International Holocaust Memorial Day

Baroness Whitaker Excerpts

Thursday 19th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, we should all be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, for his long-standing and assiduous work on Holocaust issues and for this debate. I want to focus on what the Holocaust was a symptom of.

The primary focus has always been on the 6 million Jews who perished. I would be the last to say that this should not be mourned, remembered and understood—none of my grandfather’s family who remained in Poland survived it. But it was not only Jewish people who were the victims. It was people who were different—different from a concocted so-called norm of what a nation essentially was. The noble Lord, Lord Pickles, and others referred to some: people who were gay; people with disabilities; people with learning difficulties and mental illness; and, in great numbers, the Roma and Sinti population of eastern and central Europe. As the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, so eloquently described, all were thought of as to be eliminated. Usually only a passing mention is made of these groups, when they feature at all in the accounts. We nevertheless find this kind of discrimination repugnant now—or do we?

Many countries have passed legislation outlawing discrimination and successive Governments are to be commended for that. Discrimination in jobs, for instance, against some groups is decreasing. But that is not the same as no longer considering those who are different as inferior. Homophobic and racist bullying continues; children with learning difficulties or physical disabilities have a much worse time in school than others; and, as a recent television programme by David Baddiel and the play by Jonathan Freedland have shown, hate speech against, or derogatory stereotyping of, white minority ethnic people is not regarded as anything out of the ordinary. Those two thoughtful events concerned Jews, but they are also intensely applicable to Gypsies, Travellers and Roma people, whose life chances are so severely damaged by prejudice. I declare my unremunerated interests in various posts as set out in the register.

White minority ethnic groups are very small populations, but you can still hear words such as “plague”, “swamped”, “taking over power”, “conspiracy” and so on. Of course, we are very far from ethnic cleansing in this country. But prejudice is a spectrum and toleration of hate speech and stereotyping opens a door in the climate of opinion that can lead, especially through international social media, to which my noble friend Lord Kestenbaum referred, to much more violent action. It is as if people need a “them” to be confident of being “us”.

I do not doubt that this has been a feature of human societies ever since they emerged, but there are some communities that do not appear to need to “other” groups or to dehumanise or demonise them. I think that we should study that and work on defining nations not by some alleged ethnic character but by their values. It is time that we welcomed difference, because that is how we adapt, innovate and grow creatively, as well as finding our common humanity. That would be the best way to respond to the past terror of the Holocaust and the present terrors of persecution and annihilation still poisoning our world. I ask the Minister whether His Majesty’s Government are doing any work on how societies that embrace difference conduct themselves, or how we can, through education, particularly in history, move our culture on to be truly inclusive.