It is a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy). If that was his last speech in this place and representing his constituency, may I say that he does it proud? He does his constituency proud, and he has done his constituency proud. The House and his party are proud, and his service to this House and his eloquence are known to all. I congratulate him on that.
I will begin by addressing some of the points that have been made during the course of this debate, and perhaps putting to rest some of the suggestions that have been posited. One is that this Bill is in some way being steamrollered, which I suggest cannot be anything other than a flight of fancy. In fact, this measure has taken many years—close to a decade from its earliest formations. It has not quite reached the Dickensian Jarndyce v. Jarndyce level of bureaucracy and contemplation, but I do not think it is accurate to claim that it has in any way been steamrollered.
I also do not think it is in any way appropriate to say that security concerns—legitimate though they may be—are a good reason to countenance removing this important centre to another location. We must stand up against the thugs, the violence and the vandals. We in this House are a thin green line, and hopefully not that thin; hopefully, we represent the vast majority of people who defy those who would vandalise Holocaust memorials, and who hold in contempt those who would disgrace themselves and the freedoms, democracy and ancient history of this country by vandalising the memorial to the dead. Not only is that a wickedness and a blasphemy to those who have fallen, it is a type of fascism that is a disgrace to those who perform it, and we must stand up against it. We must say, “I’m not going to refuse to build a location of historic importance on a particular site because some criminals may choose to graffiti it. We defy you, and we stand up against you. We do not buckle to those security concerns.”
We need a prominent memorial marking the Holocaust because, sadly, recent events have shown that we could see it happening again. It is not fanciful to say that such a thing could happen again. There are voices in this House who have heckled Members, including myself when I have spoken out against antisemitism, and there are voices outside who care about every nuance of other people’s rights—about microaggressions—but do not care about Jewish women and girls being brutally raped and savagely tortured while hostages in the pogrom of 7 October.
We have seen a refusal by respected authorities around the world to accept that Hamas are a terrorist organisation and that what they did on 7 October is unparalleled since the actual Holocaust of 1939 to 1945. In defying that truth, they show the world that it is not impossible that such an atrocity, or something like it, could occur again. That is why we need a memorial.
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To those who ask, “Why does it have to be here?”, I say that it has to be here because this is the seat of our democracy. This is where our democracy’s fulcrum rests. This is the burning location of that democracy, where the fires of passionate argument have burnt almost since time immemorial, and Victoria Tower Gardens is part of this historic site. Of course one must be conscious of local residents, but one must also remember that this is to be a national memorial; it is of national importance. Protesters come here every week, in relation to myriad topics, because they know that this is where the action is; this is where democracy lies; this is where people meet to make decisions about the future. For that same reason, the memorial should be in a location that is centred where people will not forget it.
As the great figures of the recent past—Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, Mohandas Gandhi and other towering figures of post-war history—have made clear, it is not those who sow division and fan the flames of conflict who bring light and hope to the world. Those who use their oratory to promote division and hatred on the streets or elsewhere are here today and gone tomorrow; they do not matter. They are like wasps at a picnic whose buzz spreads momentary fear, and perhaps whose sting is sharp but short-lived. Wasps produce an alarming noise, but their presence is fleeting and their sting is temporary. We must not let those people deafen us to the realities—the cold, hard realities—of why such a memorial in this location is necessary.
Feeling the need to cover up a memorial, or wishing to cover it up, is not a good reason to place it elsewhere. The spreading of hate, the poison of sectarian hatred, the language of conflict and the vitriol of division may easily arouse the weak-minded, the ignorant and the mob—they always have done and always will do. There are the Twitter warriors, the anonymous, the fascist apologists. But the forces of light have always been stronger than the forces of darkness.
The Chief Rabbi, the president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Holocaust Educational Trust, whose very job it is to educate the younger generations about the Holocaust, all support this project. That, I think, is telling.