On the 8th May the theme of our club day was the celebration of the 80th anniversary of VE day.
Victory in Europe Day is the day celebrating the formal acceptance by the Allies of World War II of Germany’s unconditional surrender. This sideshow was prepared for children to explain to subsequent generations why this anniversary is important.
We then had a look at some of the original footage of the celebrations of 8th May 1945.
Despite the size of the celebrations at that time, involving millions of people, the number of images available are of course very limited because they were recorded as individual images, mostly black and white with still cameras or cine cameras with a short recording time.
This slide show by Sky News nicely summarises what happened that day:
https://news.sky.com/story/ve-day-2025-a-moment-of-joy-captured-80-years-ago-13359767
and here are some, what would now call, “video clips” from the day:
https://www.shutterstock.com/de/video/clip-3416912237-britain—1946-civilians-celebrate-v-e-day
This short film of the highlights is interesting because it was shot in colour by Derek Stewart, who later produced professional documentaries:
https://film.iwmcollections.org.uk/news/90
… and this is some Newsreel footage summarising “How Great Britain celebrated …”
Fuelled by drinks and nibbles, much discussion followed ….