Last week’s Holocaust Memorial Day saw Keir Starmer reiterate government support for the UK national Holocaust memorial, planned for Victoria Tower Gardens next to the Houses of Parliament and first proposed by David Cameron in 2013.
It was in 2015 that the government accepted the recommendation of a commission Cameron had set up a year earlier that a “striking new memorial to serve as the focal point of national commemoration of the Holocaust” should be created in central London. So why, more than 10 years on, are we still waiting?
It’s a tangled story of complex planning and legal processes, all accompanied by ongoing opposition to the proposal – not least from a number of Holocaust survivors – and continuing disagreements over its location, its design, its cost, and even its precise purpose.
It took till December 2018 to agree the site, choose the design – 23 bronze fins on a large grass mound coupled with an underground “learning centre” conceived by architects David Adjaye and Ron Arad – and submit a planning application to Westminster Council. In late 2019, concerned that the council might side with objectors saying the plan would “profoundly and completely” change the character of the “well-loved” park, the government resolved to “call in” the application for ministers to decide. It got the go-ahead in July 2021.
But that wasn’t the end of the matter. Opponents of the scheme had uncovered an “enduring obligation”, under the little-known London County Council (Improvements) Act 1900 to maintain the site as a public garden. At the High Court, Mrs Justice Thornton agreed the Act was an “insuperable impediment” to the plans, and quashed the permission.
That left only one way to keep the plan alive – a new Bill disapplying the Act. That hasn’t been straightforward either. The Bill almost fell when last year’s general election was called, and its “hybrid” status, affecting the private interests of particular individuals and organisations, has meant a further stage of representations and special House of Lords committee hearings.
Those hearings focused on the details of the scheme rather than wider questions. But as the committee’s recently-published report says, it was nevertheless another opportunity for opponents to “make their views known”. And as the Bill approaches its final stages, the report notes, “the controversy on these issues has not gone away”.
As well as concerns about security, with a million visitors a year expected, and the escalating cost of the scheme, now up from an initial £50 million to some £140 million, the substantive issues remain in contention, with a particular focus on the learning centre. Camp survivor Dr Martin Stern told the Lords committee this was both “far too big for the little park” and “far too small” for its purpose.
There are concerns too that the proposal may be putting too much emphasis on “British values” and the “trite message that democracy will protect against genocide”, downplaying the more uncomfortable aspects of Britain’s history in respect of the Holocaust, as Baroness Ruth Deech, representing a number of camp survivors, has put it.
The original commission back in 2015 certainly recommended that the memorial should both “make a bold statement about the importance Britain places on preserving the memory of the Holocaust” and “stand as a permanent affirmation of the values of British society”.
Planning inspector David Morgan, who considered the point during the inquiry held after the scheme was called in, nevertheless concluded in his report that the learning centre would adopt a “warts and all” approach. The memorial’s location would also reinforce an enduring lesson of the Holocaust, about the “fallibility of democracy’s assumed righteousness, and our responsibility, if not duty, to others in safeguarding it,” he said.
For Morgan, the “civic, educative, social and even moral, public benefits” of the proposal “demonstrably” outweighed the harm it would cause to the gardens and the settings of their “heritage assets”. Once the Bill, which has significant cross-party support, becomes law, it will be for communities secretary Angela Rayner to revisit his findings and take the planning decision again.
The process is by no means over: Rayner will need to consider further representations; there may even be a second inquiry. In another twist, Adjaye has stood back following accusations of sexual misconduct, which he denies. There’s a new alternative suggestion too, to scale back the memorial and put a more substantial learning centre elsewhere, possibly alongside the Jewish Museum London, which is currently looking for a new home. The balance between commemoration and education remains at issue.
The current plan retains the support of major Jewish institutions and individuals though, including Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis and Holocaust Educational Trust chief executive Karen Pollock. And while the project continues to divide opinion, it’s hard to see the government changing course. But the early objective, for survivors to witness the memorial, may now be hard to achieve.
OnLondon.co.uk provides unique coverage of the capital’s politics, development and culture. Support it for just £5 a month or £50 a year and get things for your money other people won’t. Details HERE. Follow Charles Wright on Bluesky. Image from Adjaye Associates.