Holocaust Memorial Day

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Thursday 13th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate our three newcomers, the noble Lords, Lord Katz and Lord Evans, and the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt. I am sure they are going to make a distinguished contribution to this House, and all three maiden speeches were well worth listening to.

I have not intervened in these debates in the past. Part of the reason is that I have no family history to relate such as the harrowing stories we have heard today. Also, because I am a Roman Catholic, I have not felt that our religion’s performance allowed me to say much about the Holocaust.

I was in the Foreign Office as an official during the Six Day War. I saw the way in which the Foreign Office reacted, and it was very interesting. The Arabian departments did not want anything to do with it. Frankly, had it not been for Harold Wilson, we would probably have made a lesser contribution to the Six Day War and its aftermath than we did. The combination of Harold Wilson and Lord Caradon—better known as Hugh Foot—meant that Britain ended up having quite a reasonable outcome to the war. The reason I mention this is that they suddenly put together a special department of the Foreign Office, which I was posted to from the Arabian department. One of the things I noticed, which I will come back to later, was an inability of some people to see both sides of the story. That was not because they were malicious; it was because they were just blind to an extent.

I fully support the Conservative Friends of Israel and I have been horrified by the Hamas attack, and in particular the failure, it seems, of the British press to realise that it was Hamas that attacked Israel. Israel did not do any attacking; Hamas attacked. When I look at the three released hostages last week and the gloating of the Palestinians around them, I am sorry, but I cannot feel much sympathy for them. I just wonder at the damage they are doing to their own population. It is absolutely astounding. What is quite saddening to me is what I perceive as the bias in reporting in the British press. I do not see it as being even-handed; it is all, “on the one hand, this; on the other hand, that”. The people of Israel were attacked. They have a right to defend themselves—full stop, as far as I am concerned.

I was 25 years in the European Parliament. I had a lot of time to talk to politicians from other countries of Europe—many of whom had been alive during the war and some of whom had fought during it. One who became a good friend of mine was a German general. He joined at the very end of the war in the boy soldiers brigade in Berlin. I also spoke to a lot of people around Germany. The fact of the matter is that many Germans blanked themselves out from what was going on. If you want to know what I mean, it is the way in which we blank ourselves out from what is going on in British prisons this very day: rats running around, atrocious overcrowding. No one knows about it. No one writes about it. No one deals with it.

Talking to many of my German colleagues, I am afraid it was quite clear that many of them had just blanked it out. They had lived, or their parents had lived, through the terrible 1920s, when the Weimar Republic was frankly unstable, and Germany was a horrible place to live—with massive inflation and the like. Then, along came this little man, who nobody particularly liked and who was not from their class, but, somehow, the country became richer. Things started happening. We often overlook the fact that the dispossessed effects of the Jewish community were distributed largely to the remaining Germans. Many Germans got better flats; they got more furniture; they got all sorts of things. They turned their face to the wall. They pretended they did not know, because they did not want to know. They blanked it out.

That also applies to my own Church. The Pope at that time, Pope Pius XII—Eugenio Pacelli was his name—came from one of the most established families in the Roman Catholic hierarchy. He was probably the most upper-class Pope that we have had in the last 200 years. He cut his teeth, so to speak, as papal envoy in Germany. He spoke fluent German but, in 1870, Italy was reunited and the papal lands were confiscated. That was a dreadful blow to the Catholic Church and the Pacelli family refused to deal with the Italian state. Then along came Mussolini, who signed the concordat and regularised relations with the Roman Catholic Church. Pacelli was influenced by that. By that time, he had left to become the Secretary of State, which is like being the Foreign Minister, and then he became Pope. He also blanked out what was going on. He was looking for Jews who had been baptised as Catholics who could be saved. The rest were cast aside.

When I was a little boy at a convent school, I was quite firmly told that we should not be sorry for the Jews because they killed Jesus. That was in 1953, so that was what was going on then.

My final plea to the Minister is that, if we need one good thing, apart from Holocaust lessons in schools, it is education. People do not understand the different religions, and we need some education so that people understand what the Jewish, Muslim and Christian religions are. That is needed because the base of tolerance is knowledge and education.

European Union

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Monday 7th October 2024 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Balfe]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they plan to take to build a closer relationship with the European Union.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

I beg—briefly—to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Twycross) (Lab)]

We have already begun working to reset the relationship with our European friends and neighbours. The Prime Minister met with President Ursula von der Leyen in Brussels on 2 October, and they agreed to strengthen the UK-EU relationship and our mutually beneficial co-operation, and on the importance of holding regular UK-EU summits. This is not about renegotiating or relitigating Brexit but about looking forward and realising the potential of the UK-EU relationship.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

I thank the Minister for her comments. We really do need to reset our relationship with the European Union. Things such as free movement, movement for young people and working with the European Investment Bank have to get to the top of our priority list. Can we put this nonsense of not liking Europe behind us and get down to business?

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

The previous Government said they would get Brexit done; they did not think about what would happen afterwards. This Government want to and will make Brexit work.

Holocaust Memorial Bill

Lord Balfe Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 4th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I have seen a lot of concentration camps. I was in the European Parliament for 25 years, when I saw Bergen-Belsen, Auschwitz and Dachau. We had our own pet one down the road from Strasbourg called Struthof. I went to them several times over those years. They were horrifying and remain horrifying. However often you visit them, the emotions are the same.

My first concern about the idea of the Holocaust is how we teach it. I was very impressed by what the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, said, because the truth is that the Holocaust was German inspired but widely supported throughout Europe.

I am a very sad person—I spent the summer reading through some of the newly released Vatican archives on the Second World War. I am a Roman Catholic so I am not attacking my own Church, but I will say that the record of the Roman Catholic Church in collaborating with the Germans when they occupied Italy and in failing to defend its Jewish population is nothing to be proud of. Nor is its record in defending Jews in Germany, in encouraging its Church, in backing Father Tiso in Slovakia, in backing Austria and in the role of the Church and individuals.

When Austria was applying for EU membership I visited Vienna and was told that Austria was the first victim of the Germans, despite the fact that there were more Nazis in Austria per head of population than in Germany. So my first plea is to make sure the history is accurate.

The second thing I would like to mention is the centre itself. Mainly because I am a Euro fanatic, I was the European Parliament representative on the Jean Monnet foundation in Paris and we constructed an education centre. The first thing we found was that we had far more coaches than we could cope with. I do not think 11 coaches is anywhere near what you will need. That is roughly one every 40 minutes. The demand will be much higher than that, or the whole thing will be a failure, so first we must look at that. We found at the Jean Monnet centre that we started off with 20 coaches and in the end had to produce a park for about 45, because the demand went up. So the first thing is capacity.

Secondly, for all the worldly touch-and-feel looking at the pictures, people like to look at items. There is nothing quite as moving as a child’s shoe or dress in a pile in one of these camps, and I am sure that our colleagues of the Jewish faith would be able to help us erect a proper learning centre where people could immerse themselves and see what it was really like. That is what is needed here.

Someone said we have the right idea in the wrong place, which is true. If it were me—it will not be, because they do not trust me enough to put me on any committees here—I would have a monument in Whitehall. That is where the war memorials are. I would have a learning centre at the top of the Mall. Take the Admiralty Arch and convert some of that. If it was good enough to give John Prescott a flat, I am damn sure we can take it over for a worthy cause such as a learning centre. Immediately behind it is a car park where they do Trooping the Colour. I say, “Back to the drawing board, friends”, and if the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, moves a vote and tries to take us back to the drawing board, I will be scurrying into her Lobby.