VE Day and the myth of national unity

The Second World War was not simply a fight against tyranny (Pic: Library of Congress)

This week Britain will be draped in Union flag bunting. We will be encouraged to get out the finger sandwiches, have a garden party and sing Vera Lynn. It’s 80 years since the end of the Second World War in Europe.

Actor Timothy Spall did his best impression of Winston Churchill reading the war time prime minister’s VE day speech.

He said, “This is not a victory of a party or of any class. It’s a victory of the great British nation as a whole. We were the first, in this ancient island, to draw the sword against tyranny.”

We are told that in the war everyone kept calm and carried on. That we all stood united against a common enemy. That it was our finest hour.

But despite the jingoism, we weren’t all in it together. The rich used the war as an opportunity to line their pockets. They hoarded goods and the black market flourished as people evaded rationing.

The poorest Londoners spent air raids in shelters that were cramped and dangerous. In Bethnal Green in east London,
173 people were crushed to death by the crowds as they ran for cover. In 1940, protesters marched to the Savoy hotel and demanded to use its shelter. They found patrons being served tea and sleeping on mattresses with matching sheets.

Class struggle continued during the Second World War. Engineers and miners struck for pay rises. Women working for Rolls Royce struck in 1943 over equal pay.

Churchill himself spent much of the war drunk or drugged up on amphetamines.

He used poison gas against Kurdish rebels in 1920 and let millions of Indians starve during the Bengal famine of 1943. He was a racist brute.

Was he even anti-fascist? The British ruling class did concede that Britain would need to fight Hitler’s Germany. But this was in part out of fear of losing the Empire and to smooth over unrest at home.

Churchill himself told Italian fascist Benito Mussolini that his movement had “rendered a service to the whole world”. In Greece, he persecuted the anti-fascist resistance movement and armed those had fought on the side of the Nazis.

When he visited Walthamstow in east London in 1945, Churchill was booed by a crowd of 20,000 people. A few months after VE Day, he was kicked out by the electorate in favour of Clement Attlee’s Labour Party.

Now one of Churchill’s biggest admirers is in the White House. And, just like his hero, Donald Trump is more likely to be fanning the flames of fascism than fighting it.

Patriotic Millionaires. Seriously?

There are many types of interest groups who lobby governments to influence public policy. Some good, some bad—and some simply ridiculous.

The Patriotic Millionaires “leverage the voice of wealth to build a more just, stable and inclusive economy”.

To be a member, you have to be in the 1 percent with a total wealth of £4 million. But Patriotic Millionaires is “not suggesting that this wealth is confiscated”.

“We do not have a wealth problem—we have a distribution problem,” it says.

If the government simply taxes the ultra-wealthy more, problems like inequality, poverty and climate change will be solved.

Its chair Morris Pearl was Managing Director of BlackRock investment bank.  He helped orchestrate the 2008 financial crash which ravaged the lives of working class people across the globe. He then oversaw the bailout of his bank with public money, and is now preaching about the solutions to inequality.

The grim irony of it all is almost too on the nose.

The group’s name highlights how “national interest” is an illusion. Ideas like patriotism are used to defend the capitalist system. But cross-class interests doesn’t exist.

The solution lies in fighting the millionaires and billionaires.