Holocaust Memorial Day

Lord Evans of Sealand Excerpts

Thursday 13th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Evans of Sealand (Lab) (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, it is humbling—and slightly daunting—to follow such moving and important contributions, particularly from my noble friends Lord Katz and Lady Levitt. I will do my best. I would like to do three things in this speech: give some thanks, briefly tell the story of why I am here, and contribute to this debate.

First, I thank my noble friends Lord Kennedy and Lady Ramsey of Wall Heath for introducing me; the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, for her brilliant leadership and support; and the doorkeepers and all the Lords staff who have been a credit to this House and an enormous help to me. With all these maiden speeches, I hope they feel cherished—they certainly deserve to.

Of course, I thank my noble friends, but I have also been made to feel so welcome right across the House. After three short weeks, it is clear to me that this House is an extraordinary place. It certainly has its foibles and it is not perfect. But the quality of expertise, scrutiny and debate is world-class. Dig under the partisan froth, which occasionally bubbles up even here, something terribly important is happening: the foundation of so much of what we have as a nation. It is democracy at work.

Why am I here? It started with my parents, both working class; their values were family, fairness, decency and hard work. Together, they were greater than the sum of their parts, and they worked so hard to give my brother Rob and I the start in life that everybody should have: safe, secure and loving.

So many people have helped and encouraged me but I will pick out just three: Dennis Wiseman, my English teacher at St Olave’s school, saw something in me that I did not see in myself; my friend and mentor Len Collinson, who told me I knew nothing about business and then dedicated so much of his time to teach me so much; and the exceptional Baroness Margaret McDonagh of this House, sadly no longer with us.

Noble Lords will all have their own stories about what got them into politics. Over the years, I have worked with some brilliant people from all mainstream parties, all wanting to change places and lives for the better but disagreeing on exactly how—which is what democracy is about. You cannot have democracy without political parties, and the disrespect in which they are held by too many is a great jeopardy for us.

I can remember the day I first got involved in politics like it was yesterday. It was 12 May 1979. Margaret Thatcher had just been elected in a landslide, but it was not that election that called me to action. I was meeting my brother Rob in our local high street. I was late and, as I approached, I saw him being bullied, mocked and taunted by a group of teenagers. Rob has a learning disability. I sorted those kids out—trust me, I did—but on the bus on the way home, I realised that I would not always be there for him. I needed to do something to make the place better, safer and kinder. Why did those kids think it was right to bully and mock, whereas similar kids from our street were kind, generous and inclusive to him? I wanted a country that brings out the best in people and discourages the worst. I joined the Labour Party that day.

I am fortunate, though, to have three families: my own—my wife, brother and daughter; the Labour Party; and, thanks to the only unkind thing my father ever did, imposing on me the life sentence of supporting Chester Football Club, I have Chester Football Club. All three have the power to test me, but I am blessed to have them.

Hatred in politics was alive and well when I was cutting my political teeth in the 1980s, with the National Front on the rise. In 1988, I visited the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where many of the mechanics of the Holocaust were developed before implementation in the larger camps. It was a profound experience which lives with me today: the mundane, everyday things in the well-preserved huts; living quarters, not statistics.

Those who perpetrated the atrocities were people as well. As Steven Pinker has said:

“We have to be prepared … to see that evildoers always think they are acting morally”.


Yesterday, in advance of going on a delegation to Israel next week, I witnessed raw footage collected by the IDF of the 7 October atrocities, which are still happening today. Were they monsters? Maybe, but they were also people like us, which is difficult for us to concede. Despite technological, economic and social advances, we are still constantly rocked and astonished as atrocities are committed today. It is too easy to demonise perpetrators as simply evil.

In 2006, 12 British National Party councillors were elected in Barking and Dagenham. Rapid change, poverty and deindustrialisation all played a part, but political parties, including my own, were also culpable. I am proud of the work I did alongside many others, notably the noble Baroness, Lady Hodge, to regain the confidence of residents in mainstream politics there.

I became general secretary of the Labour Party in 2020. I was alarmed to find anti-Semitism alive and well in my own family, the Labour Party. My friend, Dame Louise Ellman, who suffered terrible anti-Semitic abuse, once said to me, “Only now can I really fully understand how ordinary people can do terrible things”. That chilled me. This was not the 1940s in another country; this was England in the 21st century, within a progressive political party. It was a personal pleasure to welcome Louise back into Labour Party membership in 2021.

Keir Starmer provided first-class leadership, and it fell to me as general secretary to root out anti-Semitism. It was not easy. I witnessed the certainty of the self-righteous, and indestructible narratives that resisted challenge and even truth, but I was ably assisted by so many in that task, including my noble friend Lady Ramsey, who led the transformation of our complaints process and did so much to restore the battered confidence of Jewish stakeholders. My noble friend Lord Katz provided exemplary leadership, and the Jewish Labour Movement was courageous and resilient. Other Jewish leaders trusted us when they could have been forgiven for not doing so. It was tough but, together, we changed the Labour Party for good.

However, there can be no complacency. There is still a toxicity in our politics, and, sadly, it is growing. I saw it in the recent general election all too clearly. It is easy to descend to the lowest and to proffer simple solutions to complex problems. My fundamental belief remains that, with the right environment, support and nurture, the overwhelming majority share the values my parents taught me: generosity, kindness and love.

The work done in your Lordships’ House is noble in the best sense of the word, but it could be too easy for us to become cocooned in this House and the other place against the harsh political reality. There has never been more volatility, or less affinity with mainstream parties. This is a real danger. Very little in politics is inevitable, but a dysfunctional democracy is certainly a precondition for the worst to prevail.

As my noble friend Lord Dubs, who knows more about this than most of us, said, we must never be bystanders to hatred. That can be difficult, but thanks to the support of so many, I was able not to be a bystander to hatred in that high street with my brother in 1979, to the BNP in Barking and Dagenham, or to anti-Semitism in the Labour Party. It is up to us to spot and stop the small acts of hatred wherever we find them, before they become the norm, before they burgeon with the accelerator of social media, and before it is too late.

David Baddiel has said that anti-Semitism is unique in its ability to shapeshift. It exists in both the far right and the far left, in conspiracies, in populism and even among those who claim to fight racism. No party represented here is immune. I am proud to be a Member of your Lordships’ House, but we need to do more. We are the doorkeepers of our democracy. If we allow democracy to fray and decay—and it is doing exactly that—on our watch, we could open the door again to the kinds of atrocities we are marking today. We must simply never let it happen.