Making a Usable Past? Time, Memory and Britain’s Second World War

Abstract This article considers the emerging memory of the Second World War in 1945 Britain and asks whether this can help us to understand its popularity and power during the ‘Brexit’ debates of the 2010s. It examines the ways in which people writing for the British Social Survey organisation Mass Observation in 1945 negotiated the ends of the Second World War. Focusing on three key moments as the war came to its conclusion – the liberation of Bergen-Belsen in April, the end of the European war in May and Allied victory over Japan in August – the article considers the ways in which these writers attempted to draw on their recent pasts to negotiate a complex and uncertain present, and to imagine a post-war future. The article argues that while the cultural memory of the Second World War may be ubiquitous in early twenty-first century Britain, a study of its emergence and utility in 1945 reminds us that its power to help people imagine a future is contingent on contemporary circumstances.