Rachel Blake

I thank the right hon. Member for recalling that exhibition for us. What we have seen in Parliament over the last few weeks has been incredibly powerful. A key part of bridging the generational gap are the very youngest generation of survivors, many of whom first arrived in the UK on the Kindertransport. A memorial to that stands in my constituency at Liverpool Street station, where many of the children met their foster families. Most of them remained in the UK, and they and their descendants are our neighbours, our families and our friends. This week, I joined City residents and workers in the congregation at Bevis Marks, the oldest synagogue in continuous use in Europe, for the Holocaust Memorial Day service. Bevis Marks is a testament to London’s history of tolerance, openness and pluralism. I pay tribute to the work of the local community in creating the Jewish Square Mile project, which is bringing together the community and recording this long and deep history. The City of London’s Jewish population dates back to the time of William the Conqueror, and it has long held a stake in the City’s civic life. This early history was a painful one. London’s Jewish population was falsely accused of practices such as coin clipping, and it was barred from the coronation of Richard I and subjected to multiple massacres across the middle ages. However, moving into the 18th and 19th centuries, as pogroms swept across the continent, it was to London that hundreds of thousands of European Jews fled. Many of their descendants later hosted the refugees from the Kindertransport. The Kindertransport is a reminder not just of what Britain and its people can achieve when we work together, driven by compassion, but that we cannot be complacent that good intentions are enough on their own. That complacency has too often been the case when we, as politicians, have failed adequately to address the rise in antisemitism in recent years. We have condemned and lamented hate crimes, but have we done enough to prevent them from recurring? We have spoken with Jewish leaders, but have we truly heard their concerns? I know that many of my Jewish constituents do not believe we have made the progress that is needed. I am not the first today to mention last October’s horrific attack in Manchester. In the months leading up to it, we will all have spoken to or heard directly from community leaders who warned that something exactly like that might happen. I have spoken to young constituents who are fearful of walking to shul. Jewish people across the country are experiencing prejudicial antisemitic hate. It needs to end, and we need to end it. Every Member of this House has a role to play in bridging generations and communities. We are leaders in our neighbourhoods, villages, towns and cities. At a time when relations between and within communities remain so broken, our time to act is now. I ask each and every one of us: what is next? What are we doing to convene leaders of all faiths and none? What are we doing to ensure that our children are being taught about the reality of the Holocaust in school and online? What are we doing to address the hatred and violence of the past few years head-on? Will we remain determined to tackle online hatred and antisemitism? The road to ending hatred sadly takes years to travel, and the results will take longer to show than many of us would like, but we have gone down the road of detoxification before, so a way exists. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Cheadle (Mr Morrison) for his suggestion on how to proceed. It centres on the human contact, recognition of shared values, empathy and respect that was shown to the 10,000 Jewish children whose lives the British public were able to save. We must remember the Holocaust alone in deep reflection, but we must also come together to remember the extremes of good and evil that regular people are capable of. If we leaders recognise that we can shape things through our empathy, compassion and respect, we will stop it happening again.