Polish Anti-defamation Law

Peter Grant Excerpts

Tuesday 5th June 2018 Westminster Hall

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

Mr Gapes, it is a privilege to be able to contribute to the debate. I cannot go as far as to say it is a pleasure, because it is a difficult debate to take part in and to listen to. The testimonies we have heard will, I hope, continue to be heard in hundreds of years’ time because there is a story here that we cannot afford to forget.

I commend the hon. Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel) on securing the debate and on his contribution, and also the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski), who followed him. It strikes me that we have two people here whose family histories bear remarkable similarities and yet who have used their personal stories to come to completely different conclusions about how we should address what is clearly a serious concern for those in Poland and for many other people. That might be something we should point to—that it is possible for people, with great sincerity and integrity, to come to opposing views about something and be able to air those views such that they disagree without having to get disagreeable. That is too often lacking.

We should also bear in mind that we have heard stories about people—only about a tiny fraction of such people—who did what they believed to be right, knowing that it would cost them their lives. How often in this place does a whole system try to get people to do what it hopes might be politically advantageous to their careers, regardless of what they, in conscience, believe to be right? A clear example has been set by some of the stories we have heard today. It does no harm for Members of Parliament occasionally to look in the mirror and ask ourselves whether we would risk not our lives but our popularity within our party to stand up and speak and vote for what is right.

An earlier speaker said that there was not time in the debate to do justice to the part that the people of Poland and their then Government played in standing against the evil of Nazism. I do not think that the war would have turned out as it did had it not been for the contribution of those people. The truth about many of the things that happen in war gets distorted at the time and continues to be distorted afterwards. We have heard examples of how the Soviet regime tried, and continues to try, to rewrite history completely. I cannot imagine there ever being a time when we will discover that Poland did not play the part it is given credit for. I cannot imagine that the historians will ever find evidence to suggest other than that millions of people in Poland ran horrendous risks and suffered the horrific fate they did to protect friends and neighbours at a time when many other European countries were turning in on themselves. Poland stood against the holocaust at a time when, shamefully, few other countries in occupied Europe, and even in non-occupied Europe, were prepared to do so. I see that as an accepted historical fact and I cannot imagine a time ever coming when it is challenged.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful speech. I want to get on the record something with which I hope he agrees. Poland welcomed more than 3 million Jews to live there before the outbreak of war, and the two communities co-operated and got on very well. I am proud of how the Poles accepted so many outsiders into their country and of the harmonious society they created. It was the travesty of war that created the problems.

[Peter Grant]

I am grateful for that intervention. Clearly, I cannot speak with the hon. Gentleman’s authority about the detailed history of Poland, but I certainly look at it from a common-sense point of view. Surely the Jewish population in Poland was so big because Jews were comfortable there and felt that they would be treated better than in many other countries in Europe.

I find offensive any suggestion that the Polish Government, either directly or indirectly, collaborated with the Nazis, and I well understand why the people of Poland today find such suggestions greatly offensive. However, I am not convinced that criminalising the actions of a newspaper or a television programme is the right way to deal with that offence. That is where the nub lies. I think we must accept that Polish citizens will have collaborated in crimes against humanity—a tiny minority of the Polish population—as, if the full facts were known, there would no doubt have been Scots who collaborated, just as there were Scots who risked their lives to help. People of all nationalities committed acts of great courage, and people of all nationalities will have collaborated in acts of great evil. If we lose sight of that, we do a disservice to all those who risked and lost their lives.

[Stephen Pound]

I apologise for interrupting the hon. Gentleman’s flow. Holocaust denial is a crime in many parts of the world. Does he suggest that we should repeal all legislation on holocaust denial?

[Peter Grant]

Absolutely not. I was coming on to that. One of the first steps towards being prepared to allow a repeat of the holocaust is to deny that it ever happened. We also must be careful about denying that it could have happened in other places. I take issue with the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham on one point. He repeatedly referred to the crimes and actions of Germany. It is a fact that Nazism was born and developed in Germany, but the holocaust was not a battle of nationalities; it was about an ideology of sheer evil that was able to spread across Europe so quickly because it had its proponents in many more countries than we might like to think. It was certainly born and brought up in Germany, but it could have been a child of almost any nation in Europe and, it must be said, it could have happened in the United Kingdom. There were periods in the United Kingdom’s past when anti-Semitism had become so virulent that it would have been possible, if the right group of people had got together, for Nazism or something very like it to take hold. When I talk about the dangers of holocaust denial, I am talking not simply about the denial of a clear historical fact but about the denial of a clear acceptance that it could have happened in other places as well. That is why it can happen again—it has already happened again on a smaller scale—and it will continue to happen if we are not prepared to speak out and act against it.

I am aware of the time pressure and I want to leave time for the winding up. The hon. Member for Leeds North West also deserves a bit of time. I get the point that academics cannot be prosecuted but, as has been pointed out, a law of this nature not only opens a door to legal action in the courts but can sometimes be seen to legitimise actions that no one would want to see legitimised. I do not see where the line could be drawn between an academic publishing something in a journal and a newspaper reporting on that publication. At what point would the law come into play?

However difficult some parts of any nation’s history might be, we must be prepared to face up to the bad parts as well as the good. I have to accept that Glasgow—the city close to which I grew up and which I consider almost a second home—was built on the slave trade. I am not proud of that. I am proud of Glasgow, but I cannot be proud of the part that the city, and Scotland, played in the slave trade. I cannot be proud that the great ancient university town of St Andrews has monuments built into the pavements to show where devout Scottish Christians burned other devout Scottish Christians to death because they were the wrong kind of devout Christian for the time. Those things are parts of our history that we have to face up to, and the more we are willing to face up to the evils that have been done in all our countries and communities, the more we can hopefully ensure that they become much less likely to be repeated.

I have spoken before about Fife’s enormous debt of gratitude to our Polish community. Scotland and the United Kingdom owe an enormous debt of gratitude to the people of Poland not only for what they did during the war, but for what they have done since. We owe Poland an enormous debt of remorse for what we did to them after the war, when we handed Poland over to Stalin, and we should never forget that either.

There is a serious issue that has to be addressed. I simply do not think it is right to clamp down on one of the most precious freedoms we have—the freedom of the press to report things as they see them, and sometimes the freedom of the press to print things that we find offensive. That freedom needs to be protected. It can never be correct or acceptable to accuse Poland of collaboration with the holocaust, but I do not think the law as it is currently framed in Poland or in other European countries is the correct way to go about it. I hope that the Polish Government can be persuaded that there are other ways to prevent their new good name from being besmirched. At the end of the day, if idiots accuse someone of ridiculous things that did not happen, that someone should ignore the idiots and listen to the vast majority.