Recognition of Western Sahara as Moroccan

Debate between Fabian Hamilton and Daniel Kawczynski

Wednesday 8th May 2024 Westminster Hall

[Fabian Hamilton (Leeds North East) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman mentions Members of this House who have family connections to Morrocco. Does he agree that the fact that my late great-uncle was the Jewish major of Tangier during the second world war proves the point he is making?

[Daniel Kawczynski]

I am very aware, through our discussions, of the hon. Gentleman’s family connections with Tangier. I pay tribute to him and his ancestors and relatives, who played such a critical role in Morocco at a particularly difficult time.

Mohammed V, in response to Vichy and Adolf Hitler, said, “There are no Jews. There are no Muslims. There are only Moroccans.” He refused to comply with the diktat of Pétain and Hitler and did not cave in to those demands. I think that is testimony to the way in which the royal family of the Kingdom of Morocco protects all religious minorities. I heard from one journalist that the late Yitzhak Rabin, the former Israeli Prime Minister, said that when he had difficulties with the Moroccan Jewish population, he sought the advice and support of the late King Hassan, who had such close links with that diaspora in his own kingdom.

Secondly, I want to talk about women’s rights. During my many visits to Morocco I have met women who are far more empowered in Morocco than in many other Arab nations. Having met many female journalists, civil engineers, women who work in construction, female politicians and female diplomats, one gets the impression that Morocco, out of all of the Arab League members, understands and recognises that it will become a true modern society only if women are empowered and supported, not only through the education system but by being able to reach the very top of all sectors in society and the economy, including those that have historically been dominated by males.

Finally, I turn to democracy. On my many visits to Morocco I have witnessed and experienced what I perceive to be a greater freedom of the press than I have come across in any other Arab nation. There is greater protection of citizens under the constitution, a genuine Parliament, a genuine system of checks and balances, and genuine power of the opposition. Having spoken to many opposition MPs in Morocco, one gets the sense that it is a genuine thriving democracy where the rule of law is protected and people can debate and challenge one another in the most robust way without fear of retribution.

The key issue facing Britain today is the growing spread of the malign Iranian influence across the middle east and north Africa. That evil, despotic regime, which came about after the fall of the Shah in 1979, with the mullahs that control Iran—I visited Tehran when I was on the Foreign Affairs Select Committee—is one of the most dangerous, violent, authoritarian regimes in the region. It suppresses and abuses its own people and throws gay people off buildings. It is a very dangerous country and its malign influence is spreading across the region.

I will briefly mention the allegations of Iranian influence in the disturbances and difficulties that Bahrain faced in 2011. Iran filled the void in Iraq, which Mr Blair helped to create in the second invasion of Iraq, and its malign influence is growing there. Our miscalculations over Syria have given the Iranians the ability to enter the country. It supports Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas, and the Houthi rebels in Yemen. Its influence is extending to north Africa, Libya and Algeria through its support of the Polisario movement.

In contrast, Morocco is a thriving democracy. When I went to Morocco, I saw the massive effort to stem the flow of illegal migration to Europe. I met many officials and heard how they have managed to prevent over 300,000 illegal crossings into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta and the Canary Islands. Bearing in mind how we are getting increasingly agitated and frustrated about the illegal migration operating in the English channel, we have to pay tribute to the extraordinary support and vision that Morocco has in policing its own borders and making sure that illegal migration does not end up in Europe and ultimately through Europe to the United Kingdom.

With the restrictions in the Red sea and ultimately the Suez canal as a result of the conduct of the Houthi rebels, the waterway around the Moroccan coastline will be even more important for our security and defence capability.

There are of course huge commercial opportunities. Between 700,000 and 1 million British tourists visit Morocco every year. We also have a company, Xlinks—its chief executive officer is Sir Dave Lewis—that seeks to export green energy by funnelling solar and wind power from Morocco through an undersea cable to Britain. That aspiration could ultimately lead to 8% of British energy requirements being provided by Morocco through green energy.

Earlier this year I visited Western Sahara, including Laayoune and Dakhla, with General Sir Simon Mayall. We spent a week together in Dakhla and the wider area. The highlight of our visit was our meeting the Foreign Minister of Morocco, Nasser Bourita, with whom we spent an hour and a half. Instinctively, when we started to talk to him, although, of course, I am not going to reveal the intricate discussions we had—[Interruption.] Does the hon. Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady) wish to say something?

Holocaust Memorial Day

Debate between Fabian Hamilton and Daniel Kawczynski

Thursday 23rd January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Fabian Hamilton]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. Every day in this place—I have been here 22 and a half years—we learn of colleagues who have a connection to a Jewish past, and my hon. Friend has just told us about his.

While I was in Paris, I went to Drancy and met the maire adjoint—the deputy mayor—of that small township. We went to the holocaust memorial centre on the housing estate that had become a concentration camp in 1940. While we were there, there were demonstrations in the small town of Sarcelles on the outskirts of Paris—the very town my great-grandmother, Raina Sevilla, came from. The demonstrations were against the Jewish people there. People were calling on the community to burn the synagogue down. This was in 2014, at the very time I was going to commemorate the death of my great-grandmother in the holocaust.

In 1985, I received a surprise phone call from my father, who sadly passed away in 1988. He was doing some research into his family history, and had discovered something quite extraordinary: his family, who he assumed had been murdered in the holocaust—while he was at school here in England and then volunteering for the British Army—had actually survived their incarceration in Bergen-Belsen.

My grandfather was born in Salonica—Thessaloniki in modern Greece. It is important to know that the Nazis invaded Salonica somewhat later than many parts of Europe. That meant that many of the Sephardic community of that great city survived, My grandfather’s brother’s wife, Bella Ouziel, not only survived, but, in 1985, was alive and well at the age of 93. My father asked whether I was free at the weekend, and we flew via Athens to Salonica. We met this magnificent old woman of 93, with her painted fingernails, her Jaeger dress and her coiffured hair. We sat down with her in her apartment, and we discussed the war experience.

My father had not seen Bella since 1934, when he was 12. However, he had kept photographs—Bella’s had been destroyed when she had been arrested with her daughter and her granddaughter and taken to Bergen-Belsen. We discussed at great length. Luckily, we had a shared language, French, which was my father’s first language and the language of many of the educated Sephardic Jews of Salonica—indeed, I speak it fluently as well—so we had a very good conversation. We laid out on the coffee table the photographs she thought she would never see again, but which my dad had kept, and which I have had electronically scanned. At the age of 30, for the first time in my life, I heard a first-hand account of life in a concentration camp. That is something I shall never forget, nor should any of us ever forget it.

The Holocaust Survivors’ Friendship Association was set up in Leeds and covers most of the north of England; indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) drew attention to its work in establishing the Holocaust Exhibition and Learning Centre at the University of Huddersfield. It did that by gaining grants from the national lottery heritage fund, the Pears Foundation and the Association of Jewish Refugees, as well as many personal donations. It set up an exhibition called “Through Our Eyes”, for which it interviewed 20 holocaust survivors over several days, many of whom have since died. The idea is that, once their physical presence has left us, their presence will still be felt through a series of interactive holographic videos. Visitors can go to the centre and actually interview some of the people in those videos—many of whom are not with us anymore—and ask them about their life. What a great tribute to the people who survived, and survived for so many years. What a wonderful thing for our children and grandchildren to have when the physical presence of those individuals is no longer with us.

I have to pay tribute to the wonderful Lilian Black. Her father, Eugene, was a survivor from Auschwitz-Birkenau. He was 16 years old when he was there. He died a few years ago, and I remember him well. Lilian has taken the memory of her father and the experience he had, and she has worked with the HSFA and the survivors to create this fantastic centre. If hon. Members have not been there, they should please go—it is absolutely brilliant, as my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield said.

I also want to pay tribute to the survivors who still live and, indeed, to those who are no longer with us. My constituent Arek Hersh, who lives in the village of Harewood, has a wonderful mix of Polish and Yorkshire when he speaks English—it is a great accent. A room at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem has been named after him. He wrote a wonderful book about his experience, which I recommend. He is 91 now; he was an 11-year-old boy when he was taken off the streets of the Lodz ghetto in Poland. He was then taken to a number of different camps. When I met him at Yad Vashem, he was with his friend Jacob. Jacob and Arek had shared a bunk in every camp they were in from the age of 11 until they were liberated at the age of 16. How they survived is quite a miracle.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

The hon. Gentleman is making an eloquent and powerful speech. He has referenced Poland on several occasions. I hope he will join me in remembering the millions of Poles who were killed during the holocaust, many of whom, like a member of my family, Jan Kawczynski, were shot by the Germans for hiding their Jewish friends and neighbours. The hon. Gentleman will know that Poland was the only occupied country with the death penalty for helping and protecting Jewish citizens. I would be grateful if he could acknowledge the suffering of the Poles in helping their Jewish friends.

[Fabian Hamilton]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that powerful intervention. I have always believed that the Poles played the most extraordinary role, and paid a high price for it, in the second world war. My heart goes out to all my Polish friends; I have many, and one of my best friends at school was Polish. He could not go back to Poland until after the end of communism, because his parents had fled the communist regime there. The Poles are a wonderful, brave people. They did so much to resist the Nazis and so much to protect their Jewish population—the largest in the whole of Europe before the second world war. My heart goes out to all Poles who played a vital part in protecting their Jewish citizens as well as their own, who suffered so much.

Iby Knill was born in Bratislava. Later, she was smuggled across the border to Hungary, where she spent the first part of the war fighting the oppression of the Nazis, until she was eventually arrested as a communist and taken to Auschwitz No. 2 camp. While she was there, she teamed up with all the other women nurses, doctors and dentists—medically qualified people. She did that because, as she says in her book “The woman without a number”—again, I recommend it to all Members here—if people stayed together in solidarity, it was very hard for the Nazis to pick them off individually. She saw Dr Mengele every single day, but because she went to the camps in 1944, she survived.

Iby married a British Army colonel after the war. After his death, she began to talk about her experiences. She had come to Leeds in the early 1960s, and she taught at universities and worked for the local authority. Now, at the age of 96, my constituent Iby writes, lectures and gives talks. Indeed, eight or nine years ago, she did a talk for Members in Speaker’s House, with the blessing of the former Speaker, John Bercow. Some may remember it; it was a very moving occasion.

Iby has written another book, called “The Woman with Nine Lives”. In her books, she talks about the fact that she never had the tattoo. When people ask her about that, she says, “I do not know why I was not tattooed. Maybe it was because they ran out of ink, or maybe the officer concerned simply had to go to the toilet.” Iby’s first-hand accounts are well worth reading, and it is extraordinary that, at 96, she is still able to go around our schools and educational institutions.

Trude Silman is another survivor. She came from Bratislava during the war, on the Kindertransport. She is 91 now. She is a very close friend of mine and my wife’s: we see her every other week if we possibly can, and I was with her at the weekend. She is a contributor to the exhibition at Huddersfield University, and figures large in it. Eugene Black I have mentioned. John Chillag, who died recently as well, was another holocaust survivor in the city of Leeds. But the person I want to end my contribution by describing is someone who was born on 14 February 1920—two years before my own father was born—and died on 1 January this year, six weeks before his 100th birthday. His name was Heinz Skyte.

Heinz was absolutely extraordinary. He was the founding director of the Leeds Jewish Welfare Board and the Leeds Jewish Housing Association, organisations that have done so much for so many Jewish people who have been so underprivileged and have had so many problems in their own lives in the city of Leeds. He made an incredible contribution. He was also a great supporter of Leeds United football club. But the one thing I remember him for—I will finish with this short anecdote—is that in 1998, a year after I was elected to this place to represent my constituency, he gave a talk on the 60th anniversary of Kristallnacht. We are talking about a number of anniversaries today, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Heinz was a student of the University of Hamburg. He was born in Munich, but he went to Hamburg to study. One evening, he received a phone call on his landlady’s telephone. “You need to get out of there,” said his mother. “They are going to ransack the synagogues. They are going to arrest and beat the Jewish people of Hamburg. Go to the park, and stay there all night.” It was four o’clock in the afternoon. So Heinz stayed there all night. He saw the fires. He saw Jews being arrested, being beaten, being brutally attacked. He saw the Torah scrolls being removed from the synagogues and burnt in the streets. He saw the destruction of Jewish businesses. He told us this from his first-hand experience. It is the kind of thing that you never forget hearing.

After the night of destruction and horror was over, Heinz managed to get through to his mother, and his mother said, “Go and see our family doctor. He has retired from Munich, and he now lives in Hamburg with his daughter. Go to his flat. This is the address.” So he turned up, at six or seven in the morning. He walked through the front door to find the old man sitting on the sofa in his full Wehrmacht uniform from the first world war. If you had been a serving officer in the German army, you were allowed, above a certain rank, to keep your uniform, and there was the old doctor with his pointed helmet with the spike on it, and his Iron Cross First Class.

The Gestapo had broken down the door—they did not knock on the doors, they broke the doors down—to arrest this filthy Jew, and they had found a man with an Iron Cross, in an army uniform, with the rank of major. They did not know what to do. As Heinz said at the time, “Zey didn’t have ze mobile phones.” They could not ring headquarters to get instructions, so they left. The doctor gathered his belongings in shock, with his daughter and with Heinz, and they took the train out of Hamburg. This was in 1938. They went to Denmark, they crossed the sea to England, and they came to Leeds. The doctor lived until the 1960s. I do not know what became of the daughter.

That is a story that I wanted to share with the House because it is a story that Heinz told us from his first-hand experience. Here was one of the last living witnesses of the horrors of the holocaust, someone who himself made a recording, and—I am very proud to hear this—at his funeral on 5 or 6 January at the Jewish cemetery in Leeds, his son Peter said that until his dying day, Heinz was a member of the Labour party. He never lost those values. He was never prepared to give them up, in spite of what he did not like in our party.

So it is with that tribute to Heinz Skyte that I finish my remarks. I thank Members for all the contributions that are being made today, and I thank them for indulging me in talking about my own family’s history.

Libya

Debate between Fabian Hamilton and Daniel Kawczynski

Wednesday 26th October 2016 Westminster Hall

[Fabian Hamilton (Leeds North East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Chope. It is also a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady), who is the Scottish National party’s spokesperson on foreign affairs and international development.

Back in 2005 I had the opportunity to visit Libya with the Foreign Affairs Committee. It was very different in those days. Gaddafi reigned supreme, and I found, as we all did, the country to be a paranoid place, covered with posters of Gaddafi—“the father of Africa”—with his portrait stemming out of a map of the whole of Africa. It was a deeply disturbing place; there were no street signs or even road markings because they were so scared of invasion. We did not have the opportunity then to meet Colonel Gaddafi—I never met him, thankfully—but we met his deputy, Musa Kusa, who was one of the most sinister people I have ever met. During the revolution he “defected” to the west and came to live in Britain. I do not know if he is still here, but he gave us a portrait of Libya in 2005 that was worrying to say the least, given the human rights abuses and the absolute authority of Gaddafi and the way he dealt with opposition.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

My understanding is that Musa Kusa did not come to live in the United Kingdom. I believe he is currently living in the middle east.

[Fabian Hamilton]

That is interesting to learn; he certainly survived, although he was clearly Gaddafi’s henchman and de facto deputy.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng) on raising a really important issue in the debate. It is something Parliament has not paid sufficient attention to, and the Government have not paid sufficient attention to it either; I am sure the Minister will contradict that when he winds up the debate in a few minutes’ time. I also commend the Foreign Affairs Committee—I served on it for 10 years—under the leadership of the hon. Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt)—I think he is a right hon. Member now.

Flood Risk Management

Debate between Fabian Hamilton and Daniel Kawczynski

Wednesday 9th February 2011 Westminster Hall

[Fabian Hamilton (Leeds North East) (Lab)]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Hugh Bayley) for initiating the debate this afternoon.

After the then Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), had made a statement to the House on flooding on 17 December 2008, I asked him a question about his proposed trial areas for surface water management in Leeds. My question was about an area in the Roundhay ward of my constituency called the Wellhouses—a series of residential streets through the middle of which runs Gledhow beck. I had been approached by local residents who were concerned that they had the responsibility for maintaining the banks of the beck, which frequently overflows during heavy rain, exacerbated by the excessive outflows of water from the balancing lake in Roundhay park. As always, my right hon. Friend was courteous and helpful in his reply, and promised to let me know whether Gledhow beck would come under his plans to transfer surface water management to local authorities such as Leeds—one of his trial areas—in 2011. The subsequent answer was that it would.

Surface water management might appear to many to be a rather dry and uninteresting issue until their homes are flooded by exceptional rainfall or overflowing balancing lakes. I took up the issue affecting the residents of the Wellhouses because I was shown first hand the appalling damage that could be done in an instant to the homes of people I am privileged to represent. Most people never give a moment’s thought to the merest possibility of their homes being flooded, until it happens.

It is true that many parts of the hilly city of Leeds will never be in danger of flooding. Where I am fortunate to live—in Pudsey to the west of the city, between Leeds and Bradford—we are more than 650 feet above sea level and can be complacent. However, much of Leeds is built around the River Aire, and is therefore susceptible to flooding. On 15 June 2007, Leeds city centre came very close indeed to being overwhelmed by water, after days of appalling weather when a whole month’s rainfall fell in 24 hours—Leeds was not unique in that, that summer. Many city centre roads were under water, and the city almost came to a juddering, squelchy halt. On 27 June 2007, the Yorkshire Evening Post reported that more than 6 cm of rain had fallen during the previous nine hours,

“causing millions of pounds worth of damage to flooded homes, schools and businesses. Dozens of trains were cancelled and roads were gridlocked as the city tried to cope with the torrential downpour, the heaviest on a single day for 50 years.”

Suzanne McTaggart’s report added:

“The latest stormy weather comes after heavy rain hit Leeds just over a week ago, when rivers threatened to burst their banks and roads became waterways. Many areas saw six weeks worth of rain in just 24 hours yesterday…making this the wettest June ever—and possibly the wettest month since Met Office records began in 1882.”

On its excellent website, the Environment Agency says of its proposed Leeds River Aire flood alleviation scheme:

“Leeds has suffered from localised flooding in recent years which caused significant disruption to local residents, businesses and commuters. However, these floods were relatively small and there is always the risk of a much larger flood.”

The Environment Agency’s latest briefing on the Leeds scheme tells us that the agency is now working closely with Leeds city council to come up with an affordable scheme. It estimates that the current comprehensive scheme would cost about £190 million and would involve building raised defences on the River Aire, thus directly protecting 255 residential and 495 commercial properties and indirectly helping to avoid the flooding of 3,800 residential and commercial properties. The briefing suggests that if the city of Leeds were inundated by floodwater, the damage would total at least £480 million —several times the cost of the flood defences. DEFRA has asked the Environment Agency to continue working with Leeds city council to secure alternative sources of funding or to find ways to reduce the costs of the project, but initial indications from DEFRA, which I understand have now been confirmed, show that sufficient funding will not be available in 2011-12 to proceed to detailed design.

I intend no disrespect to my good friends who represent the great Yorkshire cities of Hull, Bradford and Sheffield, or, of course, to the wonderful people who live in those cities, when I say that Leeds is without doubt the engine of the whole Yorkshire regional economy. Like every other city in the UK, with the possible exception of London, Leeds has been badly hit by the economic downturn, but it still draws in tens of thousands of commuters every day, who come to work in the many businesses, legal practices and financial institutions that operate from Leeds city centre. Leeds is still the largest financial centre in England outside London—hon. Members can forget about Manchester. Imagine what would happen if the “relatively small” floods in 2007 became a much larger flood, as the Environment Agency fears they might, swamping the centre of Leeds, its wealth-generating businesses and its newly built apartments and homes.

Spending a relatively small amount now could, however, help to prevent catastrophe in the future. With climate change making rainfall in these islands ever more unpredictable, the River Aire will burst its banks sooner or later and drown our city. Not only will thousands of homes be affected, but millions, if not billions, of pounds of business activity will be halted, and thousands of hard-working citizens will have their jobs or their lives ruined—all for the want of the flood defences that could have been built, but which the Government cut because the deficit simply had to be repaid in four years, rather than five, six or even seven. [Interruption.] Sorry, does the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) want to intervene?

[Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)]

I am not allowed.

[Fabian Hamilton]

In the summer of 2009, I was approached by the residents of Valley terrace, which is in an area of housing just off the Leeds outer ring road, in the Roundhay ward. They were upset that woodland between their homes and the noisy, busy dual-carriageway ring road was to be destroyed and built on by developers.