Well I had hoped to be at Westminster Abbey today
to mark this very, very important day but obviously in present
circumstances that is not possible. We face a different crisis a health crisis
and that is why I'm locked down here in the Isle of Wight. I remember back to
VE Day I remember the evening I remember the
bonfire at the bottom of our road, our avenue. I remember the guy that was built and I
remember the tin hat which was made into Hitler's face and the paint coming
off it as the heat got to it. So memories of that day are very... even now I can
bring them back but, of course, what I also remember is the war itself. I was
only seven when the war actually ended but I spent I suppose my formative years
- most of my years in fact living under a Morrison table. It was a big steel
structure and it was meant to take the whole weight of a house if it was hit by
a bomb and collapsed. Fortunately that never happened to us although we had a
number of near misses and we, it seemed to me, perpetually our ceilings were
coming down because of bombs. You see we were we were first of all
semi-industrial perhaps more than semi and therefore a target and we were also
on the way to London - on the way to the East End, on the way to the docks and I
remember being taken out and seeing the v2 rocket sort of going past
high in the sky. So those are some of the memories I have of of that time but the
real memory which still comes through to me is of the American servicemen.
They were at an Air Force Base nearby in Bourn, and they came into the town
obviously from time to time and they all seemed immensely old to me but of course
they were nineteen, twenty, twenty-one and these were brave men who went up in
their bombers went over to Germany to bomb and, of course, the casualty rate for
them was extraordinarily high they were brave men a long long way from home so I
remember them in particular today but I think what one needs to remember also is
that it's not just a time for looking back it's also a time for looking
forward. I mean that period was very important - in 1944 just before the war
ended we had the 1944 Education Act. For people like me that was crucial. It gave
us the opportunity. Opportunity not only to go to the grammar schools and the rest
but also to go to university. And then we had, of course, the National Health
Service. I spent six years as health secretary but, more than that, I
was entirely dependent upon the National Health Service for all of my childhood
up to University and of course beyond. So there were very important changes
that took place and I suppose if there is one lesson from that it is, if you
look at the position today, it's a different crisis - it's a different kind
of issue altogether- but we might just look at it as a new start in the sense
that the nation has shown that it can come together and how we managed to
achieve this in the years going forward.