What We Owe the Next Generation: Legacy, Leadership and the Fragility of Progress

This is my Dad, photographed in 1945/46.

He joined the Navy on VE Day, lying about his age and soon found himself among the first helicopter engineers in the Fleet Air Arm. His role was to service and repair helicopters left behind by US forces as they exited the European theatre.

His generation sacrificed enormously. They endured hardship, uncertainty and loss on a scale that’s difficult to comprehend today. Because of them, we learned the lessons, lessons we must never forget.

Decades of comparative peace, tolerance, and cooperation followed. From that came extraordinary social and economic progress and with it freedoms and choices that earlier generations could barely have imagined.

Today, the world feels less safe than it has at any point in my memory. And with that unease comes a deeper concern: the freedoms and choices passed down to me by my father’s generation feel increasingly fragile. Under pressure. Under attack.

That threatens more than comfort or stability. It threatens the aspirations I hold to leave a better, fairer world for my children just as his generation tried to do for mine.