Anti-Semitism

Debate between Lord Mann and Lord Beith

Thursday 20th January 2011 Westminster Hall

[John Mann]

The Equality and Human Rights Commission is struggling with elections. We may need to write our own code of conduct this year on how elections should be run and what should happen if candidates believe that things have been done that they find inappropriate. There is a void there, and it crosses all parties. The issue is not in one direction, and it goes many different ways.

The main political parties, as well as the smaller ones, have a responsibility to ensure that candidates or complainants, including those from the community, have clear guidance on what they should do, both at the time and retrospectively. I fear that the problem is becoming too big, too quickly. Some claim success, however irrelevant their participation has been in the campaign, which emboldens more extreme action and more extreme language. If we can get agreement, we should publish our own code of practice this year outside the general election cycle. There are, of course, always elections, but we should do so well in advance of the next general election. It could be launched in the run up to the next election, with a lengthy lead-in to ensure that we get it right. That could provide a significant service. Attempting to do it may move things on in what is a tricky but rather indelicate area. If we do not, it will be to the detriment of all political parties, rather nastily and viciously, in elections to come.

I next highlight football. I do so because there is a huge danger in eastern Europe that the new Nazis will coalesce under the banner of white power using football, which may become a big problem in this country. They have not yet made huge inroads here, although groups of fanatics and thugs have made small ones using the internet. Immediately before the Olympics, the 2012 football championship will be hosted by Ukraine and Poland. It could be rather difficult, as there will be many opportunities for outrageous behaviour by those who choose deliberately to offend, and it can happen quickly and easily. Through the police and Home Office, we have great knowledge and expertise in dealing with football hooliganism and extremism. We need to lend more support to Poland and Ukraine to ensure that those countries are not caught short. It is a PR disaster waiting to happen, with extremists using the opportunity to spread their propaganda and to incite people.

I was asked by the Football Association 18 months ago to chair a working group on anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, with many people in the football world involved. I politely asked the FA, which has a new chief executive, to respond to the report submitted by my working group, because in the big money world of football as well as at the grass roots there is a responsibility to ensure that our most inclusive of sports is inclusive at every level. It must act when people attempt to use what I regard as our national sport to perpetrate race hatred. Football should be in the lead, so I await the Football Association’s response. It is about time that it did so, and I hope that it does so productively and positively.

I speak now about the international agenda and Europe. An increasing number of people in eastern Europe, including some politicians, are attempting to equate the holocaust and what happened in their countries with what happened in Soviet times. My right hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham and I were heavily involved, as were others here today, in what could best be described as anti-Soviet or anti-communist activities, not least with the international trade union movement and other organisations. We have a long track record in that respect. We understand what happened in Soviet times, but it is fundamentally dangerous, wrong and inaccurate to equate the two.

Equating the two provides an excuse for what happened to the Jewish community in, for example, Lithuania, where 94% of its members were murdered in a short period, and where many Lithuanians were involved in murdering their fellow nationals. It is fundamentally wrong and dangerous to equate things in that way, and we need to challenge that practice, because the more it takes hold, the more difficult things will be for Jewish communities in those countries, and the easier it will be for extremists to ride on the back of false nationalism and whip up hysteria, as has already happened, not least in the Baltic states, as people campaign against the Jewish international media conspiracy, the Jewish bankers and so forth. Those are old concepts, but they are being used in the modern media in these countries.

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

The hon. Gentleman is of course right that there is a fundamental difference between what happened in Nazi Germany and what happened as a result of Soviet persecution of Jewish communities and discrimination against Jews. Surely, however, the problem with drawing such a distinction is that people must understand that if they tolerate anti-Semitism in any form, they are on a dangerous slope, which can lead to the events we saw in Europe and particularly in Germany.

[John Mann]

Absolutely. Our approach of being honest about the problems in our country, our Parliament and our political parties—in our own backyard—is exactly the approach that the countries I am talking about need to take if they are to come to terms with their history. That is what being part of the modern democratic world is about. These countries are now part of that world, and they need to understand their responsibilities and obligations. We should not accept lower standards from these new democracies than we do from the older democracies, including ours.