Performed 50 years on, to an audience most of whom were not alive when the words were first spoken, it sounded like a wish rather than a statement of fact If only someone could say that to us, you thought. But then what victory could we celebrate with such unanimous fervour? And what would our just deserts be? There was the same wistful catch to much of the celebrations; ostensibly the mood of the moment was "Never again", but the solemn speeches couldn't conceal the nostalgia for common purpose, for a sense of solidarity that now feels as antique as powdered egg. Sometimes this was explicit - the BBC excitedly relayed the information that the Prince and Princess of Wales had behaved with moderate civility to each other as if this was the closest we could now get to a moment of national relief. Sometimes it was cynically exploited, as in BT's singularly shabby attempt to get us to increase our phone bills in the interest of world peace. Sometimes it was just kitsch - Chas 'n' Dave singing "We're gonna rang aht the washin' on the Siegfried Line", confirming the general view that there is some Cockney copyright on cheery, salt-of-the-earth fortitude.It might have been better if everyone under 60 had taken a vow of silence for the day and spent it listening to their elders, a fantasy provoked by the most moving of all the VE day programmes, Last Letters Home (ITV).

Tamsin Day-Lewis's film was very simple - those who had survived reading letters from those who hadn't. There is, perhaps, an easy poignancy in such documents, one that overrides clich and clumsiness of expression. The wealth of meaning in these tattered pieces of paper is touchingly fragile - how long can it survive those who unfold them so tenderly? But what the letters repeatedly brought home was how thoughtful courage could be. Unpatriotic too, in a way that formed a quiet, unconscious rebuke to the coarser flag-waving of the last few days. None of the correspondents wrote about Britain as such (though one schoolmaster had enlisted to save the boys he taught from Hitler); they talked of larger principles - of freedom and appropriate sacrifice.

In some, the occasions of writing could be glimpsed like a watermark; a bomber pilot describes a sudden apprehension of beauty in a country lane, on his way back to his unit. "I'm fighting for the freedom of all men," he writes to his fiance, "and in that I'm fighting just as much for the Germans as for the English people. With freedom and the destruction of hate this world will enter into a period, I hope, that will be much in advance of anything it has known." You couldn't really feel that David Frost had done him proud.. A human rights convention organised by Liberty and more than 50 other pressure groups is to be held in London next month. The "Festival of Rights" hopes to stimulate debate and action on the principles and practice of human rights, and expects to attract between 3,000 and 6,000 participants. The convention will set the scene for the examination of the UK's record by the UN Human Rights Committee in July. For the first time, a number of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) will jointly submit views and evidence to the committee.

They include Liberty, Mind, Justice, the Anti- Racist Alliance and Stonewall. "The virtue of the convention is that it is a way of promoting this joint work, and it is so broad-ranging it will allow us to discuss all the variety of issues that concern us," says John Wadham, the legal director of Liberty.The decision by the NGOs to make a concerted approach to the Human Rights Committee is particularly poignant in the year that sees the 50th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. It was as a result of that war that the United Nations was established and that it published its universal declaration of human rights in 1948.At that time, there was a sea change in values, largely as a result of the atrocities carried out during the war, says Mr Wadham. "There was a shift in international opinion from a belief in complete national sovereignty to faith in absolute values that the world community wants to be able to impose on all countries."A parallel move was the establishment of the Council of Europe, which in 1950 agreed the European Convention on Human Rights. It was a crucial development, bringing in its wake the European Commission and the European Court of Human Rights.Then, in 1976, came the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, modelled on the European Convention but significantly improving it. The covenant set out basic rights - such as the right to life - as well as establishing the UN Human Rights Committee.The committee has two roles: first, to deal with individual complaints under the "optional protocol".

The UK has not adopted the protocol, which means that individuals in this country do not have the right to petition the committee.The committee's second role is the periodic reporting process, and it is this that will take place in July. Every five years, signatories to the covenant submit written reports to the committee, setting out their progress in human rights matters. Some months later, the committee conducts a series of hearings, held in public, when representatives of the various governments are questioned over the two-week period. The committee will then produce a written report of its findings.