashion. The two sides of Dresden and Coventry have remained in very close touch ever since, but I still remember because I’d read about it years ago, of what the Provost of the Cathedral said at Christmas 1940, after the bombing. I paraphrase because it was part of the speech he made, but he essentially made three points. One, we do not seek vengeance for what happened, we do seek continued activity to make sure we act against the tyranny we have faced and, thirdly, that what we need to seek is a kinder and a simpler world at the end of this catastrophic war. I sometimes reflect upon that third point, we don’t really have a kinder and more sympathetic world than we did before. You think of some of the things we argue about and we discuss, it is totally out of kilter with those particular thoughts. I think there is a great deal of work to be done.
NICK ROBINSON
Given what you say, which is inevitably there will be fewer and fewer people with direct memories, do you fear that we as a country may forget the lessons? That we may forget what that generation grew up knowing?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
I think there’s a real risk of that. I mean, at the moment, people take democracy for granted. I don’t think it’s safe to do that. Democracy has been a retreat for the last 16, 17, 18 years in many parts of the world and we have some people running countries at the moment who are far from democratic, they’re tyrannical. I think the people faced by Hitler realised they were facing tyranny and they fought together in order to ensure that tyranny was defeated. But there is tyranny in different parts of the world and we have to be as strong and as resolute about it now as they were then. As far as democracy is concerned, we actually have sight in Ukraine of what an anti democracy led by a tyrannical leader is actually capable of doing, without purpose, without reason, without justification. They invade another country, are continually bombarding both the civilian population and the military establishments and also, unbelievably in this day, had people whose job it is to kidnap children from Ukraine and steal them away from their parents and into Russia. Now if that isn’t tyranny. I don’t know what is now
NICK ROBINSON
You were the Prime Minister during another major anniversary, the 50th anniversary. Do you still have vivid memories of the people you met, the stories you heard?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
I do and they’re very vivid. The first memories one has are of the people we met and we saw some of them earlier this week being interviewed on television, much older now, but in many cases, quite remarkable. Over 100, talking about what they remembered, what they’d done, what they felt, how they thought they were in a justifiable fight against evil intentions and and it was absolutely remarkable to hear them. We honour them and we should do.
NICK ROBINSON
Sometimes when we think of veterans, we think of proud men and women, we think of their uniforms and their medals. We sometimes don’t think of the people who are not so visible, people who perhaps paid a price for what they went through. I think there was one man that you met all those years ago, a veteran who turned up at a commemoration.
SIR JOHN MAJOR
That was at Hyde Park, the VE Day commemoration in 1995, and that was presided over that particular event by the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret and it was a very strong security perimeter. A little elderly man, rather scruffily dressed as it happened, in curiously on a warm day wearing an old Mackintosh, tried to get in through the secure external security barrier and he was pushed back. He didn’t say much, he looked a bit taken aback, but he was pushed back and he was turning to go when someone with sharp eyes noticed something underneath his old raincoat. They looked at it and it was the Victoria Cross and he had come across half the world in order to be at that particular ceremony. As he put it to me, very sweetly, very charmingly, later, I came here to see my Queen. I had never forgotten that. Once we discovered who he was and where he had come from, he was moved from the perimeter and actually managed to get on the dais with some other Victoria Cross holders. He had a wonderful day and met many of the people he’d met before. But my blood still runs cold at the thought that a holder of the Victoria Cross could have been denied access after travelling halfway across the world and that is something I think I would never forget.
NICK ROBINSON
Sir John Major with his reflections on VE Day.