Economic strength is the best defence of British freedoms

CELEBRATIONS for the 80th anniversary of VE Day this week are a good chance to take stock of how victory and security are actually achieved.

- Tim Newark

A strong Western alliance was key to our success in the Second World War and NATO emerged as the perfect coalition to maintain that post-war in the face of the Soviet Union. We also need strong economies having outspent and out-produced Germany in making many more tanks, aircraft and ships during the conflict.

Britain stood alone at the start of the Second World War, as European allies fell to the Nazi war machine.

"We were the first, in this ancient island, to draw the sword against tyranny," said Sir Winston Churchill in his VE Day speech, read on Monday by actor Timothy Spall.

We managed to weather the initial storm, but it was only when the Americans and Russians joined us against Hitler that the tide began to turn and victory was finally within reach.

The lesson is that a strong alliance must be forged to defeat tyranny, but we should not view this through rose-tinted spectacles.

THE Americans struck a tough business deal with us to supply weaponry. Before they joined the war, they sent ex-US Navy destroyers in return for rent-free leases on British colonial possessions in Newfoundland and several Caribbean islands. Many of these elderly US warships were later deemed to be defective.