Holocaust Memorial Bill

Lord Mancroft Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 4th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mancroft (Con)]

My Lords, like most, if not all, speakers in this debate, I believe it is right that we do all we can to make sure that, first, those who suffered in the Holocaust, perhaps the wickedest crime of all time, are remembered through a fitting national memorial, but also that their memory and what happened to them are never forgotten. I therefore share the view that our national memorial should incorporate a comprehensive learning centre. I say that at a time when anti-Semitism has grown among us, in a way that I never thought would happen again in my lifetime—how wrong I was. For that reason, I do not support the proposal to divide the memorial from the proposed learning centre. I realise that this has been proposed because it is quite simply impossible to incorporate a comprehensive learning centre alongside, let alone underneath, a memorial in Victoria Tower Gardens—there is simply not enough room.

I strolled through the gardens in the sunshine yesterday, past the statue memorial to Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst and the Burghers of Calais, both beautifully commemorated. Looking across the grass to the Buxton memorial, which is also a fitting reminder of another of the world’s most terrible crimes—between the wonderful plane trees, whose leaves cannot be more than a few yards apart—I found it almost impossible to believe that anyone will be able to see what Adjaye Associates have described:

“Visitors approaching the Memorial will see a subtle grass landform with only the tips of the Memorial’s fins bristling in the distance”.


I think it unlikely that they will see anything except a confusing muddle between the Buxton memorial and the trees. I simply do not see how it is possible to produce a structure of the quality that this project demands in such a constricted site.

I share with others the concern that the design produced is, at the very least, underwhelming. It is brutalist, symbolically obscure and, to my mind, hideous. It is meant to stimulate

“a sense of curiosity and intrigue where visitors are encouraged to explore further into the memorial”.

In my view, it is unlikely to inspire anything except sadness that the Buxton memorial has been overwhelmed by a new, inexplicable encroachment. If as many people visit the memorial as we would wish, they will inevitably turn the gardens from a place of peace and tranquillity into an overcrowded space. If they do not, it will mean that the memorial is not attracting the numbers we all hope for.

In her 2022 ruling, Mrs Justice Thornton said that all those involved in the action

“support the principle of a compelling memorial to the victims of the Holocaust”.

I go further than that. As the heir to probably the oldest Jewish community in Britain—Sephardic Jews from Spain, who made their home in the parish of Mancroft in Norwich in 1180 and remained there for more than 800 years, staying hidden throughout the expulsion— I am one of the few people of Jewish heritage who has, as far as I know, no relatives who were victims of the Holocaust. I am not even a practising Jew, as my father was, as I was baptised into the Anglican Church. When I visited Yad Vashem, I found it beautiful, fascinating, horrifying, informative and incredibly moving, and I shall never forget the experience. If we here in Britain were to create a national memorial only partially as impressive, we shall have done a very good job. But I fear that an ugly projection crammed into the far end of Victoria Tower Gardens, with a pokey underground visitor attraction posing as a centre of education, surrounded by traffic, will be simply another over-budget, government-sponsored infrastructure failure that will please no one and serve only to ruin that lovely garden.

Let us today take this opportunity, before it is too late, to say to the Government that we want a national Holocaust memorial with an education centre, but that the far end of Victoria Tower Gardens is not a suitable site for such a uniquely important national project. We are in danger of trying to create a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, and I am sorry to say that we shall fail.