Two-thirds of young Britons don’t recognize the significance of V-E Day, according to a survey from the Royal British Veterans Enterprise. The findings, released to coincide with the 81st anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe on May 8, expose Gen Z’s shocking historical ignorance of a military victory that, for decades, was central to British identity.
These findings are no surprise. Today’s young adults have grown up at a time when Great Britain is at war with its own past. They came of age viewing footage of Black Lives Matter protesters in Bristol toppling a 125-year-old statue of Edward Colston, a slave trader and philanthropist, dragging it through the streets, and dumping it in a nearby port. Though arrested for criminal damage, the protesters were feted in popular culture. One woman performing a black power salute inspired a sculptor to create a new statue for Colston’s plinth, which drew widespread media attention when unveiled. When one of the vandals appeared in court, he told the jury, as a reporter characterized it, that Colston’s statue was “like a racist piece of graffiti which the city council had failed to remove.”
