Holocaust Memorial Bill

Baroness Fleet Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 27th March 2025 Grand Committee

[Baroness Fleet (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 32 in the name of my noble friend Lord Blencathra. I will briefly add a rather personal perspective of antisemitism, which is absolutely central to our debate today.

I believe, as I think we all do, that antisemitism must be central to the memorial’s learning centre, with no distraction of other genocides. I am not Jewish but I believe that everyone, of whatever religion or faith, should have a knowledge and understanding of antisemitism—what it means and why it is ever present. The proposed learning centre provides us with a real opportunity. We must take that opportunity.

Antisemitism has touched my life in ways that I could never have imagined 40 years ago when I married someone who is Jewish. Early on in our marriage, my husband said to me, “You have to understand that antisemitism is with us now, just as it was in 1948 when the State of Israel was created, just as it was in 1933 and just as it was 2,000 years ago”. He then added, “My suitcase is always packed”. It is hard for people who are not Jewish to understand that. In the run-up to this debate, I spoke to a number of noble friends who, like me, are not Jewish, and they looked really quite puzzled.

My husband’s grandfather died in Auschwitz. His mother, an assimilated Jew from Vienna, escaped to London as a 17 year-old. His father, just one year older, escaped from Prague. They met in the Lyon’s tea house on Coventry Street, which was the only place they could find work, even though they were both highly educated. They were among the fortunate few who found refuge here, and they were grateful to Britain for ever. However, they believed that the antisemitism of British officials and politicians had prevented thousands of Jews being saved from the Holocaust.

Shockingly, antisemitism has continued to lurk in the shadows since 1945. Now, since the horrific events of 7 October, it is boldly and violently on the streets of London and elsewhere in Britain once again. The ignorance and complicity of the police allowed crude antisemitism to gain respectability during the pro-Hamas demonstrations in central London, just as the German police did in Berlin in 1933. How else, during the pro-Palestinian march through Westminster in February 2024, could a hologram saying “from the river to the sea” be projected on to Big Ben and the Elizabeth Tower for some considerable time? Do the police not know that that phrase calls for the destruction of the 7 million Jews in Israel?

I will give two examples from close to home; one is quite minor but the other is, I think, very significant. Every day, I walk down Hampstead High Street. Since 7 October, I have seen the heartbreaking posters of dozens of Israeli hostages—men, women and children —on the windows of empty shop fronts and bus shelters. Overnight, day after day, these were defaced. Is that not antisemitism?

Then there is the BBC. Why is antisemitism in the BBC still tolerated? Noble Lords will remember that, for weeks after 7 October, the BBC resisted calling Hamas a terrorist organisation. The former director, Danny Cohen, set out the evidence against the BBC when he published a 60-page dossier endorsed by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, in September 2024. The dossier exposed the corporation’s pro-Hamas coverage of events since 7 October. It said the BBC’s

“false and damaging claims about Israel’s conduct of war have fuelled the flames of anti-semitism across the world”.