Why is Britain’s national Holocaust memorial proving so contentious?

To someone of my – post-Second World War – generation, it is hard to imagine that a project to commemorate and teach people about the mass extermination of Jews and other minorities could be controversial in any way. One of my uncles, an Army chaplain, was in one of the first British contingents to enter the Belsen concentration camp; many others will have witnesses among their own relatives.

So how is it that, 75 years after the end of that war, plans for a national Holocaust memorial and what is described as a “learning centre” have become so contentious that they risk harming the very cause they were intended to promote?

It is a complicated saga, which begins on 16 September 2013, when the then prime minister, David Cameron, gave a speech to mark the 25th anniversary of the Holocaust Educational Trust – an admirable charity whose name explains itself. In his speech, Cameron deplored the return of anti-Semitism in some parts of Europe and stressed the need to “ensure that the memory of the Holocaust is preserved from generation to generation”.

To that end, he announced a “multi-faith, cross-party commission” to consider whether “further measures should be taken to ensure Britain has a permanent and fitting memorial and educational resource for generations to come”. So far, so uncontroversial.

The commission reported 18 months later, and Cameron made another speech – at an event to commemorate 70 years from the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp. Accepting the commission’s recommendations, he outlined plans for “a striking and prominent new national memorial” in central London to “make a bold statement about the importance Britain places on preserving the memory of the Holocaust and to stand as a permanent affirmation of the values of British society”.

Clearly the scale of ambition had grown. Not only was the memorial to be “striking and prominent”, but the “educational resource” was to sit alongside as “a world-class learning centre” that incorporated the latest technological wizardry “to engage and inspire vast numbers of visitors”. There was also to be an endowment fund and an “urgent” programme “to record and preserve the testimony of British Holocaust survivors and their liberators”. The government committed the not inconsiderable sum of £50m.  

Five years and two prime ministers later, however, the new plan has still not left the hi-tech equivalent of the drawing board, and this major government-sponsored project – which had once been noted by the wider public, if at all, with murmurs of general approval – has become mired in contention, and some bitterness.

On the one side, strongly in favour, you have a slew of former prime ministers, the current leader of the Opposition and the current mayor of London. On the other, you have local residents, who are overwhelmingly opposed, and the local council – Westminster – in whose jurisdiction the proposed complex is set to rise. In between there are prominent Jewish figures who are for and against; there are Anglican church leaders, past and present, who are at odds on the wisdom of the enterprise, as are MPs and otherwise non-political peers of the realm. This autumn, the plans for the National Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre were referred to a public planning inquiry.

But how, you might ask, could an enterprise born of such benign intentions go so badly wrong? The simple answer – the too simple answer – boils down to the choice of location. It is entirely possible that, had a different location been selected, a new National Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre might, even now, be preparing to receive its first visitors. But the site the commission settled upon in what was described as a “moment of genius” by former Communities Secretary, Eric – now Lord – Pickles, who co-chairs the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation Advisory Board, was a small public park on the Thames embankment, adjacent to the Houses of Parliament.

Viewers of television news may, unwittingly, be familiar with the park, as – weather permitting – it is often used for interviews, with its atmospheric backdrop of greenery, the river and Parliament’s Victoria Tower – hence the name, Victoria Tower Gardens. It is also used, incidentally, for the annual parliamentary dog show and, once upon a time, for the Shrove Tuesday pancake race.

But it is primarily a public park. Although right next door to parliament, with gates that are locked at dusk, there is no overt security, anyone can walk in. There are benches overlooking the river; there are grassy areas big enough and informal enough for children to run around and dogs to be walked. There are lines of trees at either edge for shade.

At which point, I should declare my interest. Victoria Tower Gardens is the closest green space to where I live, in an area dominated by flats and offices. During the first Covid lockdown this year, it was a boon, discovered and rediscovered by hundreds for their “permitted exercise”. For residents of south Westminster with small children or for people unable to walk very far, it was reachable; the great Royal Parks are a magnificent asset for London, but for many living where I do even the closest, St James’s Park, is just that bit too far.

So, yes, I am among the local residents who have objected to the proposed National Holocaust Museum and Learning Centre being built in Victoria Tower Gardens – and I was among those who testified to the inquiry last month. For me, as for many, the single argument is the loss of green space and the added congestion and security that would undoubtedly come to an already congested area with a complex expressly designed to attract “vast numbers of visitors”.

How the commission settled on this park is shrouded in secrecy (and redacted documents). It was not on a consultant-compiled shortlist. And it seems simply incredible that there is any remaining green space in central London that is not protected by the equivalent of a three-line whip conservation order. In the wake of the pandemic – where lack of fresh air would appear to be almost as much of a factor in the spread of the disease as it was in the Great Plague – it seems even more extraordinary that the government is pressing ahead.  

In fact, it turns out that there are conservation areas and conservation areas, and who has the “right” to Victoria Tower Gardens is unclear. It is managed by the Royal Parks Service, but “belongs” to the Department of Culture, Media and Sport. Mercifully, planning regulations mean that the government cannot just appropriate the park and dig it up – at least not without planning permission from the local council.

It is credit to the strength of local opposition and the council’s commitment to its own policies on green space that this was not just waved through, as ministers appeared to expect. Despite heavy behind-the-scenes pressure – and the government’s recruitment of a PR agency (at public expense) in an apparent attempt to “fix” the public consultation – Westminster made known that it was likely to turn the application down.* (see note at end)

Without waiting for the rejection, the government then “called in” the application. This is how it ended up at the planning inquiry, where one of the country’s most experienced inspectors, David Morgan, now has the unenviable task of making the final recommendation. Even then, it will be just a  recommendation. Ministers may accept – or reject – it, which makes the Government, whose project it is, both judge and jury, a situation currently subject to legal challenge.

The pandemic restrictions meant that the inquiry, which ran through most of October and November, was conducted almost entirely virtually and most of those making oral submissions did so over Zoom from their homes. An advantage was that the proceedings were live-streamed in their entirety on YouTube, which probably makes this inquiry one of the most open and democratic ever.

(You can find the recordings here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQqDetL1R5aRgbNm8PDViNw)

Contributions were at times desperately emotional, including from Holocaust survivors and their relatives. Some, from experts, including arboriculturalists, were highly technical. You found out a lot about drainage and tree roots and the “vitality of the London plane tree”. Others, including from the “starchitect” and chief designer, David Adjaye, were high-flown and poetic (or pretentious,  depending on your perspective). Sometimes you felt you were in a courtroom: the exchanges could be lawyerly, sharp, wheedling, aggressive – which raised the question of whether the techniques of, say, a rape trial are really suited to a planning dispute.  

There were few dull moments. One of the “regulars” tuning in was the classical music critic, Norman Lebrecht, who described the proceedings in The Jewish Chronicle as “the best show in town” (while recognising that, in these Covid-compliant times, entertainment options were limited). I too was a “regular”, and what was clear from the start was that, while the choice of site was the simple reason why there was so much opposition – and was the single question the planning inspector had to address – many other strands seethed below the surface.

The potential loss of green space was, in some ways, the most straightforward. Are there times when the government’s judgement of the national interest – in this case, for a new national complex to memorialise the Holocaust – should take precedence over national and local environmental policies? If there are, does this particular project reach that level? If it did before the pandemic, does it still?

Then there are the aesthetic merits, or otherwise, of what is planned. If the national interest is deemed to override local considerations in this instance, do the concept and design make the grade? To many objectors, they do not. Dubbed by some a “toast-rack”, the main part of the memorial consists of 23 tall bronze “fins” leading up to a mound (the park is currently flat). The architecture critic, Rowan Moore, described it as “clumsy”; Lebrecht – as “a pile of junk”. It must also be asked whether a Holocaust memorial complex can or should coexist in a single park space with playing children, dog-walkers, sun-bathers etc, which is the current idea.  

The chief architect, the much-garlanded David Adjaye – whose latest claim to global fame is the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington – professes himself stunned by the criticism, and by the claim that his practice, Ron Arad Architects, has simply dusted off a design that was rejected for a Holocaust memorial in Ottawa. At times, though, his advocacy was confusing.

His comment that “disrupting the pleasure of being in a park is key to the thinking” hardly helped his team’s claim that the park would retain its existing character. His description of the memorial as creating a “crescendo of the moment”, where “we’re using this focal point to make the point about what the memorial is saying about the world in which you see, and how you see it” drew ridicule in some quarters.  

It is a matter of dispute precisely how much of the park the monument will occupy, with most of the “learning centre” planned to be built down to two or three storeys beneath. What is beyond doubt is that the complex as currently conceived will obscure at least some of the famous view of Victoria Tower. To that extent the exact dimensions are secondary to the overall effect, which would be to dominate the gardens – and sideline the other, far smaller, monuments in the park.

These include Rodin’s Burghers of Calais, the memorial to the slavery abolitionist, Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, and a statue of the suffragette, Emmeline Pankhurst. An interesting footnote is that an application more than 10 years ago to erect a new monument to victims of slavery was rejected on the grounds of lack of room. Whether such a proposal would be so smoothly rejected today, might be another matter.

But that is by the by. If the aesthetics are crucial, they are not the only factor feeding into the decision. The proposed memorial and learning centre also raise some very specific concerns.  

One is security. Any new complex designed to attract visitors so close to parliament is likely to need protection. And – shameful though it might be – this will be doubly true of an installation designed to commemorate the Holocaust, just as it would be, say, if what was planned was an Islamic centre. In fact, the list of objects needing protection may be lengthening by the week, given the present furore about monuments in public places.

In his testimony to the inquiry, Lord Carlile, a former independent reviewer of Anti-Terrorism Legislation, described the proposed memorial bluntly as a “trophy” target. The former Northern Ireland Secretary, Tom – now Lord – King, agreed. And so, sort of, did advocates for the project, who insisted nonetheless that security could be discreet; visitors to the memorial complex could be separated from locals just frequenting the park, and – anyway – was it not defeatist and simply wrong to cite security as a reason why the memorial should not be built? Did the perceived risk not, in fact, illustrate precisely why such a memorial was needed?

All of which is true. But it is also true that a Holocaust memorial complex will need protection, and that protection will probably have to be obtrusive. Baroness Deech, the daughter of a Jewish fugitive from Poland and a forceful opponent of the project, was among those who argued that this, plus the scale of the development, would spell “the end of the park as we know it”.

Which brings us to perhaps the thorniest question. Why, a full 75 years after the end of the Second World War, is so much of the UK political establishment not only backing the proposed memorial complex in principle, but insisting that it should be sited next to parliament?

One reason might be that, once the plan had been mooted, it was politically easier to support than not. Those who went public with their opposition – the vast majority citing the loss of the park or the dubious aesthetics – soon found the slur of anti-Semitism wafting in their direction. With a resurgence of anti-Semitism generally in the air – whether in the UK Labour Party or in continental Europe, it was a charge that was hard to dispel.

A second might be that, a “world-class” Holocaust memorial complex has become something of a status symbol for any national capital with global aspirations. In the quest by cities and politicians everywhere to make an even bigger and more impressive statement, it sometimes seems to be neglected that there are reasons why Berlin has a much-praised and hugely affecting Holocaust Museum, and why it is sited where it is – opposite the Reich Chancellery where Adolf Hitler had his office. There are reasons, too, why Austria is building a major new Holocaust memorial, and also why the most monumental and impressive Holocaust Memorial complex by far, with a state-of-the-art library and research centre, is Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem.

Whatever Britain may have been guilty of during the Second World War and in other conflicts since, the mass murder of Jews, homosexuals, disabled people and other minorities was not one of them. To be sure, everyone needs to know about the Holocaust, and not all children leave British schools with an adequate understanding (even though it is part of the curriculum). But will a major new memorial help?

Another, perhaps more convincing, argument for such a national memorial centre in the UK is that it would address the understandable concern, not just among Jews, that the memory of the Holocaust could be lost, once the last of the survivors, with their living testimony, are gone.

But how might this best be done? As the inquiry heard, this country is far from lacking official recognition of the Holocaust. There has been a memorial in Hyde Park since 1983. There is a Holocaust Centre at Newark in Nottinghamshire. London has the Wiener Library and a recently revamped section of the Imperial War Museum. What is new and unique about the current proposal is its scale and the desired location, not just – as in the original prospectus – in central London, but adjacent to parliament.

To advocates of the chosen site, proximity to parliament would serve as a salutary reminder to our legislators of the dangers of totalitarianism and intolerance of all kinds. It could thus be a very public demonstration of what the nation stands for – hence the reference to “British values”. The learning centre, it is suggested, could also be an opportunity to show how far the official British response to the plight of Jews in Nazi Germany fell short – for all the retrospective tributes paid to individual rescuers and the “Kindertransport”.  

The idea that the memorial complex would be, at least in part, about “British values” and should be sited beside parliament for that reason, however, has become a controversy in itself, among Jews and non-Jews alike. Some argue that the learning space – mostly beneath the memorial – would be too small to set out the historical complexities; any “lessons” might thus be reduced to the simplistic – and complacent – “British = good; Nazis = bad”.

Baroness Deech and others argued that, given today’s technology, the money would be more effectively spent on a wider national educational effort. As for sites, many expressed a marked preference for any learning centre to be housed in a dedicated wing of the Imperial War Museum, which already has such a project in train.

One of the weightiest contributions came from the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan – now Lord – Williams, who took issue with the prospect of what he called a  “national Valhalla” and expressed concern that the unpopularity of the scheme locally could make it counterproductive in terms of the message conveyed. His main argument, though, was that the purpose had been insufficiently thought out. “To put it more simply, a memorial may be about the victims of mass murder and genocidal violence overall, or it may be about this specific cancer in the European mindset. Both are worthy aims. but ... there needs to be clarity about the goal.”

He was also forthright on the “British values” question. “Whatever comes of this inquiry, I earnestly hope that any self-congratulatory rhetoric about democracy and British values will be reined in and recognised as deeply inappropriate... many have noted that our democracy did not uniformly stand alongside the victims of Hitler’s murderousness at key points in the Thirties. We should beware... of consoling myths about this.”  

Lord Williams also touched on another question that hovered over the inquiry without being directly addressed: as he put it, by what right could local recreational needs compete with a memorial to genocide? Or, in a slightly different vein, why should a national Holocaust memorial be bigger and flashier than, say, the Cenotaph or the Buxton memorial to Abolition?

Indirectly, though, that argument was made by the impassioned appeals from Holocaust survivors and their kin – into the second and third generation. Their pleas were for a memorial that would ensure the preservation of the memory, their memory, forever in their adopted land. Among them was the television presenter, Natasha Kaplinsky, who concluded: “I beseech you to see its national and international significance for the sake of humanity.”

For all five weeks, the inspector, David Morgan, had presided in the inscrutable, sometimes quizzical way, of the classic public servant. In his closing remarks, he noted that he had volunteered for what he saw as one of the most significant and interesting cases of his career. It was a case, he noted, that had attracted an unprecedented level of public engagement, and he concurred with several witnesses that what faced him was “a judgment of Solomon”.

Essentially, he must decide whether the value of the park as green space and a public amenity is worth more or less than a national memorial that would commemorate and teach about the Holocaust. If he deems that the memorial is worth more, any statutory protection of the park can be overridden. His ruling is expected sometime in the spring.

In the meantime, here is a small suggestion. The memorial in Hyde Park, which takes the form of a rough-hewn boulder with a simple inscription, is elegant, restrained, but perhaps a little off the beaten track. In scale and character it would fit admirably into Victoria Tower Gardens; it could be moved there over a weekend and prompt no outrage from the locals at all.

* The Jenrick method: https://thecritic.co.uk/the-jenrick-method/