“This is Your Hour” – The Party That Ended All Parties – British VE Day Celebrations

My dear friends, this is your hour. This is not 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. After a while we were left all alone against the most tremendous military power that has been seen. - Churchill, 8 may 1945

VE Day 1945

The Daily Telegraph went with “GERMANY CAPITULATES!,  followed by ‘To-day is VE Day: “Complete and Crushing Victory”. Of course the other newspapers joined in with celebratory VE Day headlines. After all there was a lot to celebrate. Even The Irish Times managed to join in when the pro-British editor Bertie Smyllie got past the strict Irish government censorship of newspapers, especially The Irish Times, by setting the front page to make a sort of  V for victory sign. The official day for the celebrations was on 8 May 1945, although after a radio announcement the previous evening many people decided the black out was over and all over the country people pulled back the curtains and the blinds and walked out into the street to see what it looked like.

By early afternoon the next day people were gathering in the West End of London by their hundreds of thousands. Many people were wearing paper hats. Harold Nicolson walking through Trafalgar Square that afternoon thought them “horrible, being of the comic variety”.  At three o’clock in the afternoon everyone stopped to listen to Churchill’s victory speech he had written the night before: “the evil-doers now lie prostrate before us” he said with a flourish and everyone cheered. Loudspeakers had been connected everywhere. Two or three days before Churchill had said to his wife Clementine, “I need scarcely tell you that beneath these trumps lie poisonous politics and deadly international rivalries”.

Model and actress Christabel Leighton-Porter made her way to perform at the Kilburn Empire in London. She was famous as the model for the famous Daily Mirror cartoon strip ‘Jane’, and that evening, in honour of VE Day, she had decided to pose on stage as a semi-nude Britannia, draped in a Union Flag but, best of all, wearing a helmet the fire brigade leant her.

The crowds in front of Buckingham Palace have spilled into Green Park and in the evening deckchairs and park benches were passed via a human chain and thrown onto a massive bonfire.

A Mary Derrick, aged 20 and who at the time was working in the Education Department in Clifton had written in her diary on the 7th: Terific excitement, rumours of V E Day, shampooed my hair, went to bed at 12. The following days entry read: V E day at last. Went up to Grace’s at Redland at 11 o’clock. Down to centre, climbed up Cabot Tower. To Corn St, saw Lord Major at centre. Back to Grace’s for tea. Up to Downs marquee. Back to Grace’s. Walked from Redland to Centre. Hundreds of people. Left Centre at about 12. Walked home. Bed at 3 am.

After celebrating VE Day in front of Buckingham Palace, Noel Coward walked back to the Savoy Hotel, where he’d been ensconced since his home was bombed in 1941, with his friend, the composer Ivor Novello, who has a flat nearby. At about midnight Coward wrote in his diary later: ‘I suppose this is the greatest day in our history.’ And it probably was.

VE Day

Irish Times, 8th May 1945

VE Day 1945 London

Trafalgar Square

VE Day

VE Day

VE Day Cardiff 1945

Cardiff

VE Day scenes in Teesside. 8th May 1945.

VE Day scenes in Teesside. 8th May 1945.

VE Day london

Piccadilly Circus

VE Day Manchester

Manchester

Trafalgar Square

Piccadilly Circus

VE Day in Manchester

VE Day in Manchester

 

VE Day in Birmingham

VE Day in Birmingham

 

VE Day London

8th May 1945: Crowds celebrating VE Day in London. (Photo by Express/Express/Getty Images)

People ride on a van loaded with beer at Piccadilly Circus in London

10th May 1945: Medical students at London’s Guy’s Hospital in a celebratory mood as Victory in Europe is declared. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)

VE Day London

Islington

Huge crowds gathered around Piccadilly Circus during the celebrations

The number 3 struggles to get to south London

Ve Day in London, 8 May 1945 Two small girls waving their flags in the rubble of Battersea, snapped by an anonymous American photographer.

VE Day celebrations in the East End of London

Thousands of people gathered in Trafalgar Square, London, in 1945 to mark VE -Day

VE Day celebrations in London at the end of the Second World War.
Huge crowds gathered around Piccadilly Circus during the celebrations.
8th May 1945.

 

VE Day London

8th May 1945: VE Day revellers blowing party trumpets in Piccadilly, London. (Photo by Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)

 

VE Day London

8th May 1945: Canadian troops entertain the crowds in Leicester Square while waiting for the broadcast of the King’s VE Day speech. (Photo by Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)

 

VE Day London

8th May 1945: Crowds clamber on trucks and buses during the VE Day celebrations in Piccadilly Circus. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)

 

VE Day

Men fixing the loudspeakers in Trafalgar Square, London, in readiness for the King’s VE-day speech. (Photo by Harry Shepherd/Getty Images)

 

VE Day London

7th May 1945: Mrs Pat Burgess of Palmer’s Green, north London is thrilled to get the news that her husband will soon be home for good from Germany. (Photo by Reg Speller/Fox Photos/Getty Images)

 

VE Day London

8th May 1945: A group of ATS and American soldiers celebrate VE Day in Trafalgar Square. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)

 

VE Day London

8th May 1945: Three girls join in the VE Day celebrations in Downing Street, London. (Photo by Fox Photos/Getty Images)

 

VE Day London

8th May 1945: A van load of beer passing through Piccadilly Circus on VE Day. The statue of Eros, protected during the war by advertising hoardings, can be seen in the background. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)

 

VE Day

8th May 1945: Cheering crowds in Piccadilly Circus celebrate the German surrender on VE Day. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)

 

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