Holocaust Memorial Day 2021

Duncan Baker Excerpts

Thursday 28th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Duncan Baker (North Norfolk) (Con) [V]]

North Norfolk is a peaceful constituency of farming, beautiful coastline and, of course, the Norfolk broads. Life generally moves slowly, with a broads ranger quietly reminding a speeding boat that 5 mph is well over the 4 mph limit, and to be more careful in future.

Had I been the MP for North Norfolk in the 1930s, I wonder how I would have reacted to the growing stories of antisemitism in Europe. I wonder how Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Thomas Russell Albert Mason Cook, my predecessor from 1931 to 1945, would have reacted. According to Hansard, in the years between his election and the outbreak of war, he did not once mention the subject. It is not surprising, really, and I do not blame him, because in the same period from Hitler’s power grab, antisemitism gets only 43 mentions in Hansard, and those are largely in passing. In Hitler’s early days in power, that is perhaps excusable, but our records show not only a lack of interest in the rise of evil elsewhere, but a positive wish to keep it there. There are quite a few examples to choose from, but perhaps this one from a debate in 1938 is as good as any to prove the point:

“We must remember that if these people come in here, we risk the rousing of anti-Semitism in this country.” —[Official Report, 24 November 1938; Vol. 341, c. 2053.]

Thankfully, times have changed and continue to change.

As an island nation, we could be accused of being inward-looking. We must not be. Too often it is easier to turn a blind eye or to make the excuse that we must fix our own problems first. Too often, especially these days, people are afraid of calling out wrongdoing or evil for fear of being branded a troublemaker or disrupter, of going against the tide, of challenging authority, of raising their voice when others say they must not, because it means putting their career and reputation at risk. So have I any right to call out Sir Thomas for worrying more about the British sugar subsidy in 1935 than the persecution of Jews in Germany? No. We live in very different times; but it is an important reflection of how far we have come, and must continue to move, so that this period of history is never forgotten yet always learnt from.

That is why today we should be standing up for the Rohingya in Myanmar, and against the Dinka ethnic group in South Sudan for their persecution of the Neur people. We should be calling out the persecution of the Yazidis in Iraq. Perhaps most seriously, there is the persecution of the Uyghurs by the Chinese state. We put our economic comfort against the untold distress of an entire people. These atrocities are happening today. Are we a light in their darkness? We should be. Let us all be a light in their darkness.