Holocaust Memorial Bill

Rosie Duffield Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 28th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Rosie Duffield (Canterbury) (Lab)]

I, too, rise to support the construction of the holocaust memorial and learning centre. I hope that we will be able to remove any remaining barriers and get the work started as soon as possible.

We have heard important voices, including my friend the Father of the House, the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), raising concern about the location of the memorial. Of course, they must be listened to with courtesy and all consideration. However, surely it is right that the memorial be somewhere in close proximity to the heart of Britain’s democracy, where we can reflect and remember the most extreme consequences of despotic dictatorships and the atrocities committed by elected and unelected regimes around the world. That must be what drives all of us here to do and be better, and to unite in condemnation of the ethnic cleansing and genocide still being inflicted on many peoples today. The world looks to us for our collective voice and our actions, and a memorial to the victims of the holocaust is a positive and permanent signpost of our commitment to uphold human rights and affirm definitive rejection of anti-Jewish racism.

A memorial speaks louder than the badges we sometimes wear in this Chamber. It is a mark of our pledge to interfere and disrupt when we see mass murder, racial injustice, and acts of terror carried out by weak and failing Governments in their increasingly desperate pursuit of ultimate power over their own citizens. We see and condemn the treatment of people in Ethiopia, the Hazara persecuted in Afghanistan, Uyghurs, Rohingya, Ahmadi, Baluch and Christians around the world, but closer to home, our own recent past with regard to antisemitism is nothing to be proud of either, and we have heard a lot today about how it is absolutely on the rise.

My party in particular has moved considerably in the past few years, but that does not eliminate the need to be open and honest about our shameful record. A change of leadership and the adoption of a tougher approach are not necessarily all we need to do. When those of us who did speak up were trolled, hounded and harassed, particularly as new MPs, we received absolutely no support whatsoever. Indeed, the supporters of our former leader used his name in the written or verbal attacks spat at us across the rooms in which meetings were held. Although the majority of that unpleasant minority group of members decided to leave the Labour party on the election of a new leader, some do shamefully remain.

In March 2018, when the Jewish community felt they had no choice but to gather in protest, they chose Parliament Square and peacefully held placards reading, “Enough is Enough”. While many members of our shadow Cabinet and Front-Bench MPs chose to do and say absolutely nothing—present company excepted—those of us who attended that rally to support our Jewish friends and colleagues were watched by a senior member of the former leader’s staff, who stood under the arches as we re-entered through Carriage Gates and wrote down in his notebook the names of all who attended.

There followed almost two more years of relentless calls for some of us to be deselected and removed from our seats, with former colleagues and activist journalists inciting social media pile-ons, appearing at rallies and roadshows, and sharing platforms alongside celebrity socialists. Decent Jewish women, democratically elected as Members of Parliament, felt that they had no choice but to step away from this place. We must never allow such things to happen again.

For me, a memorial is a reminder to fight antisemitism wherever and whenever we see it, reminding ourselves that in the evil design to create a so-called Aryan master race, Hitler and the Nazis targeted and murdered millions of Jews, Roma and gay people. We cannot ever be complacent, and that nudge to remember ought to be somewhere we in this House can see and visit.

I will end with the words of Karen Pollock, chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust and friend to many in this House—my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) read some of her words earlier. She said:

“It is crucial to remember that the Holocaust Memorial—and remembering the Holocaust in general—is not about planning permission, or square footage, or underground pipes. What these discussions are about at their heart, is people.

People who were subjected to unimaginable suffering, simply because they were Jewish. People who were stripped of their homes, their citizenship and their dignity; and forced into overcrowded ghettos, labour camps, and concentration camps. People who were made to dig their own graves and were shot into pits in forests and ravines across Europe, or gassed to death in purpose-built killing centres.

And it is about people who against all odds survived, and made their home here in the UK.”

That is what we need to never forget. If there is a tangible reminder on our very doorstep, we have no excuse to ignore the plight of others persecuted by evil despotic regimes around the globe.