New UK Government Commits to Building Holocaust Memorial – King Charles III Names it a Priority

The new UK government has announced that it will build a Holocaust memorial and learning centre next to the Houses of Parliament in London, pledging to fulfil a long-standing, controversial promise.

The announcement of the Holocaust memorial museum was also made by King Charles III in a speech on 17 July, during which he read out the Labour Party's priorities for the coming months.

The Holocaust Memorial, first proposed almost a decade ago under the previous Conservative administration, was intended to commemorate the more than six million Jews and other victims murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators during World War II. 

Preparations for the institution began on the basis of recommendations from the all-party Holocaust Commission, which the Prime Minister had set up a year earlier in 2014. At the time, Cameron said that the project was intended to ‘guarantee Holocaust education forever.’ 

However, the planning permission was later overturned in the High Court after activists argued that it violated a 1900 law that protected the park from development.

Problems arose after the London Historic Parks and Gardens Trust challenged the decision to allocate a site for the museum in the Victoria Tower gardens. The latter are listed in category II and have a protected status. Following a review by the High Court of Justice, the planning permission for the Victoria Tower was cancelled in 2022. The decision is backed by a law from 1900 that requires the area to remain a park.

The new Holocaust Remembrance Bill will repeal part of this law, removing the 120-year-old legal obstacles. 

Jewish community organisations in the UK welcomed the innovation. 

‘At a time when our community is fighting anti-Semitism, it is vital that society is reminded of what hatred of Jews can lead to if left unchecked. We very much hope that the memorial and education centre will allow all visitors to learn about the vital history of the Holocaust, and we look forward to continuing to work with the government,’ Michael Newman, chief executive of the Association of Jewish Refugees (AJR), said in a statement to The Art Newspaper.

The legislation to build the Holocaust memorial museum and education centre comes at a time when anti-Semitism in Britain is set to reach its highest level since 1984 in 2023. In February of this year, the Jewish advisory body Community Security Trust (CST) released a report showing that 2023 was the worst year for anti-Semitism in the country since intolerance was recorded in 1984. A sharp rise in hatred of Jews emerged after 7 October, when Hamas terrorists attacked Israel. Israel's war with Hamas terrorists is still ongoing.