Sir John Major’s Interview with Nick Robinson for the BBC World Service – 8 May 2025
The interview between Sir John Major and Nick Robinson, recorded for the BBC World Service.
NICK ROBINSON
For this interview, I met Sir John Major, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, who came to speak to us at the BBC headquarters at Broadcasting House. You’re going to hear Sir John’s recollection of the end of the war, what it meant for him and his family, as well as the lessons he believes we should learn from the sacrifices that were made then, his concerns about the future of the NATO alliance, the future of Ukraine and the threat it poses to us all, if tyranny is, in his words, allowed to succeed. Welcome to the interview from the BBC World Service with me, Nick Robinson.
SIR JOHN MAJOR
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. I recall one thing, I think my mother said at the time that the day must have been the most joyous day in the whole history of our country and I think that is probably true. 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 they 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
Given what you say, which is inevitably that there will be fewer and fewer people with direct memories. Do you fear that we as a country may forget the lessons? 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 in 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.
NICK ROBINSON
How do you convince a younger generation who may, some, look at this and think this is just nostalgia? This is an older generation saying that everything we’ve mentioned before, this was the greatest generation, this was our finest hour. How do you convince them?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
Everything in our country wasn’t better before, despite all the problems we’ve had since the wartime period, the lives of people today are despite the difficulties we face, despite the lack of growth in recent years, despite the immediate problems, all of that is immeasurably better than the life in and in the 1940s and the 1950s. Once again, if I can quote my mother, doing it twice in just a couple of minutes, she once looked back on those days and referred to them as “the days of lino, no hot running water and outside toilets” and that was the way most people lived. There were people who were very lucky and lived in a different style, but the vast majority who were alive during those days will remember that. Nothing like that would be remotely acceptable today.
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. If we hadn’t had NATO, if we weren’t built up as a military establishment, who knows how much earlier this might have happened? Who knows how much further Putin and his plans may have gone?
NICK ROBINSON
How much further? In other words, for those who think that that’s Ukraine, she borders Russia, it’s a long way away, this won’t affect us.
SIR JOHN MAJOR
No, try and say that to all of Russia’s neighbours, and they’ll tell you very differently. They are frightened of what may happen and they have reason to be frightened if Putin gets his way over Ukraine. By get his way, I don’t just mean take over all Ukraine, which I don’t think he’s capable of doing, but actually a bad peace is made in which he’s offered things he should not be offered and given advantages he should not be given. He has to be seen to lose or the danger of Putin continues. If Putin gets away with it, what is to stop other countries thinking they can do the same? Why should President Xi not think well, ”the West are very weak-kneed. I think I can deal with Taiwan now.”
Why should not other people in different parts of the world do exactly the same thing? Open the doors to any success for tyranny, and you are opening a very dangerous situation indeed. We have to keep saying that. We have to keep defending democracy, keep explaining to the next generation what it is that it means not to be democratic. Let me give you an example, young people today often say very savage things about politicians and successive governments, they’re perfectly entitled to in this country. Indeed, it’s a national habit, it’s something we have come to expect. If they said that in Russia about Putin, they would be falling out of a high window in Moscow or be in a gulag somewhere in Siberia. That’s the difference between living in a democracy, which we should cherish, and living in a country as Russia is, with its ill-fated leader and his nefarious activities.
NICK ROBINSON
You’ve warned just now very clearly of what you call a bad peace. There’s a word that we used to have for that, isn’t it? Appeasement?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
Yes.
NICK ROBINSON
Would you use that word?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
I’m perfectly prepared to use that word.
NICK ROBINSON
And the suggestion by Donald Trump that territory is handed over would be appeasement, would it?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
I don’t think we should do that, I don’t think that would be a proper thing to do. We’re in a very curious situation, because we’re not entirely sure exactly what America’s commitment to the war is. It seems to change with ad hoc remarks that appear on the internet and are suddenly said. Sometimes they’re overturned, sometimes they’re not. So we can’t be sure and uncertainty is a very risky proposition, but what it has done has made it clear to the Europeans that we have failed to devote as much of our resources to our own defence in the last 30 or 40 years, and must now do so, so that we are ourselves in Europe sure of what defence we can offer for ourselves, rather than necessarily being prepared to rely on the resources of the United States. We cannot be certain that that will be there.
NICK ROBINSON
President Biden warned about the consequences of what you call uncertainty. He said that he feared that countries that border Russia were to use his word ‘accommodate’ with the Kremlin, they would change so as not to offend Vladimir Putin.
SIR JOHN MAJOR
Well, early signs may not only be countries adjacent to Russia who were prepared to offer a defensive crouch when Putin demands something and that is unattractive. Once you get into that position, you are going to lose the argument. There is a growing risk of tyranny and that growing risk requires Europe to be as strong and self defensive as she can possibly make herself, and that means working together.
NICK ROBINSON
When you talk of losing the argument, do you understand that something that your generation of leaders have now lost the argument, that it is not just Donald Trump, there are people all over Europe as well saying, ‘let’s put our own people first. Let’s not spend money on worrying about someone else’s borders’.
SIR JOHN MAJOR
I know. There’s a great far right nationalist surge in many countries, including our own. You see it in Germany, you see it in France, you see it in Italy, you see it in the UK, you certainly see it in Hungary. We should be agitated about that and if the Democrats don’t fight back, if the Democrats just begin to appease this far right thought, absorb it and pay off the dragon bit by bit by adopting a little bit of their policy, because it may mean that they attack you last, then that is absolutely the wrong way. We should have drawn a line in the sand, I think, some time ago, but I think it is very important now that the democracies begin to defend democracy itself and speak out against the sort of extreme right wingery we’re seeing in many parts of Europe, as well as other parts of the world.
I feel very strongly about it. I’m coming to the end of my days, a few years left, I’d hope. But there’s no doubt that the longest days I have are way behind me, and I’m sorry perhaps we didn’t draw the line a little further, a little sooner. We certainly ought to draw it now.
NICK ROBINSON
When you say that others should draw the line clearly?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
I’m talking about the countries right across Europe. When you speak of Europe, but for an accidental geographical event a couple of billion years ago, we would actually be on the mainland of Europe. We’re not. But to all intents and purposes in terms of our security and our interests, we still remain in the European sphere of influence. We need to work with them. I don’t like the fiddling bureaucracy of Europe and never did. My support for Europe was always based on a very clear calculation, and it was this, ‘am I, my children and my grandchildren safer and likely to be better off in very large power blocs around Europe or isolated and alone in a world that is going to be rough and tough in the future?’ and the answer is yes, we are safer, and that is what has made me a supporter of the European Union, not the fiddling bureaucracies that so irritated us in the nooks and crannies of our life.
NICK ROBINSON
So if the current Prime Minister can get us a little closer, if not back in?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
No, you can’t get us back in now. I’d like to think we haven’t left, but we have left, and I do not think it is politically practicable to get back in immediately. But I do think we can get back in much closer and particularly into the Customs Union or the single market, because that is where we need to build. But we need to build first on the defence relationship. We need to work together in their interests and our interests, because we also have to strengthen NATO and our European neighbours are, of course, members of NATO themselves.
NICK ROBINSON
Now you were 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, in fact, of three anniversaries, the D-Day 50 year anniversary in 1994, and VE Day and VJ Day. I have memories of each of them and they’re very vivid. I mean, the first memories one has is of the people we met. 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. It was absolutely remarkable to hear them, and we honour them, and we should do.
I think I’d make a further point, if I may. It was the People’s War in the sense that at home you had, apart from the armed forces themselves, you had at sea, you had the merchant navy, you had the Home Guard, you had the police service, the ambulance service, the fire service in particular, particularly in 1940 at the times of the Blitz. You had the Bevin boys who were digging out the precious coal we needed, you had the land girls who were digging out food. They were all part of our defence. We shouldn’t forget their part in the war as well.
It revolutionised the lives of women. A lot had been done for that after the First World War, but after the Second World War, the things they did and the responsibilities they took changed the face of this country forever. We could never go back, and it was needs must and they rose to the challenge, and you saw the world change before our eyes in a very few years.
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.
I remember on D-Day, a very long day, we’d gone from England to France, I spent the morning looking at the cemetery in Bayeux, and then we went on to Arromanches, and we were standing on a platform with the Queen and Prince Philip and other people to the march past of the veterans. We thought it would take a reasonable time, and it did, and they were very elderly people, many of them bearing the scars of war. And they came on and on and on. The event had started a bit late, because one head of government was a touch late, as I recall, not ours. The tide started coming in and people were getting worried about the tide coming in, and still the march went on and on and on and on. An unending supply, infinitely more people from Britain and the Commonwealth than anyone had ever imagined would turn up. It was the most moving occasion, because every one of those people had been involved in action in the war at some stage, and it was quite extraordinary. You wondered at the thoughts that were in their mind, the memories that were there, the things they had done and the things they had seen, and the lives they had lived thereafter, and how they got over those experiences. It was a very, very moving occasion.
NICK ROBINSON
We are celebrating the end of the war in Europe, not the end of the Second World War. As of course, many people beyond Europe will know that anniversary, VJ Day has yet to come. But again, you were in office, you were Prime Minister on the 50th anniversary.
SIR JOHN MAJOR
Yes, I remember it very well. The predominant memory of that was sitting there waiting for the fly past up the Mall over Buckingham Palace and far away, led of course by a Lancaster, followed by a whole range of aircraft that I couldn’t identify then and can’t identify now, and of course, followed ultimately by the Red Arrows. But it was the Lancaster that sticks in my mind, because there was a long argument in a committee organising all this, upon which a member of my staff was involved about whether it would be a good idea for the Lancaster to drop poppies as it went down the Mall. For reasons that, to me, passed all understanding, the MOD was opposed to this and my member of staff wasn’t prepared to accept that. It was a fairly interesting argument, and eventually it was resolved in Number 10’s favour. It was decided the Lancaster would drop poppies, and it did. It was a very iconic, iconic is a word used far too often, but it was a genuinely iconic moment. There was one poppy dropped for every service man killed in the war, and it was really the most moving occasion. I know that members of the Royal Family who were sitting on the dais with me at the time, were as moved as I was by that. It was an unforgettable memory.
NICK ROBINSON
In conclusion, do you hope that people of whatever age will remember the commitment, the sacrifice that so many made?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
I hope we will continue for a long time to remember the anniversaries of what went on, because it does remind younger generations of what their predecessors did and we will never see another war fought in the same way. So it is a unique piece of history and I think if they remember what they did, they’re more likely to remember why they did it, and if they remember why they did it, then the way of life that offers freedom rather than restriction is enhanced, and the people who have a political philosophy that rely on restriction and thuggery, rather than the aggregation of freedom that we all wish to see will be put to one side. So I very much hope we can continue to do that
The way in which Ukraine is finally treated, the extent to which we realise that Ukraine is not just fighting for Ukraine. Ukraine is fighting for the whole of Europe, including the United Kingdom, and they’re fighting for a form of freedom that we have been privileged to enjoy in our country for a long time and never wish to lose. We have our role to play in that war to ensure that that remains in Ukraine and in other countries as well.
NICK ROBINSON
Thank you for listening to the interview from the BBC World Service.