How 50th anniversary celebration of VE Day was the biggest party in Britain since end of Second World War
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THE chant swept through half a million people packed into The Mall, gathering every voice as it roared towards Buckingham Palace: “We want the Queen Mum.”
As the chanting swelled louder and louder, the French doors on the palace balcony swung open, and the 94-year-old Queen Mother stepped out first, followed by the Queen and Princess Margaret.
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Hide AdThe cheer that went up will never be forgotten by anybody who was there. It was an ear-splitting, utterly joyous outpouring of affection for the royal who more than any other personified the spirit that had got Britain through the Second World War.
The crowds could not have cheered more that day than they did on the anniversary. The Queen Mother, in a golden-yellow outfit, with the Queen, in red, to her right, and Margaret, in turquoise, to her left, beamed and waved. And then, a moment of pure magic.
A stage had been set up in front of the palace, and forces’ sweetheart Dame Vera Lynn, then 78, stepped forward and began singing one of the greatest of all wartime anthems, The White Cliffs of Dover. Without song sheets, the royals joined in, as did everyone in The Mall.
She was followed by Cliff Richard, who sang Congratulations to the Queen Mother. How touched she was became apparent when a flypast by historic aircraft climaxed the appearance. As the Spitfire, the Hurricane and the Lancaster of the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight thundered over the palace, the Queen Mother wiped away a tear.
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Hide AdThere were tears amongst the crowd too, who when the royal party finally went back inside, starting chanting “We want the Queen Mum” again until she reappeared to wave for a final time.
Of all the commemorations of wartime anniversaries in the decades since 1945, none has been marked by so many people than on that sunny long weekend 25 years ago when the weather was made for celebrating, with temperatures soaring into the 80s.
London felt like one huge party for three days, and the rest of the country followed the capital’s lead. Traffic came to a standstill as roads were shut, decorated with bunting, and millions threw street parties, just as had happened in 1945.
Veterans of the war were present in huge numbers – the youngest were then still under 70 – and moved to tears at being approached by strangers who wanted to shake their hands and thank them.
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Hide AdYet the success of the commemorations was far from a foregone conclusion, because the run-up to them was a shambles that came to be symbolised by the most bizarre of images – Spam fritters. John Major’s Government, hamstrung by divisions over Europe and its authority fatally compromised by sleaze, badly misjudged the mood of the nation over how to mark the anniversary.
Its first announcements focussed on encouraging people to hold street parties. Enter the Spam fritter. Why not serve up a wartime menu at your street party, gushed press releases, which went on to specify that fritters would be an ideal example. Doubtless the manufacturers of Spam were delighted that the Government was promoting it, but nobody else was.
The suggestion that the best Britain could do to mark a great moment in our nation’s history was frying Spam was greeted with derision. War veterans accused the Government of trivialising the commemorations, pointing out that VE Day was a moment of national thanksgiving after six years of blood, sweat and tears, and that even as Britain celebrated, its soldiers were still fighting and dying in the Far East.
The Government thought again, and to its credit came up with a programme worthy of the milestone being marked, which was billed as the biggest peacetime event the country had ever staged. But there was another shadow over it.
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Hide AdThe popularity of the Royal Family was at a low ebb, and there was debate about whether the crowds would turn out for them. If they did not, it would be acutely embarrassing.
Only three years before, the Queen had spoken of 1992 being her “annus horribilis”, after the separations of Charles and Diana, the Duke and Duchess of York and Princess Anne and Mark Phillips.
The year also saw the Windsor Castle fire, and a row over why the public should pay the £40m repair bill when the Queen was the richest woman in the land, only resolved when £8-a-head tours of Buckingham Palace were introduced to raise funds.
Perhaps worst of all, 1992 had seen the publication of Diana: Her True Story, by Yorkshire-born author Andrew Morton, which laid bare every ghastly detail of the Wales’s unhappiness.
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Hide AdThe enmity between Charles and Diana was even deeper by 1995, and the long-cherished image of the Royal Family as an example to the nation in ruins.
Yet through it all, the popularity of the Queen Mother had never wavered, and she became the face of the commemorations, which was entirely fitting. Her fortitude in the darkest days was part of the national collective memory. She and George VI had refused to leave London during the Blitz, and won the hearts of Britain by touring endlessly, boosting morale on the Home Front.
She commiserated with those whose homes were destroyed by bombing, famously saying that after Buckingham Palace was hit on September 8 1940 she finally felt able to look the people of the East End in the face.
And so the Queen – the same age now, on the 75th anniversary as her mother was then – deferred to her. Amid the three days of events, there was the extraordinary spectacle of the sovereign following her mother down parades of veterans, and standing by as she officially opened the commemorations at a ceremony in Hyde Park.
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Hide AdSpeaking without notes, and from the heart, the Queen Mother said: “This day will bring back many memories to many people. And I hope that all those who go to the many ceremonies will remember with pride and gratitude those men and women, armed and unarmed, whose courage really helped to bring us victory. God bless them all.”
The image that went around the world of that unforgettable 50th anniversary was of a beaming Queen Mother on the Buckingham Palace balcony, turning the clock back half a century and bringing joy to the vast crowd below, just as she had in 1945.
The following morning’s front page headline in The Yorkshire Post summed up the moment perfectly: The mother of all celebrations.
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