Holocaust Memorial Day

Simon Hoare Excerpts

Thursday 25th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Simon Hoare)]

This is the first time I have attended a Holocaust Memorial Day debate, and I have to say that I am rather glad it is. I must be honest with the House that, if I had had any idea of the raw emotion, I might have dodged it, but I am so glad that I did not. It has been sad and it has been frightening, but every word has been worth hearing. I thank the House and all those who have contributed to today’s debate. It has been a true privilege to be here to hear it.

As many right hon. and hon. Members have noted, the theme of this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day is the “fragility of freedom”. It is not just about the fragility of freedom in emerging democracies or elsewhere in the world; it is about the threat and the challenge to all mature western democracies. Frankly, we have grown complacent about our rights and privileges, and about our freedom to think, speak, write, congregate, worship and pray. Too much of it is under attack, whether by social media, the ease of populism or the search for the simple in a complex world. So much that we hold dear is under pressure, so let us come together, as this debate has shown the House can do at its best, to champion and defend all that we cherish and hold dear to our hearts.

But let us do more. Let us not just be armchair or, indeed, green Bench democrats. Let us be, as my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) suggested, muscular and robust in our stance and in our defence, because in collaborative defence there is courage, there is hope and there is opportunity.

The big numbers of the holocaust make it hard to envisage, as all big numbers and statistics do, so let us pause for a moment not to think of 6 million as just another statistic. I follow the Auschwitz Memorial Twitter feed, or X feed as we now have to call it, and, virtually every day, it presents a picture or pictures of men, women and children. These ordinary folk were starved, taken from their homes, persecuted and incinerated—the true meaning of the word “holocaust”—for their faith. Let us recommit to always seeing these people for what they are, people, fellow human beings, and never as just a statistic, whether they be Jewish, Bosnian, Rwandan or Cambodian.

What we must always remember, as many contributors have reminded us so powerfully today, is that down the centuries the Jewish people have always been forced to look over their shoulders, with pogroms, the holocaust, displacement, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” and the Dreyfus case. They are a people always worried that they are only temporarily tolerated, rather than permanently welcomed.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge)—I am going to call her my right hon. Friend—added a poignancy to her characteristically brave and bold remarks and thinking by reminding the House that, sadly, this is the last of these debates that she will take part in as a Member of Parliament. As the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) said, she will be missed but not forgotten. Hers have been important words on this issue, particularly during difficult years for her and Jewish colleagues in her party—thank God that is changing—where she stood bravely on difficult and hostile Benches and made her case, as she did today.

My job is to reply to the debate and respond to speeches, so with the leave of the House I will try to reference a nugget or two from each contribution, because they merit it, as does the seriousness of the issues at hand. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist) for her words, in speaking for the Opposition, as I am to the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald), who spoke for the Scottish National party. I know that the hon. Member for Blaydon has given me a little more time than the usual channels may have agreed to.

My hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), the Father of the House, spoke powerfully about the fragility of democracy. As many Members soon went on to do, he pointed to the importance of education. We do not repeat when we know, and we know only when we are educated. The right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland spoke about his constituency and the story of rescuing those fleeing persecution in Norway. That historical fact was new to me, and the House will be grateful for it.

My right hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) spoke, in his characteristically frank but moving way, about his experience in Yugoslavia, and I wish to make two points to him. First, he is right to remind the House, and we are right to remind ourselves, that those events took place not in a faraway land of which we knew nothing, but on our doorstep, and just in 1993. Secondly, for what it is worth, I wish to say personally to him, because he spoke of his shame and the shame of his mother, that he has nothing to be ashamed about. He and his men did their best, and that is all we as a democracy can ever ask.

The hon. Member for West Ham (Ms Brown) is currently in Westminster Hall for a debate about religious freedom, so there is a link even today. She is not in her place for that reason, but she gave us a powerful speech on Rwanda, reminding us of the horror of rape and sexual violence, as my hon. Friends the Members for Hendon (Dr Offord) and for Brigg and Goole and my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) did in relation to the horrific events of 7 October. I sat and listened as a husband and a father of three daughters, and who would not be moved to think that those horrible events took place just a few short weeks ago.

A common theme has been smell, a sense that is often not spoken about enough. We talk about our memories of what we have seen or heard, but smell can be hugely evocative, be it of a time or place in our childhood, a holiday or whatever. My hon. Friend the Member for Hendon is a doctor and he will have been used to the smell of medical things. My right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet and my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole also spoke about the recent smell of death and rotting flesh. The father of a great friend of mine had been part of the medical team that went into Belsen, and until his death he always spoke about the smell that was still on his skin. We should remember that always.

The hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) spoke of the complacency of the view that, “It’s all history.” It is not history; it is happening now. When we think it is history—that either it is not happening or it cannot happen again—we have lost the battle, have we not? What was the holocaust and why should we remember it? We can remember it for the horror, the statistics, the figures and the scale, but the eternal shame, to use the phrase of my right hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham, is that it was man’s inhumanity to man. We should all be ashamed and embarrassed by it, because it shows, at the darkest and basest moments of humankind, precisely what we can do to each other, in the name of doctrine, theology, ideology. It is a terrible thing that we have somewhere deep within our DNA. Let us resolve to keep it buried.

My hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) spoke powerfully about hatred and prejudice, and he, too, spoke of the importance of education. I want especially to mark the speech made by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe). I hope he will not take it the wrong way when I say that I thought that the frank assessment of current events that he gave us was, for a Birmingham Member, a brave speech. I was pleased to hear it, the House will be grateful to have heard it, and he should be commended for delivering it in the heartfelt and sincere way that he did.

My hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich East (Nicola Richards), in that simple memory of a shoe and a piece of make-up, so reminiscent of the museum where the shoes of those who died were gathered up as a reminder, reminds us of the simplicity and therefore the futility; this was ordinary people going about their lives in an ordinary way, on an ordinary day, and suddenly, as a result of somebody’s bigotry and hatred, it was all taken away. The lipstick, powder, mascara, the pair of dancing shoes, whatever it might happen to be, will stand as a longer lasting memorial than any statue or plaque that could be erected.

My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) again picked up on this theme of education, and I pay tribute to all of those—the Holocaust Educational Trust and others—who day in, day out ensure that we never forget. We are right to remind ourselves of the importance of that. People have spoken of the important role that our universities and schools play in ensuring free and fair speech, and ensuring that all voices can be heard, and that tolerance and toleration are the hallmarks of a civilised democracy. They need to step up to the plate and play their part, as does this place, in ensuring that those are preserved and protected.

The hon. Member for Blaydon, who spoke for the Opposition, gave a heartfelt speech, as did the SNP spokesman, and we commend her for that. How right my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet and my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East were to remind us of the uncomfortable truth, as the right hon. Member for Barking did, of our slightly uncomfortable position with regard to the welcoming of Jewish children through the Kindertransport but not their parents, and the controls that we placed on Jewish migration and the problems that caused for too many people. I could go on, because this has been a moving debate on a mammoth issue. It has been about history—80 years ago and more recent—but the issue is so fresh and contemporary today that it chills us to the bone.

Before I conclude, I should apologise to the Hansard scribes. My officials will have given them a typed speech but, as usual, I have ignored it, because the speeches I heard from colleagues this afternoon were from the heart, and I wanted to respond, on behalf of the Government, in kind.

However, wherever, whoever and whenever, how they died, where they died, and who they were, let us unite today and always to mark and reflect on all of those who have lost their lives, to both the holocaust and all holocausts. May all of their sacrifices not have been in vain. May all of their memories be a blessing.