Tuesday, December 13, 2005

Full Council Debates

My previous post on 2nd December gives the text of the motion that I moved at the Council meeting on Holocaust Memorial Day. Appropriately, the prayers at the beginning of the Council meeting were given by Rabbi Vogel – the energetic Rabbi of the Ealing and Acton synagogue – who spoke of the importance to all faiths of winter festivals of lights like Hanukkah.

In my speech, I started by saying that although I had moved the original motion proposing local commemorations some four years ago, all that I and others remembered of that debate was the speech made by former Cllr Joan Ansell. Joan was the first Jewish Mayor of the Borough, and as a young woman in the armed forces had visited concentration camps soon after their liberation in 1945. Her speech was one of the finest and most moving that I have ever heard in the Council Chamber in my twenty years there. Joan's speech was a perfect example of what Holocaust Memorial Day is intended to achieve – the use of memories and experience of holocaust to learn lessons for the future.

I outlined the background to the motion, and particularly stressed both the centrality of the Jewish experience to the understanding of Holocaust, and its relevance to other groups and nations before and since the Nazi period. For example, we have in our Borough one of the largest Armenian communities in Britain – and the Armenian diaspora in Turkey experienced what most would regard as a holocaust in the second decade of the last century. Hitler infamously sought to justify his holocaust by saying “who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?" I finished by saying that Holocaust Memorial Day was ultimately about the moral duty of the Council to challenge and seek to defeat all forms of persecution including anti-semitism, racism, islamophobia, homophobia, and xenophobia – in Boroughs like ours we proudly celebrate our diversity, whilst also recognising our common humanity.

Unfortunately, Tory Cllr Tony Brown who had intended to second the motion was not able to attend. His place was ably taken by Tory Cllr Jason Stacey from Greenford Green ward, who talked about the relevance of holocaust to all ages and particularly those who have learnt it as history rather than as news. Labour Cllr Bassam Mahfouz (Northolt West End ward) outlined his experience of visiting Auschwitz as a school student – my motion specifically welcomed the Chancellor’s announcement of an extra £1.5 million to the Holocaust Educational Trust which will enable two sixth formers from every UK school to undertake such a visit. The all-Party support was completed by Cllr Harvey Rose on behalf of the Liberal Democrats, who described the Nazi holocaust as “a unique event of extraordinary cruelty”.

The motion was of course passed unanimously. I spoke afterwards with Jason and Harvey and we agreed to set up an informal group of members to oversee the arrangements for Holocaust Memorial Day 2006 (which will be commemorated nationally on 26th January as the 27th falls on the Jewish Sabbath). Darra Singh agreed to set up the first meeting of this group for early in January. Sorry about the length of this piece on the Holocaust Memorial Day motion, but it's an issue about which I feel passionately.

The Council meeting also had two other motions of a similar character. Labour Cllr Tejinder Dhami (Dormers Wells) moved a motion on the recent earthquake affecting Pakistan, Afghanistan and India, and spoke movingly saying : “natural disasters do not respect the boundaries of nations or religions … amongst the poorest people in the world have faced the wrath of nature.” Tory Cllr Glenn Murphy moved a motion commemorating the recent death in Iraq of pilgrims from the Dawoodi Bohra mosque in his Northolt Mandeville ward, which was agreed without debate despite a distasteful attempt by the Lib Dems to add party political comments to it.

All of this said, for most people, the best speech of the night was made by Labour Cllr Kieron Gavan (Northfield ward), in a debate about a recent auditors report into the ‘Response’ scheme. This report – commissioned by Leader Leo Thomson and Chief Executive Darra Singh – stressed benefits flowing from the ‘customer first’ Response programme, whilst criticising its governance by former senior Council officers. Kieron’s speech was a unique combination of thoughtful analysis and glorious rant. He said that there should be “no shame in the bold vision of the programme” but that there were “clear operational failures”. Warming to this theme he said of former senior Council officers “there are some people that I’d like to bring back just to sack them … particularly three former members of the corporate board … when I heard that they were going, I was sitting here thinking ‘whoopee’ while you lot (the Tories) were saying that it was a shame that they were going.” Kieron (just) avoided naming the people in question, but every Cllr knew who he meant.

Christmas drinks and mince pies afterwards in the Mayor's Parlour were very welcome - even if the London Pride was only in cans.

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