Anti-Semitism

Lord Bishop of Oxford Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2016 Grand Committee

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth (CB)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, for securing this debate on such an important subject. While I was, of course, aware of the issue, the detailed evidence of anti-Semitism on campuses in the UK still makes for appalling reading. What is described there is totally unacceptable. I chaired the 1994 Runnymede Trust report on anti-Semitism titled A Very Light Sleeper. Sadly, Conor Cruise O’Brien’s resonant phrase is all too true today.

I will confine myself to one section of the APPG report on anti-Semitism: that dealing with the Israel-Palestine issue and the toxic nature of the debate on campuses. In particular, I commend the recommendation of the Home Affairs Select Committee that Universities UK should work with appropriate bodies to produce a resource on how to deal with the issue sensitively and to ensure that,

“students are well-informed about both sides of the argument”.

I recommend that the bodies it consults on this include the Council of Christians and Jews, which has many decades of experience of handling this issue. This arises from the fact that historically the churches have had very close links with Palestinian and Arab Christians, and are deeply involved in aid work. At the same time they have made strenuous efforts to overcome the long history of anti-Jewish teaching—the teaching of contempt, as it has been well labelled. These twin claims have resulted in valuable experience of how debates on the subject can avoid becoming toxic.

I shall make three points that bear on this. First, the State of Israel is not simply a result of European guilt for the Holocaust. James Parkes, that remarkable Christian priest who in the 1930s pioneered the serious study of anti-Semitism and after whom the library and centre in Southampton University is named, put forward in the 1940s a five-fold case for Israel, which was little known or understood even by most Jews at the time. One element is the fact that there had always been a Jewish population in Palestine, as large as the circumstances at the time allowed. Another was that, throughout history, Jewish communities had never given up hope of returning there, hence the refrain at the end of every Seder: “Next year in Jerusalem”. These facts enable 19th-century Zionism, and any use of the word Zionist, to be seen in its proper historical context.

Secondly, I always find it helpful to bear in mind that the fiercest critics of the particular policies of different Israeli Governments are often Jews in Israel, and they make these criticisms out of loyalty to the State of Israel, whose validity they continue to uphold and whose existence they feel is sometimes threatened by those policies; nor, so far as I am aware, do they support boycotts, disinvestment or sanctions, in contrast to campaigners in South Africa at the time of apartheid.

Thirdly, after World War II all the Christian churches wrestled with the issue of the State of Israel and its legitimacy. Endless church documents were produced. The American scholar Paul van Buren, summing up these documents, put forward the minimum Christian position in these words:

“Because the state of Israel is in part the product of the ancient and living hope of the Jewish people and is of deep concern to almost all Jews, disregard for its safety and welfare is incompatible with concern for the Jewish people”.

A concern for the suffering of the Palestinian people and a desire to see a just peace in which some historic wrongs are righted must never lose sight of those words, so I look forward to seeing some resource material produced by Universities UK which can help this painful debate take place on campuses in a way which is well informed and not toxic.

Schools: Parent Governors

Lord Bishop of Oxford Excerpts

Tuesday 26th April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I am grateful for the noble Baroness’s support on parental engagement in free schools. I agree with the point she has made about people being able to develop their skills. We very much want parents to be involved, and school governing bodies provide an opportunity for them to acquire new skills. That is one of the reasons why many employers encourage their staff, particularly their younger staff, to sit on the governing bodies of schools and academies, and indeed we have an active programme with employers to develop this.

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth (CB)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that whatever skills parent governors may or may not have, they play a crucial role in keeping parental opinion feeding into the governing body and helping to gain parental support for the school?

[Lord Nash]

I agree entirely with that point. Parent governors play an important role in parental opinion, but we really want to engage with parents across a wider front so that we can have a much broader set of parental opinion. That is why we are bringing in these proposals that academies do that.

Citizenship Education

Lord Bishop of Oxford Excerpts

Tuesday 14th February 2012 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their evaluation of current policies on citizenship education.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Hill of Oareford)]

My Lords, Ofsted reported in 2010 that citizenship education is improving. Our reforms are designed to build on this by giving greater autonomy to schools. The national curriculum review is aiming to prescribe a core of essential knowledge, enabling schools to teach a wider curriculum that meets their pupils’ needs. Our recent publication Positive for Youth will help to ensure that young people have opportunities to realise their potential, including through becoming active and responsible citizens, as will the development of the national citizen service.

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth]

I thank the Minister for his reply and particularly for reporting that citizenship education in schools is apparently improving. Does he not agree, that at a time when the world is so turbulent and our own societies are under such strain, it is more important than ever that our young people should have a solid grounding in the responsibilities and rights of citizenship within a democratic framework? Further to the Prime Minister’s Answer to a Question in the other place on 11 December, what assurance can the Minister give that this can actually be achieved when there is such widespread suspicion that, as a result of changes to the curriculum, citizenship is going to be marginalised and downgraded?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I agree with the noble and right reverend Lord about the importance of citizenship. Although the expert panel that reported to us in December suggests that citizenship should form part of the basic curriculum rather than the national curriculum, the first sentence in its report emphasises the importance of citizenship and I very much share that view. The issue—and this is true of a number of subjects that are subject to the national curriculum review—is the extent to which we need to be prescriptive around programmes of study. We will reflect upon what the expert panel has said and take other representations into account, and then bring forward our proposals in due course in the light of that.