Tories issue response to anti-Semitism report

In early September a cross-party committee of MPs issued a report on rising anti-Semitism.  The Conservative Party has now formally responded to the report  with a number of commitments.  The party believes that there should be...

• Intensified cooperation between the Police and the Community Security Trust;
• Better protection from Police for synagogues and other Jewish institutions from Antisemitic attacks;
• More work to curb extremist Islamist activities on university campuses;
• Condemnation of organisations that refuse to participate in Holocaust Memorial Day (which has included the Muslim Council of Britain);
• Further social action projects to inform and educate the British public about the Holocaust.

Robert H Halfon of Conservative Friends of Israel welcomed the response and, in particular, Francis Maude's commitment to hold no truck with any candidate who espouses or has Antisemitic views.  Relations between CFoI and the party became quite difficult in the summer when David Cameron and William Hague criticised Israel's "disproportionate" response to the Lebanon crisis.  Since then the relationship has improved and the Tory leadership took swift action against a frontbencher who compared Israeli behaviour to that of the Nazis.

Comments

[mason]

ConservativeHome seems awfully concerned about offending israeli's.

[John Coles]

Where is the much-vaunted liberal-conservatism in obliging organisations to observe Holocaust Memorial day? You don't have to observe this nasty little Blairite touchstone to consider the German treatment of Jews ansd other minorities to have been beyond belief.
Instead symbolism reigns and the Conservative party falls in behind this "People's Princess" type of display and we are invited to show our Europeanism by sharing the guilt of the Germans.
Pathetic - the Conservative party is in thrall to Blairite thinking and so shows itself devoid of any independent thinking.

[TomTom]

ConservativeHome seems awfully concerned about offending israeli's.

Posted by: mason | November 29, 2006 at 09:35

When you speak of Jews living in Britain you should not confuse them with Jews living in Israel

[Mark Fulford]

Condemnation of organisations that refuse to participate in Holocaust Memorial Day (which has included the Muslim Council of Britain);

Now we're prescribing mourning. Good grief!

[Mark Fulford]

Perhaps we should fine people who don't observe two minutes' silence on Remembrance Day.

[Michael McGowan]

I agree with you, Mark. As someone who has visited Auschwitz-Birkenau, Holocaust Memorial Day has always struck me as a PC stunt: it is conspicuous for the examples of genocide and mass murder that are not commemorated (Mao, Stalin, the Turkish extermination of Armenians). The reason presumably is that the left only wants to focus on the crimes of the extreme right and not its own crimes.

[Sean Fear]

I think poorly of the Muslim Council for Britain's reasons for boycotting Holocaust Memorial Day.

That said, I agree with you that I don't really need a State-organised day to bring home the message to me that the mass-murder of innocent people is wrong.

We can take pride in the fact that our country helped to destroy Nazi tyranny, and saved the lives of millions as a result.

[mason]

If any of you have children you'll know the schools dedicate best part of the day being made to feel guilty with materials from HMD Trust being shoved down their throat. Whilst on Remembrance day schools just observe the two minute silence - no educational program. Are there any details about govt fuding of HMD ?

[George Hinton]

Surely if someone wishes to deny the Holocaust, that is their democratic right.
Are we to be like Germany where such denial is illegal? Only as a result of the post-war arrangements in which we ensured that the victors got their justice and the perps their comeuppance.
Surely in a democracy we have the right to free speech and thought. That can only be restricted where that free speech advocates violence and anarchy and the overthrow of our institutions.
The way forward, to treat deniers, is to demonstrate their ignorance of history and ridicule them.
No more legislation please.

[Sean Fear]

"If any of you have children you'll know the schools dedicate best part of the day being made to feel guilty with materials from HMD Trust being shoved down their throat."

I remember going to one exhibition where, if you didn't know much about WWII, you'd think that the British had perpetrated the holocaust.

[Phil Taylor]

The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust calls itself an independent charity but really it is just an arm of the Home Office which gives it a grant of £500K its only source of income bar interest on it gets from previous grants in the bank. Its Chief Executive is a secondee from the Home Office. See their annual report:

http://www.hmd.org.uk/files/1161684214-file.pdf

At least they are honest about it - although calling yourself a trust and registering as a charity is maybe disingenuous when all you do is spend £500K of taxpayers money. Maybe the trustees would not be so keen to be involved if they actually had to go out and raise the cash.

[liberalone]

I think you will find that the educational material used in schools comes from a wide range of sources and that much of it comes from the Holocaust Educational Trust not the HMD Trust.

[Matt Davis]

Strange but I didn't see many of you objecting to the Conservatives signing up to the New Labour agenda when the leadership were busy espousing the socialist derived views on poverty of Polly Toynbee or when we cojoined ourselves to the "put up tax" Labour approach to climate change. Seemingly it's only when the word Jew enters into the matter that some of you suddenly take umbrage.

[TomTom]

if someone wishes to deny the Holocaust, that is their democratic right.

No it isn't............there is no democratic right to engage in Counter-Factual History and no society can uphold such an inalienable right..............

[Serf]

No it isn't............there is no democratic right to engage in Counter-Factual History and no society can uphold such an inalienable right..............

That is a really wrong headed statement. Pursue that and you would end up with thought police.

People with ridiculous views, deserve nothing more than social opprobrium. We cannot call a country free, whose politicians decide what version of history is allowable.

[Sean Fear]

Did you actually read the threads here about the Polly Toynbee issue, Matt?

There's a rather nasty insinuation in your question, I think.

[Yet Another Anon]

if someone wishes to deny the Holocaust, that is their democratic right.

No it isn't............there is no democratic right to engage in Counter-Factual History and no society can uphold such an inalienable right..............
I'm not sure really, there might be the odd person who genuinely believed it didn't happen or was on a much smaller scale than believed, really though people's opinions over whether such a thing would be right or not is far more important and it's not now an issue of whether a particular person who took part should be in a position of power as the purpetrators are mostly dead or too old and infirm to go into positions of power.

The most worrying thing is where people think that it was some kind of great achievement which there are some people who do.

Otherwise there is a risk of interfering in academic debate and ending up with some kind of state proscribed description of history that everyone has to follow.

[Richard]

"ConservativeHome seems awfully concerned about offending israeli's"

Yes, I expect right now Tim is in a meeting with the Learned Elders of Zion.

[Mark Fulford]

Seemingly it's only when the word Jew enters into the matter that some of you suddenly take umbrage.

Rubbish. Many British people come from ethnic groups that have been persecuted. Many of them have even been persecuted at our own hands. Any of them can expect the same reaction to suggestions of compulsion to participate in remembrance events.

[Editor]

Matt (11:51) - that comment wasn't worthy of you. I support the party's response but I think it perfectly reasonable for people to object to the "Condemnation of organisations that refuse to participate in Holocaust Memorial Day" statement. I think many groups that stand outside of the HMD do so for suspicious reasons but I am sympatheic to the argument that these observances should be as voluntary as possible.

[Justin Hinchcliffe]

Who wants to help set up the Conservative Secular Society?

[E L Marberry]

Mark Fulford and the rest presumably oppose Remberance Sunday too.

The sooner people like him wake up and smell the coffee and recognise there is no future for their views in a modern Conservative Party the better.

[Justin Hinchcliffe]

E.L.Marberry is a troll!

[sjm]

ELM - it is surely all about political posturing.

I'm a Jew, many of my uncles,aunts and cousins perished in the camps. Nevertheless I dislike having a Holocaust Memorial Day, I dislike people of whatever different religion being corralled into commemorating it, and I dislike the fact that denying the Holocaust is a criminal offence.

I have no problem with a Remembrance Day for the war dead, and I always buy a poppy, but I would intensely dislike being obliged or forced to attend a service.

Whatever happened to freedom?

[Justin Hinchcliffe]

I think this is the first time ever that I agree with SJM.

[Denis Cooper]

When I was at school we were taught about the murder of (it was thought) about 6 million Jews and others in Nazi concentration camps as a historical episode, and as in other contexts we were warned against ever allowing our own country to be turned into a dictatorship. That was it, really. Nobody questioned it, as I recall, but if they had they would just have been told that they were flying in the face of a mass of evidence, not accused of "anti-Semitism" and "Holocaust denial" - the term "Holocaust" not then being current, and the accusation of "Holocaust denial" only becoming current since the end of the Cold War, with the reduced strategic importance of Israel as a Western ally. My own children have had the Holocaust rammed down their throats repeatedly during their school careers, and with the clear implication that the British must share the guilt. I don't believe anybody in this country should be exposed to thuggery, whether they're Jews, Muslims, gays or whatever, but I object to the state seeking to indoctrinate my children with a distorted version of history, and I object very strongly to the suggestion that nobody has the right to put forward "counter-factual" versions of history. For me, that is pretty much the kind of thing that we were warned about at school, back in those days when we were proud to live in a free country which had not succumbed to dictatorship when it was rampant across the rest of Europe.

[Justin Hinchcliffe]

CFI are 'educating' our newly-selected PPCs by taking them on jaunts to Israel...

Perhaps it’s about time someone set-up the Conservative Friends of Palestine?

[Reagan Fan]

Hinchcliffe,
If you think the Conservative Secular Society is a winner of an idea then you are, of course, free to set it up and the market will dictate whether or not it is a success.

As for HRD being voluntary, of course it should be (and I say that as someone with a personal reason to recognise it), BUT what is offensive about some of the people who choose not to observe it are the reasons they give for that NOT the fact that they choose that approach which they are free to do. As free as they are to reject remembrance we are also free to question their motives.

[Reagan Fan]

Again, Hinchcliffe, if you think the Conservative Friends of Palestine is a winner of an idea (rather than a nasty debating point) you go for it.

I suspect it will be as popular as your Conservative Secular Society!

[ToMTom]

That is a really wrong headed statement. Pursue that and you would end up with thought police.

People with ridiculous views, deserve nothing more than social opprobrium. We cannot call a country free, whose politicians decide what version of history is allowable.

No, pursue your logic and we certainly would.

You are demanding a Right ie. a societal privilege enshrined in law to deny FACT. It is not an opinion that mass-extermination took place, it is not debatable, it is FACT.

I would not expect this country to enshrine a right to say Britain is not an island, nor to say that no wars took place in the Twentieth Century, or that we speak Russian and the Queen is Japanese.

You cannot produce a right to entitle people to propound untruth - you may leave them to discredit themselves - but to write in a Bill of Rights that a person has the legal right to propagate Counter-Factual History and deny FACT is bizarre and I know of no society on the planet that has done so.

[TomTom]

if you think the Conservative Friends of Palestine

Bye-bye Jordan.........why would this Conservative Group want to destroy Jordan ?

[Justin Hinchcliffe]

Alan Duncan could join one and David Starkey the other...

[Reagan Fan]

Great, Hinchcliffe, that's a founder and one member for each (presuming they do both join), you're really on a roll now! I look forward to seeing your well-attended fringe meetings next October.

[Editor]

Back to the thread please folks!

[Derek]

I have to support those who are opposed to condemning those who fail to support HMD. While I agree that no "right to deny facts" needs to be explicitly stated, that is a far cry from having the right not to take part in any particular event, be it HM Day or Poppy day or even Aids Day. The increasing use of "minute(s) silence" I find intrusive. By all means have public ceremonies, but to expect everyone to join in I find rather nannyish.

[Denis Cooper]

TomTom, as far as I'm concerned anybody should be free to say anything they like, true or false, without the fear of the criminal law being invoked against them, provided they don't incite crime or wantonly provoke public disorder. That was (more or less) the traditional common law view, which should be fully restored by repealing certain restrictive laws, and which would then only need to be defended in practice, without it being stated in any statute or "Bill of Rights".

[Tory Loyalist]

I would not expect this country to enshrine a right to say Britain is not an island, nor to say that no wars took place in the Twentieth Century, or that we speak Russian and the Queen is Japanese.
______________________________________________________

The right that is (or should be) enshrined is simply the right of free speech. Of course it is offensive nonsense to deny the Holocaust, but if we make it a crime then we move even further down the slippery slope to totalitarianism than we are at present.

Having said that, I am a member of CFI and strong supporter of Israel, and I am not at all surprised that many Jewish Conswervatives have been offended by Cameron's pitiful fencesitting.

It's very noticable that the TR/Cameron-fan element are usually anti-Israel. Not all, but most.

[poll watcher]

Oh right, no anti-semitism there "Ellen Shicklegruber", yes the Holocaust was all the fault of the Jews...hope your bile gets deleted

[Sean Fear]

Of course this note will go down as anti-Semitic."

Really? Where would we get that idea from? And that WWI corporal - his name escapes me just now - can you remind us?

[ToMTom]

TomTom, as far as I'm concerned anybody should be free to say anything they like, true or false, without the fear of the criminal law being invoked against them

Yes........but the thread started with someone defending a right to deny the Holocaust which is completely different from being free to say stupid things...........there cannot be a legal right to state an obvious falsehood

As for Germany, it is illegal to display a Swastika and that is because it adorned most public buildings, most headed notepaper and most aircraft and ships during a period of dictatorship which cost 5 million German dead.

I fully sympathise with the desire to show this political party as a blot on Germany history - Holocaust Denial was one of the hallmarks of the Neo-Nazi revival as if undermining this issue would make them appear less demonic.

It is very hard for outsiders to understand what perversion of language and values took place under the NSDAP and that it cost 40 million dead to remove it..........and Britain's human losses were on the smaller end of the scale.

So I do not criticise Germany for legislating against Holocaust Denial though I do find their Memorial obsession in Berlin a bit OTT.

One day they may have to ban Lonsdale shirts as they are favoured by Neo-Nazis who wear them under a jacket so only the letters N S D A appear.

Germany like Poland has a very different history from Britain, and understanding what people there suffered is important if we are not to appear as crass and hypocritical in lecturing Germany how it should deal with its own historical experiences.

[Tory Loyalist]

Sorry but I can't feel huge sympathy for the "sufferings" of the Germans.

It was their grandparents who brought Hitler to power, and there is no anthropological difference between Germans then and Germans now. They have simply been "conditioned" in a different way.

Frankly I would prefer them to have the freedom to display Nazi emblems so that we can fairly judge whether Nazism remains a threat in Germany or whether it is simply a bad joke. Sweeping it under the carpet is more likely to arouse our worst fears.

Do you really think it is acceptable for a democratic country to ban Lonsdale shirts because of the conduct of a crass minority?

[Denis Cooper]

"... there cannot be a legal right to state an obvious falsehood"

There could be, in the unfortunate situation where the law laid down what people were permitted to say, rather than assuming that they could say anything unless there was a very compelling reason why they should be prevented from saying it.

For example: "Every citizen has the right to express his religious beliefs" would normally mean that some, if not all, of the citizens would be making statements which were obviously false in the eyes of some other citizens.

[Vol Abroad]

Hmm...an interesting comment -

it is conspicuous for the examples of genocide and mass murder that are not commemorated (Mao, Stalin, the Turkish extermination of Armenians). The reason presumably is that the left only wants to focus on the crimes of the extreme right and not its own crimes.

Maybe it's not because of who the perpetrators were, but rather we commemorate this genocide because it's one of the few big ones that we (the Anglosphere) have done anything about - however belatedly

[Gordon Henderson]

If you are looking for interesting (sic!) new blogs then check out my blog on: sittingbournesheppeyconservatives.com. With a Labour majority of 79 to overturn it's worth checking out one of the non A listers who could well make up the next patliament!

[John Irvine]

Mr Henderson. Exactly how is your blog, interesting as it may be, related to the problem of anti-semitism?

[Ellen Shicklegruber]

"Oh right, no anti-semitism there "Ellen Shicklegruber", yes the Holocaust was all the fault of the Jews...hope your bile gets deleted"

Sheckler, Sheckles, Schickles etc etc are all spellings of my inherited name - the post was in good faith.

This site is like the burning of the books.

If you do not like it, get it destroyed!

[Dave J]

"...there cannot be a legal right to state an obvious falsehood"

Why not? Better that than a state empowered to determine what constitutes an "obvious falsehood."