Holocaust Memorial Bill

Baroness Harding of Winscombe Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 4th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a member of the Holocaust Memorial Foundation and as a resident of Westminster. I walk my dog in Victoria Tower Gardens and I played with my children in the playground. That is just as relevant an interest as my membership of the foundation.

I wholeheartedly support the Bill and the need for a national Holocaust memorial. It is shocking that, in 2024, we do not have one. I wholeheartedly support this memorial and learning centre in this location.

I fear I have quite a reputation for taking on impossible jobs but, 10 years ago, when my noble friend Lord Cameron asked me to join the Holocaust Memorial Foundation, I did not expect that, 10 years later, I would be speaking in favour of the Bill on the opposite side of so many dear friends who have spoken today. But I will set out a couple of reasons why.

A number of noble Lords said that location does not matter. Location does matter. Any woman who has ever entered an Oxbridge college and looked at all the portraits of men knows that who we memorialise and where we memorialise them matters. So the location we choose for a national Holocaust memorial really is important. The criteria that we used to discuss its location were: prominence and having a truly prominent place in our national fabric; footfall, where millions of people would genuinely come; good transport links; space for contemplation; and the ability to have a learning centre. The proposed location meets those criteria better than any of the 50 other locations that we assessed.

Much has been said with great passion, and no doubt real integrity, about the Imperial War Museum and its outstanding work on the history of the Holocaust. I just point my noble friends and colleagues to the fact that the chairman of the Imperial War Museum is one of my fellow members of the Holocaust Memorial Foundation. This is not being done against the Imperial War Museum; it is being done with it, complementary to it.

Contrary to others’ views, there is not near-unanimous objection to this memorial; it has been supported by every living Prime Minister and the leader of every faith. We have to be careful not to use hyperbole in this debate and recognise that we are at quite a different place from many other leaders in our society about this. Collocation is very important—collocating with the memorial and collocating with other symbols of the fight for freedom and against tyranny and intolerance.

I have gone on a learning journey in the last 10 years on Holocaust education. Although it is obviously important to empathise and try to understand what it might feel like to be a victim or the relatives of victims, the deeper and more important learning is to look into your soul and wonder how you would avoid being a perpetrator yourself. A learning centre that asks us to understand that Britain did not get this completely right at all, and that it would be very easy to walk down the path of intolerance—as we sadly see across the whole world today—is the learning that we need to prompt.

I know that I am a digital fanatic in this House, but much has been said in the debate about 45 minutes not being long enough. Actually, 45 minutes is a long time in which children can form a deep impression that will stay with them for the rest of their lives. We should not think that education is through only history; it is also through experience.

In the short time left to me, I will ask the Minister one question. I was brought on the Holocaust Memorial Foundation because of my digital expertise, in the expectation that there would be planning permission and a building going up fairly swiftly. We needed to think about how to make sure that this was not in just one location but that the learning experience was accessible to people wherever they lived in the four nations of the country. I just ask the Minister to confirm that this Government are similarly committed to making sure that, as we digitise the experience and ask people to look deep in their souls into how they will avoid falling into the trap of intolerance, we do that digitally as well and make sure that schools, particularly, are able to access those materials.

Unlike my noble friend who fears that the park will be destroyed, I look forward to a future when I will still be walking my dog there. Maybe, if I am really lucky, I will be playing with my grandchildren in the playground and telling them a tale about why it is important that we link the horrors of the Holocaust to the horrors of slavery and the fight for female emancipation, about how precious it is to hold on to our democracy and why, therefore, these are all collocated.

International Holocaust Memorial Day

Baroness Harding of Winscombe Excerpts

Thursday 19th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by declaring my interest as a member of the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation, on which it is a true privilege to serve. Like many others, I thank my noble friend Lord Pickles for securing this debate, and for his tireless leadership on Holocaust commemoration, memorial and education.

I make no apology for repeating—even though we each have so little time to speak today—that the theme of this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day is ordinary people. It is so important that we remember that it was ordinary people—as many noble Lords have brought to life so emotionally today—who were victims of the Holocaust, but that we also acknowledge that it was ordinary people who let the Holocaust happen and who themselves became perpetrators. We need to learn that we too could be those ordinary people: those victims, but also those bystanders and, God forbid, those perpetrators. Germany in the 1920s was arguably the most vibrant and open society in the world—the place artists, philosophers and scientists flocked to. Yet, 10 years later, that same society had turned on its own people and others in the most atrocious way. So, for me, Holocaust Memorial Day is about remembering and learning that it could be us, so that we ensure that we do not repeat the sins of the past.

I fear that there has never been a more important time to do this. I worry that historians and therefore also politicians underestimate the impact the Spanish flu had on society in the 1920s and 1930s. History tells us clearly that pandemics cause inflation and war. We see that today. But I fear that pandemics also scar society in a deep, visceral way that war on its own does not. A pandemic touches literally everyone in society for a prolonged period of time. It requires everyone to do something profoundly inhumane—to separate from family and friends and cut ourselves off from each other—while at the same time exacerbating existing inequalities and unfairness. As a result, societies emerge from pandemics angry and off-kilter, and this, combined with inflation, leads not just to conflicts with enemies but to huge societal unease: a breeding ground for the worst parts of human nature.

Unfortunately, we are living through one of those times. As the world comes out of Covid, we are seeing inflation; we are seeing war; we are seeing anger, frustration and fear. So I argue that it has never been more important that we remember and learn from the horrors of the Holocaust. We must remember that we cannot be passive bystanders and cannot turn a blind eye to evil, because even the most seemingly progressive societies can turn very sour very quickly. I do not believe that history must repeat itself. Humanity has shown time and again that we can and do learn from our mistakes, but that is not pre-ordained. History will only not repeat itself if we make sure we remember and learn, which is why Holocaust Memorial Day and Holocaust education are so important.