THE inhumanity of the Nazis was defeated by the combined strength and bravery of freedom-loving people. No single sacrifice or act of bravery should be forgotten — whether by the teenagers in Germany who were hanged for distributing leaflets criticising Hitler when he was first elected, or the resistance movements throughout Europe. Everyone played their part.

Nor should we ever forget the biggest sacrifices of all that were made by the people of the Soviet Union where 25 million lives were lost in the patriotic war against fascism and where some of the decisive victories were won.

The battles of Kursk, Leningrad and Stalingrad, among others, must always be studied.

That Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has intimated that the largest commemorations of the victory over the Nazis, which will be held in Moscow on May 9, may not be secure is a blood-chilling reminder of the traditions that he comes from.

In response to the defeat of the Nazis, the United States, through its Marshall Plan in Europe and the creation of various global entities such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, sought the domination of the dollar.

They dropped the atom bomb on a defeated Japan as a warning signal to the Soviets and later began the barbaric war against Vietnam. They thought it would be America’s world and that Britain would be one of its most subservient butlers. They relished in genocides from Indonesia in 1965, to Latin America in the ’70s onwards, to Iraq and to Palestine.

The Indian Removal Act of 1830 which led to the forced relocation of Native American people from their ancestral homes near the eastern original United States become like a worldwide model of displacement of peoples and invasion of countries seeking their own independent path of development.

European integration, which eventually became constitutionalised as the European Union, was also explicitly created to turn back the postwar advances of the Soviet Union and the progress made in many western European countries, including our own.

Industries and public services had been expanded and economic policies were based on collective, nationally organised values and systems. 80 per cent of the economy was in effect in public hands and 80 per cent of jobs were covered by collective bargaining.

The neoliberal counteroffensive entailed removing all of this and removing national protections on production and capital flows. This, alongside the globalisation of trade, meant individual nations were less able to produce a diverse range of products necessary for self-sufficient growth. Privatisation of public services and break up of workers’ and trade union rights were cornerstones of the new reaction.

Neoliberalism also meant the reduction of public and democratic national power in favour of private corporate power. In turn, at the root of the new unfettered corporate power was the ascendancy of finance — Wall Street and the City of London reigned supreme. Wealth moved rapidly from our pay packet to the board of directors’ bank accounts. We got a cost of living crisis, and they had the time of their lives.

Such corporate powers are not nationally based, they no longer tolerate the restrictions democratically elected governments seek when promoting the wishes of their own electorates. Their modus operandi is the offshore tax haven and secret bank account. They take nationally earned pension funds for example and gamble them on the international casinos.

They redefine nations as reactionary, protectionist, chauvinist, things of the past, in order to conceal their own hatred of their country of origin. They foster a culture of individual property and identity rights rather than shared and national ones.
Because of the deep, progressive and trade union traditions in Britain, domestic fascism was never able to establish itself. The fortitude and clarity of campaigners in the 1930s swept the Blackshirts from our streets and many British trade unionists and others were the first to join the International Brigades to fight the rise of the fascists in Spain.

Relative to most European countries where there have been either fascist governments for a period or significant, strong fascist parties, Britain has not been plagued in such a way.

Our internationalist traditions outside of government circles have been very strong and thrive still. Our welcoming of refugees and asylum-seekers from other lands has been exemplary and goes back many generations and should never be confused with questions of immigration.

In recent years the enforced migration of labour throughout the world, and within the European mainland, has been engineered to weaken the labour force from which people leave and those where they emigrate to. The free movement of people, so called, has accompanied the free movement of capital. Neither are forms of freedom, both make workers and nations slaves to global capital movements.

Government policy in Britain for too long was to follow the military lead of the US, and the nation-breaking politics of European Union. Seeking to ride these two tigers has humiliated us and led us into wars not of our own choosing. It is even more dangerous now that these two power blocs are threatening to pull in different directions and claim our allegiance.

We have detached from the EU, but not yet the US. US capitalism is closely tied up in Britain and the US-led Nato runs our foreign policy too.

A free independent nation should not be led by the aggressive machinations of others, its foreign policy should be genuinely independent, determined only by the democratic will of its own people. Just as we left the EU we should now prioritise leaving the aggressive pact Nato.

To be patriotic and proud of our country is to be proud of the progressive achievements of us as a people. We happen to be from a country that has achieved many political and socially pioneering firsts in world history and created some of the most important social rights.

By asserting our strengths as a nation we seek to reclaim these rights and a sense of the collective, public good, that recent history has so severely undermined.

Nationalism is not flying the Union Jack on a food bank, nor empty jingoism about how great our country is. It is a far deeper matter about the people determining our own destiny in our own interests, it is a progressive force.

Patriotism and socialism, as our forebears knew in the struggle against Hitler, go hand in hand.

Without demonstrating we can look after our own county and our own people we cannot claim to be true internationalists and provide significant support to others overseas.

To change the world now and rebuild our own country after 50 years of domination by others, there has to be a re assertion of the importance of national sovereignty.

We want a world of self-determining nations coexisting in peace for the good of humanity. We should not interfere in the affairs of others, they should not interfere in ours.

This principle must form the basis of Britain’s foreign policy in order to celebrate VE Day most completely.