Proposed British Jewish History Month

Andrew Percy Excerpts

Thursday 11th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate, and I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken) for securing it. I agree with everything that has been said so far on the need for us to have a Jewish history month.

As others have said, the history of Jews in Britain is wound up in the history of this county, and at times, sadly, it is a complex history. In my region of Yorkshire, that is clearly demonstrated by the two cities nearest to me, one of which I grew up in. People will remember the 1190 massacre of Jews in the City of York, but York has a thriving Jewish community today. The history of Jews in York is also seen in place names such as Jewbury, where my ancestors lived. In more recent decades, the relationship has been complicated. We see it now in the rise in antisemitism, but in my birth city, Hull, we had the battle of Corporation Field in 1936, when Mosley and his British Union of Fascists turned up to be met by a crowd of 10,000 people who, I am proud to say, were mainly there to see them off, and that is indeed what happened.

I will talk today about the contribution made by Jews from the City of Hull and Hull’s place in Jewish history more broadly. Today, the Jewish community in Hull is small, but its contribution to Jewish history is significant, especially in the role the city played in the transmigration of Jews fleeing eastern Europe at the end of the 19th century, who passed through Hull largely on their way to North America. So many came to Hull that the city was marketed as Britain’s cheapest port. Now, we in the Humber do not like to think of ourselves as cheap, but that is what we were at the time. It is estimated that over 2.2 million emigrants passed through the City of Hull in the century before 1914, and 100,000 through our fellow Humber port of Grimsby. Most were passing through on their way to North America or to other cities, such as Leeds and Manchester, but a small number remained in Hull.

At its height, the Jewish population of Hull accounted for 1% of its people, but they had a huge impact on the life of the city. Let me talk briefly about the public life of some of Hull’s Jewish people. Between 1856 and 1983, Hull had two Jewish mayors, seven Jewish lord mayors, and a Jewish leader of the council, who served effectively from 1945 until 1979. This is a very consensual debate, but here I must disagree slightly with my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster, who talked about her cities as the part of the county where Jews have had the most impact. Hull newspaper editor Arthur Tidman wrote in the 1940s:

“There is no town, no city of the UK where Jews have been more closely identified with public life or where their natural abilities have been more freely exercised to the advantage of the community. It is doubtful if any other city can equal the record of Hull in the number of Jewish citizens who have filled the highest civic offices.”

Chief among those individuals was Alderman Sir Leo Schultz, the Labour leader of Hull Council from 1945 to 1979. He was elected to the council in 1926. Prior to that, he had won a scholarship to Oxford, but was told that he could not attend because of his background, so he took his fight into politics. He had the foresight before the war to build bomb shelters, in opposition to the Government at the time, who in the end relented and paid for the shelters to be built. People who were bombed out of their homes on the second night of bombing in 1941, including my grandma, might not have survived were it not for Sir Leo’s foresight. He had such an impact on our city, remaining as leader of the council until 1979, being knighted and going on to become an alderman. There is a statue of him in the city, and he is just one of a number of individuals, including former mayor Henry Feldman and Alderman John Symons, who have had a huge impact on public life, and not only in our city but in our country.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Lee Rowley)]

It is a privilege to respond on behalf of the Government and on behalf of my colleague in the other place, Baroness Penn, who formally holds this portfolio, on this incredibly important issue. Many of us who are here today were also in Westminster Hall on Tuesday to debate a more difficult part of this discussion. It is such a pleasure to be able to celebrate the contribution of the British Jewish community to our country, and I intend to keep my remarks wholly to the positives, having talked about the more challenging issues in Tuesday’s debate.

I know from the contributions of all Members that we agree across the House that Britain would not be the country it is today without the enormous contribution made by the Jewish community, and indeed by people of all faiths and ethnicities. It is crucial that we celebrate that contribution. That is why the Government are very supportive of having a Jewish history month—a brilliant idea put forward in this debate by my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken). I congratulate her on securing this important debate, because British Jews have played a vital role in shaping the life of our country, stretching back more than 2,000 years and producing, as so many colleagues have outlined, leading talents in the arts, law, philosophy, medicine, the media, finance, the charity sector, retail and wrestling.

From Peter George Davis, the founder of the Special Boat Service, to Jack Cohen, the founder of Tesco, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster already outlined; and from Ludwig Guttmann, the founder of the Paralympics, to some of our greatest artists, such as Lucian Freud, and poets, such as Siegfried Sassoon, British Jews have made an outstanding contribution to British public life. They have also done so from all sides of this House, as was outlined by the hon. Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel), who is no longer in his place, from our first Prime Minister of Jewish heritage, Benjamin Disraeli, in the 19th century, to the iron Chancellor Nigel Lawson, to the Liberal leader Herbert Samuel, and to celebrated Labour figures, such as Gerald Kaufman and Manny Shinwell, as was mentioned.

The creation of a designated Jewish history month would give us an opportunity as a nation to celebrate this history and the vibrancy of Jewish culture, traditions, values and the importance of the Jewish community to the fabric of our society today. That could not be more important given the events of the past few weeks. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster said herself, we must remind ourselves of the huge contribution that British citizens within the Jewish faith have made for the benefit of us all, and a designated history month would be a huge step towards that.

This is about celebrating Jewish history and culture, as well as—the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who is no longer in his place, said this—an opportunity to foster greater community unity and cohesion through inter-faith dialogue and understanding at a time of growing division. I know that is something we would very much all welcome. It would of course need to be meaningful and informed by the wishes of the British Jewish community themselves. If this is something that the British Jewish community would encourage the Government to support, we would welcome their thoughts on this motion, as we welcome the thoughts of all right hon. and hon. Members across the House and anyone else inspired to take up this important cause.

I want to spend a few minutes before I close to talk about some of the contributions of colleagues today. The hon. Member for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton) and my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) spoke about the history and importance of the Jewish community and told incredible and—in at least one instance—shocking stories, which remind us of the very near-term challenges that this community has faced and the importance of supporting them.

The hon. Members for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) and for Strangford reminded us of the contribution of the British Jewish community in all parts of our Union, including something I never thought I would hear: the Sinn Féin rabbi. That demonstrates the absolute contribution in so many different ways and with so many different opinions over many decades and centuries. My hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) made a hugely important point about the importance of the British Jewish community to our public life and our military life.

[Andrew Percy]

As the Minister has a little bit of time, because of the time limit, I did not get a chance to mention some of the East Yorkshire Jewish sons who fell in world war one. I would like to memorialise their names, if he will give me a moment: James Aaron, Isaac Reuben, Barnett Rubinstein, Bernard Shalgosky, Soloman Sole, John Stone, David Gordon and Harry Furman. All fell defending liberty.

[Lee Rowley]

My hon. Friend outlines another example of the hugely important contribution the British Jewish community have made to our freedom over so many decades.

The hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) made a hugely important point about how the vast contribution made is often not obvious. Like the challenges she may have had in her home city, I had challenges linking it to my home constituency where I grew up—it has a very small Jewish community. Having looked at some of the history from Derbyshire, it was heartening to hear that, just 20 years ago, when a small group of people from Derby at the other side of the county found in the archives that the citizens of Derby had paid an amount of money in the 12th century to stop British Jews from living there, they compensated the British Jewish community by the equivalent amount in 2002 so that the edict could be removed. Such acts of kindness and recognition show that what has been called a challenging history can be acknowledged and worked through, even in places where there are not large Jewish populations, such as Derbyshire.

My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Northampton North (Sir Michael Ellis) made the important point that those who forget history are condemned to repeat it. We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich East (Nicola Richards), who does so much on this hugely important subject and who was the genesis of the important debate we had on Tuesday. I know that she and Lord Austin from the other place were keen to acknowledge a gentleman who is in the Public Gallery today—Peter Madeley—a former reporter in the west midlands who has done so much over so many years to report on important issues for the Jewish community.

The hon. Member for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols), as I have already mentioned, gave us some very interesting references to the wrestling community, and pointed out the hugely important history, culture and contribution to Britain from the Jewish community and how deep and broad that contribution is. My hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Greg Smith) made a hugely important point about the challenges that the community currently face. My hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy (Robin Millar) spoke about the importance of shared heritage and the ability to reconcile that in a way that works for everybody, irrespective of faith, culture, ethnicity or background.

Finally, I come to my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster. We began our electoral journey together in the same place in Westminster in 2006. I had the privilege of representing a historically very Jewish area of Maida Vale, known in the 1880s as “New Jerusalem”, which contains the Spanish & Portuguese Synagogue, and we both had the privilege of serving alongside such luminaries as Sir Simon Milton, Melvyn Caplan, Daniel Astaire and the former Lord Mayor of Westminster, Councillor Louise Hyams, who is also in the Public Gallery.

I am incredibly grateful to my hon. Friend for securing this debate. It has been a privilege to be here and to hear about the contributions the Jewish community have made to our country over so many years, decades and centuries. This Government are wholly committed to honouring, celebrating and safeguarding the security of our Jewish communities. That is a commitment that I know everybody shares, wherever they sit in this place, a commitment that we must work together to uphold and a commitment that is demonstrated by our support for the debate today.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nickie Aiken]

I thank everybody across the Chamber for taking part in what I think is a timely and important debate. I thank the Board of Deputies of British Jews, who have been very helpful to me and my team on the research for my speech. I also thank the Jewish Chronicle for providing me with my first-ever front-page lead story this week, and the Jewish News, which has a triple-page spread on the merits of a British Jewish history month. I hope that they will continue to support our campaign to bring this important month to fruition.

[Andrew Percy]

As we have a little bit of time, and as my hon. Friend has started thanking everybody, may I also place on record my thanks to the Hull History Centre, which has incredible resources available on the history of the Jewish community in Hull and helped me prepare some of my words for the debate?

[Nickie Aiken]

It was a pleasure to allow that intervention.

It is absolutely right that we continue to educate ourselves and future generations on antisemitism and the holocaust, and we will be marking the holocaust later this month, but it is equally important—or perhaps more important—that we highlight and celebrate the achievements and contributions of the Jewish community. The Jewish story in Britain is a positive and a negative one. It is a history of human suffering, of human perseverance and of human strength. Now more than ever, it is important that British Jews know that their incredible contribution to this country is valued and that the history of antisemitism is understood.

I take this opportunity to thank the very special rabbi in my constituency, Rabbi Daniel Epstein of Western Marble Arch Synagogue; I am sure he is not impressed by my Hebrew in this debate, but he provided me with the text from the Torah that I repeated in my speech. The Jewish community in the Cities of London and Westminster and across the nation is very important to me and has been very supportive of me, and has led me to believe that it is now more important than ever that we have a British Jewish history month.

I look forward to working with this Government, who I believe are very positive towards the suggestion, and with Jewish community to make the proposal a reality. We must celebrate the British Jewish community and we must have a British Jewish history month.