Anti-Semitism

Lord Brady of Altrincham Excerpts

Tuesday 17th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sir Graham Brady (Altrincham and Sale West) (Con)]

This is a difficult debate that I think many of us would wish it was not necessary to hold. Nevertheless, I welcome the tone of the Front-Bench speakers in seeking to tackle such a difficult subject. I particularly welcome the commitment of the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne), to stamp out anti-Semitism in the Labour party, although it was clear from some interventions from Opposition Members that there is a long way to go in achieving that.

[Karen Lee]

Does the hon. Gentleman think it is appropriate for Members to use, for instance, the N-word? I condemn all forms of racism; does the hon. Gentleman agree?

[Sir Graham Brady]

I condemn all forms of racism, but there is a danger in suggesting that anti-Semitism is somehow different from other forms of racism—it is not. I hope that the hon. Lady will join me in condemning all forms equally.

As a contributor to the 2015 all-party inquiry led by the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann), I was keen to contribute to this debate. Indeed, I am also keen to do so as a Member who represents a significant part of Manchester’s Jewish community.

This important debate is necessarily short because of the previous business, so I must be brief, but it is worth noting that there is a thread that links the business that we dealt with earlier and the business that we are addressing now. The targeted strikes on Saturday were about drawing a clear line to mark the limits of decent human behaviour, ruling out chemical weapons as too horrible to be tolerated, and stopping them from becoming a normal part of a modern arsenal. Similarly, we are discussing in this debate patterns of thought and behaviour that are not new—they have been the cause of terrible crimes and loss of life in the past—but that must not be allowed to become normal in modern Britain.

The Jewish community in Manchester is the oldest and most established minority community in the city, with many Jewish people having fled there from persecution in the 19th or 20th centuries. There are 2,000 to 2,500 Jewish residents in my constituency, but I suspect that there are many more who identify as Jewish but are not particularly observant. We have four synagogues, including the newest Sephardi synagogue in the country, which opened just a year ago. The community is a model of integration, contributing fully to the wider civic and cultural life of the area, but it also maintains its own religious and cultural traditions. There is an excellent record of interfaith co-operation with local Muslim and Christian groups.

Nevertheless, in Manchester, as elsewhere, there has been an insidious growth in the number of anti-Semitic incidents. The CST has been mentioned. It has been collecting data for the past 30 years, but the past two years have seen the largest figures on record, with the number of incidents rising to nearly 1,400 last year, as the Secretary of State said. In some ways, the most worrying thing about that increase is that unlike some previous peaks in anti-Semitism, it has not been driven by wars involving Israel. Rather, it seems that an increasing minority—often on the extreme right or the extreme left of British politics—have come to regard anti-Semitism as in some way normal or acceptable. It is not.

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend share my concern that we are seeing a particularly sharp increase in anti-Semitism on university campuses? Does he agree that Jewish and Israeli students should absolutely never be made to feel unwelcome in their learning environments?

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Graham Brady]

I unequivocally agree with my hon. Friend’s point.

Some appear to have persuaded themselves that anti-Semitism is something other than racism. They are wrong. It is of course possible to criticise Israel without being anti-Semitic. British Jews themselves often have a lively debate about policy in Israel, but all too often that criticism of Israel blurs into anti-Semitism through the use of language—whether careless or deliberate. In my constituency, recorded incidents of anti-Semitism are thankfully low—five incidents of abuse recorded in the past year. It is much worse in other parts of Greater Manchester, as the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish will know well, where 53 assaults were reported in the past year.

The greatest fear comes as people sense a change in the climate. There is a greater willingness for some to tolerate attacks on Jewish people. I was powerfully struck by this a few weeks ago when a Jewish constituent in his sixties sat in my constituency surgery and told me that he is now worried about anti-Semitism for the first time in his life.

Last week, my wife and I attended a very moving Yom HaShoah event in Manchester, commemorating the holocaust and the Warsaw ghetto uprising. There was a very clear warning from two of the speakers, Judge Lindsey Kushner and Martin Davidson—Davidson is the author of “The Perfect Nazi” which is about the discovery of his German grandfather’s enthusiastic support for the Nazi party before the second world war. The message from both was that the seemingly impossible can happen—that seemingly educated and outwardly respectable people have in the past and could again be anti-Semitic—and that abhorrent attitudes can become engrained or normal. It is incumbent on all of us to stop that from happening by challenging anti-Semitism wherever it arises, by recognising the fear that is being kindled in Jewish communities around the country at the moment, and by understanding where the boundaries of civilised debate lie. This debate is just an important start.