Holocaust Memorial Day

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Thursday 25th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

I, too, thank the Backbench Business Committee for making time for the debate. I am grateful for the way in which the application was dealt with. When we went to the Committee, I felt that we were pushing at an open door. Its willingness to find time in the Chamber was exceptionally welcome, because this year of all years it is important that the debate take place right at the heart of Parliament. It would have been no less powerful in Westminster Hall, but it really matters that it is here. I pay tribute to my co-sponsor, the right hon. Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge). Her speech was one of the finest I have heard in my 22 years in Parliament. It would have been powerful just for her to share her family experience, but for her then to take that experience and draw parallels and lessons for the world today made it a wholly exceptional contribution. She will be remembered and missed in future Holocaust Memorial Day debates.

Next year, it will be 80 years since the end of the second world war. With every year that passes, the act of memorial becomes more and more important. Members can do the maths for themselves: I was born in 1965, 20 years after the end of the second world war. I was born into a world where many of the older people in my community had lived experience of it. They had fought in different parts of the world, or made a contribution on the home front. I grew up reading comics that were rooted in the second world war—The Victor, The Hotspur and Warlord—so even in that way there was a context that I understood, which was unavailable to my children, who grew up with comics full of Japanese anime or whatever. If they have children, they will doubtless look at me blankly and say, “Comics? What are you talking about?”

As we get further from the lived experience, and those who survived the holocaust or served in the second world war become rarer, moments such as this become more important. As the right hon. Lady said, the work of organisations such as the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and the Holocaust Educational Trust—I pay particular tribute to the work of Karen Pollock—becomes more important too.

In the community that I represent in Shetland, we have our own story to tell on Holocaust Memorial Day. The Shetland bus was a fleet, or progression, of small fishing boats that went from Lunna and Scalloway in Shetland to bring those who were fleeing persecution and whose lives were at risk in Nazi-occupied Norway to safety—in Shetland, and then in the United Kingdom mainland. When we talk about the Shetland bus, we talk mostly about the work that it did in bringing downed airmen and others to safety, but it should be remembered that no fewer than 350 refugees came to Britain through that route. They were fugitives of the Gestapo. They were not all Jews, but many were. Indeed, I came across an article in The Jewish Chronicle from 2018 that highlighted an episode that I had never heard of. I share it with the House because it is remarkably potent to think of the contribution that my small community, right at the very north of this country, closer to Norway than to London, was able to make in that struggle. It records:

“Individual stories from individual sailings bring a human face to a brave, secret expedition. Just one example is the Bus’ first loss, Nils Johansen Nesse.

After dropping an agent in Bømlo, Norway, Nesse’s fishing boat Siglaos started the return journey to Shetland in dreadful conditions. Aboard were seven passengers rescued from Norway, including three children.

After several hours at sea battling the weather, the Siglaos was attacked by enemy aircraft. Nesse, who held his position at the steering wheel, sustained injuries to the leg and the head.

The boat returned safely to Shetland, but Nesse lost the fight for life, aged 23. Today, on a calm day in this picturesque, close-knit harbour town, it’s hard to imagine such heroic endeavours taking place.”

Imagine them we must, because it is part of history, and part of what brings us here today.

We have to recognise the context of today’s debate: what is happening in the world, and what is happening in Israel and Gaza as we speak. Apart from anything else, we know that the Jewish communities in this country feel so much more at risk and vulnerable than ever, as a consequence of what happened on 7 October. There is a balance to be struck. The focus has to be on what happened—otherwise, we risk disrespecting those who perished and those who survived it, and the families for whom it is a lived experience—but surely the whole point, as others have said, must be to ensure that it does not happen again. That is why when I read stories about a restaurant opening in Jordan called “October 7”, frankly I despair. It is something that has to be called out and dealt with wherever it happens.

As somebody who has massive reservations about what Netanyahu is doing in Gaza—and we can debate that another day—I look with horror at the incipient antisemitism that is creeping up in so many different ways. Let us not forget that antisemitism—something that is wholly irrational but that we never seem to eradicate —was at the root of what happened in the holocaust. The price of it not happening again is that those of us who care about what happened in the past have to be honest, open and courageous in calling it out when we see it starting again. If we wait until it has taken hold, it will be too late.