Holocaust Memorial Day

Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent Excerpts

Friday 2nd February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, and my noble friend Lord Dubs. I refer to my interests in the register, not least my roles with the Antisemitism Policy Trust and HOPE not hate.

I will focus on the importance of bearing witness to evil and the onus on us all to make sure that the truth lives on. My family arrived in the UK in the 1880s, fleeing the pogroms of tsarist Russia. My ancestors fled state-sanctioned violence and arrived here in the hope of a better and safer life. Little did they realise that their choice of final destination was to guarantee the survival of my family. As far as we know, not one of those who chose to remain in Poland, Ukraine and Belarus survived the Shoah. For my family, anti-Jewish hatred is not an academic exercise; it is formative to my understanding of my place in the world.

As they have for many noble Lords, the pogroms and the Shoah have shaped not just my existence but my worldview. My family knows only too well where hate can lead and the importance of security and freedom. We also know the value of truth and the danger of misinformation, distortion and propaganda, which is why bearing witness to horror and evil is so important. It is why people’s stories, as horrendous as some of the details are, need to be heard, repeated, shared and remembered, not just on Holocaust Memorial Day but always.

The facts of history are often too easily forgotten. The sheer scale of the Holocaust, and of the genocides that have followed in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur, enables us to remember facts and statistics but can allow us to ignore or forget the impact on people, families and communities. People’s stories and experiences—their pain and survival—touch our hearts and ensure that we remember where hate and division can lead. Personal testimony also allows us to directly counter propaganda, lies and distortion about some of the greatest crimes that the planet has ever seen.

Your Lordships’ House recognised this principle as soon as the first concentration camps were liberated in 1945. Within days of the liberation of Buchenwald, in April 1945 our Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, asked a delegation of parliamentarians from both Houses to travel to the camp to see the horrors at first hand and bear witness on behalf of our Parliament and our country. Two Members of your Lordships’ House attended on our behalf: Earl Stanhope and Lord Addison. Their experiences were published as The Report of a Parliamentary Delegation by the Prime Minister.

I consider myself quite political and generally better informed than most on matters related to the Holocaust, but I did not know of this report or delegation until a few years ago. Just before the pandemic, my noble friend Lady Golding, a fellow resident of north Staffordshire, gave me some of her parliamentary papers that she thought might be of interest. When I started to go through the box, I realised that they were not just her papers but included some of her father’s, who had been the MP for Caerphilly, including during the war. Ness Edwards was one of the 10 members of the delegation to travel to Buchenwald. My noble friend unfortunately cannot be with us today, but I wish to share the words she used when discussing her father and his experiences during a debate in the other place:

“My father was a member of that delegation. His name was Ness Edwards. He was the hon. Member for Caerphilly for 29 years. I remember him telling me about the horrors of what went on in that camp. They are engraved for ever on my mind and heart.


There has been much talk tonight about the passage of time. I was but a child on the day when I opened the door to my father on his return. He stood there, grey and drawn, and said, ‘Do not touch me. I am covered with lice. Everyone in the camps is covered with lice. We have been deloused many times, but I am still covered with lice.’ He could not sleep for many weeks, and he had nightmares for many years … My father spoke to me and to my brothers and sisters about what he had seen in the camp. He told us of the hanging gibbets. Human beings were put on hooks and hung from under their chins until they died. He told us that the people in charge of the camp rather liked tattoos, and they skinned people and used their skins to make lampshades. They discovered that, when people die, their skin is given to shrinking too quickly, so they tried skinning them alive. My father showed me photographs of piles of bodies on carts. Three weeks later, the allies had not had time to remove them all. He showed me photographs of men in thin clothes, photographs of skeletons, and photographs of men with haunted eyes. I will always remember the look in those men’s eyes—the look of utter bewilderment and incomprehension. They had been starved and beaten, yet their spirit was still there”.—[Official Report, Commons, 12/12/1989; col. 901.]


Ness and the nine other representatives of our Parliament did us a huge service by travelling to bear witness. The final paragraph of their report states:

“In preparing this report, we have endeavoured to write with restraint and objectivity, and to avoid obtruding personal reactions or emotional comments. We would conclude, however, by stating that it is our considered and unanimous opinion, on the evidence available to us, that a policy of steady starvation and inhuman brutality was carried out at Buchenwald for a long period of time; and that such camps as this mark the lowest point of degradation to which humanity has yet descended. The memory of what we saw and heard at Buchenwald will haunt us ineffaceably for many years”.


In recent months, I have thought often of the parliamentarians who chose to travel to the camps to bear witness, who determined that reading testimony and watching Pathé News was not enough and who decided that they needed to be able personally to share their experiences of hell with our Parliament, the Government and future generations. It was in this spirit that I chose to go to Israel last month with Labour Friends of Israel on a solidarity mission to visit the site of yet another pogrom, to meet the survivors and hostage families, to see for myself the devastation and to be able to bear witness for the next generation.

The history of the Jewish community has been filled with too many chapters of pain and death. We are a very resilient community, but the human cost we have paid for our very existence is far too high. My generation was meant to read about the persecution of Jews in history books. Pogroms, death, torture, systematic killing and anti-Jewish propaganda were for my grandparents’ generation. I was meant to live in an enlightened world where humanity and human rights are protected and cherished. I honestly believed that I would never be speaking about a modern-day pogrom, yet that is what happened on 7 October in southern Israel.

I am still struggling to process everything I saw. I could spend the next hour telling your Lordships’ House about the horrors I saw and the survivors I met. I will not do so, but I want to share one story: the experiences of a young woman I met only weeks ago. In Tel Aviv, the survivors of the massacre at the Nova music festival have claimed a space and filled it with the remnants of the festival. A young woman who had survived the massacre joined us as we saw the burned-out cars, the festival toilets riddled with gun holes and the drinks fridges in which people hid from terrorists. She told us of the horrors that had happened in each part of the festival: of the young disabled girl who was burned alive with her father; of the people killed while hiding in toilets; of the running, the rapes, the shooting and the brutality.

They have recreated the lost property area of the festival. It is reminiscent of visiting Kanada at Auschwitz. Every item left behind in the lost property is now evidence of someone who died and has not been able to return to claim it. On screens throughout the venue, there were recordings of the party taken before the massacre—young people dancing and enjoying themselves before hell was unleashed. The images of their laughter and joy are burned into my memory, because so few of them survived. Nova was a trance music festival. I did not even know what it was, but apparently Israel leads the world in trance music DJs. As we toured the exhibition, we listened to their music. I had to stop when one of the songs was a trance version of the Hatikvah, as I stood in the remnants of a massacre.

Our guide told us not just of her personal trauma on 7 October, and how her life was saved because her boyfriend made them flee five minutes before everyone else, but of what happened to her in the hours and days that followed. She spoke of watching on a video call her best friend running for her life, desperately trying to get away from the terrorists, and the moment of complete horror when she heard a shot and the call ended. She told me about how she struggled to get hold of her friends as the day progressed and her fear of not knowing who was alive and who was dead, as she hid in a house on the edge of the festival not knowing whether the terrorists were going to find them next.

Our guide explained that, in the days that followed, she had to choose which funerals to go to. She had lost 20 friends; her boyfriend had lost 45. There were too many funerals, and she could not attend them all. She could not say goodbye. Her story is one of thousands that happened on 7 October. Already, however, people are trying to downplay the attacks to distort the facts and claim lies and smears. It is our job to make sure people know what really happened.

To finish, I will touch on the anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim hate that has followed on our streets since 7 October. Not a day has gone past when members of our community are not scared. I am therefore so grateful to CST and its extensive network of volunteers, who are doing everything they can to try to keep us safe when others are trying to hurt us. There cannot be any room for bad faith actors who want to make political gain by exploiting the fear of those touched by 7 October and the awful war that has followed in Gaza. Together, we must resist the efforts to divide us.

As Holocaust Memorial Day has reminded us this year, our freedoms are all too fragile. There is a responsibility on all of us to do everything we can to protect and cherish them. The work of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and the Holocaust Educational Trust do extraordinary work to remind us where the hate can lead. However, the onus is on us to listen and to act so that this time, “never again” really does mean never again.

International Women’s Day

Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent Excerpts

Friday 10th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

My Lords, this is an incredibly important debate. It is a privilege, and not one that I take for granted, to be in your Lordships’ House as one of the 226 women who have the right to sit in this hallowed Chamber. As this debate has demonstrated, my fellow noble Baronesses are both extraordinary and completely intimidating.

On Wednesday, for International Women’s Day, I addressed students on behalf of the Anne Frank Trust. I highlighted not only the importance of telling women’s stories but the power of amplifying their lived experiences, wherever they may be. Collectively, we all made a promise that this week—and, I hope, in future weeks—we would seek to tell the stories of the women who have made a mark and ensure that the world knows their names. I seek to deliver on that promise today.

I refer noble Lords to my declarations of interests. I am proud to be the chief executive of Index on Censorship, a charity that endeavours to provide a voice to the persecuted and campaigns for freedom of expression around the world. I work daily with dissidents, both men and women, who risk everything to change their societies and communities for the better. But today, I would like to read the names of some of those women who have made the ultimate sacrifice in the past year for the supposed crime of doing something that we take for granted every day: using the human right to freedom of expression.

Deborah Samuel, a student, was brutally murdered in Nigeria after being accused of blasphemy on an academic social media platform.

Nokuthula Mabaso, a leading human rights defender in South Africa and the leader of the eKhenana Commune, was assassinated outside her home in front of her children.

Shireen Abu Akleh, a veteran Palestinian-American correspondent for Al Jazeera, was killed while reporting on an Israeli raid in the West Bank.

Jhannah Villegas, a local journalist in the Philippines, was killed at her home. The police believe that her murder was linked to her work.

Francisca Sandoval, a local Chilean journalist, was murdered, and several others hurt, when gunmen opened fire on a Workers’ Day demonstration.

Mahsa Amini’s name is all too familiar to us as her murder inspired a peaceful revolution that continues to this day. She was murdered by the Iranian morality police for “inappropriate attire”.

Oksana Baulina, a Russian journalist, was killed during shelling by Russian forces in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.

Oksana Haidar, a 54 year-old Ukrainian journalist and blogger better known as Ruda Pani, was killed by Russian artillery north-east of Kyiv.

Oleksandra Kuvshynova, a Ukrainian producer, was killed outside of Kyiv while working with Fox News.

Petronella Baloyi—I apologise for my pronunciation—a South African land and women’s human rights defender, was gunned down while in her home.

Yessenia Mollinedo Falconi, a Mexican journalist who was the founder and editor of El Veraz as well as a crime and security correspondent, received a death threat a fortnight before she was shot. She was killed alongside her colleague, Sheila Johana García Olivera.

Vira Hyrych, a journalist for Radio Free Europe’s Ukrainian service, was killed by Russian shelling.

Cielo Rujeles, wife of the socialist leader Sócrates Sevillano, was shot and killed alongside her husband in Colombia.

Luz Ángela Quijano Poveda, a delegate of the Community Action Board in Punta Betín, Colombia, was murdered at her home.

Sandra Patricia Montenegro, a PE teacher and social leader, was shot and killed in front of her students in Colombia.

Clemencia Arteaga, a Colombian indigenous social leader and prosecutor, was murdered by gunmen at her home in the reservation of the Nasa people.

Melissa Núñez, a transgender activist, was shot dead by armed men in Honduras.

María del Carmen Vázquez, a Mexican activist and member of the Missing Persons of Pénjamo, was murdered by two men at her home. She was looking for her son, who disappeared last summer.

Blanca Esmeralda Gallardo, an activist and member of the Voice of the Disappeared in Puebla collective, was assassinated on the side of the highway in Mexico as she waited for a bus to take her to work.

Yermy Chocué Camayo, the treasurer of the Chimborazo indigenous reservation in Colombia and a human rights defender, was killed as she headed home.

Dilia Contreras, an experienced presenter for RCN Radio in Colombia, was shot dead in a car alongside her colleague after covering a local festival.

Edilsan Andrade, a Colombian social leader and local politician, was shot dead in the presence of one of her children.

Jesusita Moreno, otherwise known as Doña Tuta, was a human rights activist who defended Afro-Colombian community rights. Facing threats against her life, she was assassinated while at her son’s birthday party.

María Piedad Aguirre, a Colombian social leader who was a defender of black communities, was violently murdered with a machete. She was found by one of her grandchildren.

Elizabeth Mendoza, a social leader, was shot and killed in her home in Colombia. Her son, husband and nephew were also murdered.

María José Arciniegas Salinas, a Colombian indigenous human rights defender, was assassinated by armed men.

Shaina Vanessa Pretel Gómez, who was known among the LGBTQI+ community for her activism, was shot dead early in the morning by a suspect on a motorbike.

Rosa Elena Célix Guañarita, a Colombian human rights defender, was shot while socialising with friends.

Mariela Reyes Montenegro, a leader of the National Union of Workers and Employees of Public Services, was murdered in Colombia.

Alba Bermeo Puin, an indigenous leader and environmental defender in Ecuador, was murdered when she was five months pregnant.

Mursal Nabizada, a former female member of Afghanistan’s Parliament and women’s rights campaigner, was murdered at her home.

This is not an exhaustive list by any stretch of the imagination; I apologise for going slightly over the time limit. Compiling the names and profiles of women who have been killed as a result of their right to exercise freedom of expression is almost impossible, not least because of the nature of the repressive regimes they live under. Every name I have just read out represents thousands of others who put their lives at risk day in, day out to speak truth to power. They were mothers, grandmothers, daughters, nieces, granddaughters, sisters, aunts, friends, partners and wives. To their families, they were the centre of the world. To us, today, their stories bring fear and inspiration in equal measure. They are heroes whose bravery we should all seek to emulate.

International Holocaust Memorial Day

Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent Excerpts

Thursday 19th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

My Lords, I am not sure how to follow the noble Lord, Lord Polak. As ever, his contribution was thoughtful and considered; I am grateful to follow it. Before I start, I refer the House to my register of interests, specifically that I am a trustee of the Antisemitism Policy Trust and a director of Hope not Hate.

This is, I believe, the first time noble Lords have had a debate to mark Holocaust Memorial Day. The fact that it is happening today is a testament to the work of the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, who has done so much in the field of Holocaust commemoration. I thank him for his ongoing commitment and, of course, for securing today’s debate.

I wish that this debate could be solely one of reflection and commemoration; that we could stand here today and consider the issues of anti-Jewish hate and fascist ideology as consigned to the dustbin of history; and that the bulk of today’s debate could be historical comment, highlighting the horrors experienced by the victims and the inspirational acts of the survivors, whose testimony has changed the world, and celebrating those who worked against their own Governments to protect and hide their fellow citizens.

This debate should be a celebration of the life of Zigi Shipper, an Auschwitz survivor who sadly passed away yesterday. It should be an opportunity for us to honour the work of my noble friend Lord Dubs, who has used his own story to inspire so many others. We should be sharing the testimony of Janine Webber, a Holocaust survivor whom many of us were privileged to hear last week at the Holocaust Educational Trust. We should be discussing these amazing people and many others whose names we will learn in today’s debate.

I wish that today’s debate was anchored in the past and that anti-Semitism was not a contemporary matter that required noble Lords’ attention—but I am afraid it is. The Holocaust should have been a unique moment in our global history. It should have shaken the world to its core. For many of us in this place today, I am sure that that is exactly what it has done. Holocaust Memorial Day provides us all with a moment of reflection to remind us of where political rhetoric and hate can lead. It gives us an opportunity to challenge our own behaviour and asks us to recommit to challenging racism, hate and bigotry everywhere we see them.

That brings me to the world we live in today. Noble Lords have already touched on the scourge of anti-Jewish hate that seems far too prevalent in modern society. In recent weeks, we have seen the National Union of Students forced to accept that its culture is hostile to Jewish students. We have seen numerous stories about the antics of Kayne West and his attacks on the Jewish community. It is 2023 and this ancient hatred is in the newspapers nearly every day.

This morning, CST, the Community Security Trust, published a new report detailing anti-Semitic incidents on university campuses across the UK. The past two years have seen a 22% increase in anti-Jewish hate incidents. There have been 150 verified and reported anti-Semitic incidents on British campuses in the past two years. For context, there are only 271,000 Jews in the UK of all ages, so this is a terrifying level of hate. Our universities are meant to be cathedrals—or should I say synagogues—of learning and enlightenment. You would hope that, if there was one place where vile racism and anti-Jewish hatred were challenged and beaten, it would be in our educational establishments. This is clearly not the case. I want to put on the record my heartfelt thanks to Mark Gardner and his team at CST, who work tirelessly to keep the Jewish community safe both on campus and in wider society.

I am aware that time is short in this debate but it would be remiss of me not to recognise the amazing work of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and the Holocaust Educational Trust, which ensure that the legacy of this evil chapter of our history is remembered every day, not just on 27 January. This is a vital debate and I am grateful that we are having it, but I fear that our work in challenging anti-Jewish hate is far from over.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 17th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab) (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, it is still with some astonishment and a great deal of trepidation that I rise, for the first time, to speak in today’s debate. I never imagined for a moment that this is where my journey would take me, and I hope that I will always be in awe of this building and of the calibre of debate in this Chamber.

Over the last month, I would have been lost, both metaphorically and in reality, without the kindness and support of noble Lords from across the House. Their collective welcome has been incredibly reassuring, and I am genuinely grateful. However, I believe I owe an even greater debt of gratitude to the officers and staff of the House, especially our wonderful doorkeepers, who have indulged my every ridiculous question, ensured that I have found my way and so far managed to keep me on the straight and narrow—a far from easy task.

I also have a number of noble Lords to thank personally, including my sponsors, my noble friends Lord Coaker and Lord Kennedy of Southwark, who I am proud to have known for many years. It is a personal joy to be able to work with them in this House. I would also like to thank my noble friend Lord Haskel, who has been given the unenviable task of mentoring me since my introduction to this House.

I stand here today in the footsteps of the women in my family, who instilled in me a hunger to fix the world’s ills—although I cannot imagine that they ever thought for one moment that a member of our family would be in this place. My family arrived in the UK in the 1890s, fleeing the pogroms. My nana, in the first generation to be born here, was a determined woman. She taught me that food was love, that no one should ever be hungry and that, whatever little you had, someone else always had less, so the onus was on us to help them.

In 1936, when the Jarrow marchers arrived in London, my nana was waiting for them with food and socks. In the run-up to the Battle of Cable Street, she spent 48 hours stuffing razor blades into tomatoes, to be used as defensive weapons against the fascists—although that is a story she never wanted my mother and me to know, because she believed we would get ideas.

My mum did get ideas. She became a trade union activist and, ultimately, deputy general secretary of MSF and Amicus. She took me on my first demo when I was still in nappies; when I was four, she took me to collect food for the miners, and when I was 11 on my first anti-fascist demo. She has dedicated her life to fighting for those who struggle to find their voice. She taught me the importance of campaigning against tyranny and racism, wherever it is found, and every day I seek to be more like her.

Noble Lords may be aware that I was formerly a Member of the other place. It was a privilege to represent the people of north Staffordshire. I am sure that I will bore many noble Lords on the importance of ceramics and the history of my adopted city, as it is also where I met my wonderful partner Gareth and his brilliant daughter Hannah. It is my city that anchors me and which I love, but that does not mean I am not aware of our challenges. My great city—like so many others across the Midlands—needs help as we grow beyond our industrial heritage.

Today’s debate is therefore timely, as we discuss and consider how we rebalance the economy of our country so that the postcode of your birth is not an impediment to your future. There can be no greater aspiration for our country than to ensure that opportunity exists for everybody, that access to culture, education and housing is freely available, that incomes are not an accident of geography and that people can thrive in the communities in which they were born.

I am proud to live in one of the six towns of Stoke-on-Trent, but the latest statistics available from the Department for Work and Pensions state that 53% of the children in my town of Tunstall are living in relative poverty and that over 20,000 children are in the same position across the city. These statistics were collated prior to the current cost of living crisis and will today be significantly worse.

As my noble friend Lady Taylor of Stevenage stated in her opening remarks, levelling up must be about people. It cannot and must not be just about investment in buildings. In Stoke-on-Trent, much like our country, our people are our greatest asset. It is investment in those people and their life chances that will change the lives of the people of north Staffordshire and many of our former industrial heartlands. When colleges are having to buy shoes for their young learners, when hunger is a distraction in the classroom and when a day’s childcare costs more than a day’s wages, we cannot hope to level up anything.

Across our country, our towns and cities know what they need to bring success and opportunity, but too often they are forced to compete with their neighbours for tightly controlled short-term funding. If we are to level up our country and give places such as Stoke-on-Trent the tools and resources they need to benefit their residents, we should be encouraging co-operation, not competition. Levelling up will succeed when it is something that is not done to buildings for photo opportunities but is done with local people to address and eradicate the social ills which hold them back.

At its heart, levelling up has to be able to give everyone who wants it a chance to make a life for themselves and their family, in which secure employment provides a decent salary to pay the bills in a safe and thriving community. It is about people and their hopes. As my nana said, there is always someone with less than we have, and it is our duty to help them.

I am delighted to be joining your Lordships on these Benches, to fulfil our role as a revising Chamber in order to make legislation work for our great nation. I look forward to working with all of you in the months and years ahead, to deliver for my party and our country.