Antisemitism in Modern Society

Jess Phillips Excerpts

Wednesday 20th February 2019 Commons Chamber

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

It is a pleasure to follow the powerful speech of the right hon. Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge). It is also an honour to speak after my hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb), who made an excellent speech. We have been great friends since I made a speech here against tuition fees in 2010. He told me I was wrong then and has not stopped telling me I am wrong about Brexit, but we have been great friends even since, and on this issue, as on so many others, we have worked together closely. I join him in paying tribute to my constituency neighbour the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) for the work he has done chairing our all-party group on antisemitism, often in the face of abuse and, sadly recently, of threats and abuse against his nearest and dearest. He deserves great credit for his work.

I want to start on the good news. As this debate is demonstrating, most people in this country are decent, tolerant and open-minded, and that is proven, I think, by surveys in recent years. The annual Eurobarometer has consistently shown that Britain is one of the most tolerant societies in Europe, with some of the most positive views on immigration. We should never forget that that is how most people in this country feel and think.

That is the good news. The bad news, as many Members have said, is the rise of antisemitism in our country. I share the growing concern and alarm. The statistics that the Secretary of State laid out—I will not lay them out again—should shame us all in this House, on whatever side, as should the views of young Jews living in this country. A recent survey showed that 29% of British Jews had considered emigrating because of safety concerns. That is up from 11% in 2012 to now nearly a third of Jews living in this country. About a quarter of them have suffered antisemitic harassment in the last year and about one in three have suffered such harassment in the past five years. This should shame us all. It makes me embarrassed as a Member of Parliament and should shame us all.

My hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy made a great speech about the experience of Jews living in mainland Europe. I cannot reiterate the feeling we had going to that school in Brussels, which is guarded by armed Belgian soldiers, with armoured vehicles outside. I was a schoolteacher. I never had to go through those hoops to get into my school to teach, and to think that pupils have to go through that in mainland Europe just to go to school and do the things they have a right to do is truly shocking. We asked the young people there if they could see a future for themselves in Europe and only a very few hands went up to show they could.

As many Members have said, we have a problem on both sides of politics in this country. There is a growing movement on the far right. According to all surveys, those on the far right hold the most antisemitic views in society, and that is a huge and growing problem. It should concern us all that the far right is getting younger in this country. It is tapping into this feeling of discontent and all the rest of it. As I said in the Holocaust Memorial Day debate, I am disgusted, as somebody who believes in and campaigned for Brexit, that some of these people are now trying to use that issue to further their own hateful, spiteful and poisonous political ideology. It disgusts me, and I say not in my name and not in the name of the nearly 70% of my constituents who trudged out and voted to leave the EU.

The CST contacted me a couple of weeks ago saying, “We’d like to come and talk to you, because your name is on a far-right list as somebody who is trying to stop Brexit,” as my hon. Friend highlighted. I will sit down with the CST and find out exactly what was said, but that is the nonsense perpetuated on the far right. It is fair to say that UKIP has now become a far-right party. The new leader and some of its members seem to be revelling in embracing a far-right, fascist agenda.

As many colleagues have said, antisemitism is a huge problem on the far left of politics. I will not say a great deal about that—Labour Members can speak to it better than I can—but I was outraged at the report on Sky News that George Galloway, who has reapplied to join the Labour party, described the decision of the hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) to leave the Labour party as a black-ops plot against the leader. He also used the phrase “Goebbels-style” throughout.

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

To reassure the hon. Gentleman and the House, the women in the Labour party have spoken today collectively to push our Front Benchers and the leadership of our party to say that Mr Galloway is not entitled or able to join our party not only because of the rules, but because he is not welcome as he is a misogynist and an antisemite. I would never be in the same party as him.

[Andrew Percy]

I thank the hon. Lady for saying that. Let us call this out for what it was: it was Jew-baiting and a deliberate use of language and of Goebbels to bait. It is exactly the same on the far left as it is on the far right. Let us call George Galloway what he is: he is a misogynist and a racist. That is exactly what he is. He has no place in this Chamber or in politics in this country.

What do we do about antisemitism? We have identified the problem and we know that it is growing in our country. I want to reflect to the Secretary of State on where we are getting it right in schools and the curriculum—I used be a history teacher—but also on where we need to do a lot more. It is right that holocaust education is written into the national curriculum. When we teach holocaust education, we of course teach the history of antisemitism in Europe as part of it, but I fear that the teaching of the holocaust in isolation could leave pupils with the impression that that was the end of it. We say that antisemitism started and ended with the holocaust and the end of the second world war, but we need to look at how we can broaden the school curriculum so that the liberation of Europe and the camps is not the end of the antisemitism story. It is right that holocaust education is on the curriculum, but we need to look at how we can go further.

I had another good idea, but, as a former teacher, I cannot read my own writing. Not for the first time, I will follow up on that excellent idea with the Secretary of State as soon as I have deciphered my own code. I will end on that, but I associate myself with what other hon. Members have said. I am so proud that, in debates such as today’s, the Chamber is united in its revulsion of this disgusting scourge.