Yesterday morning I woke up to find newspapers and magazines plastered with Holocaust Memorial stories…Not just ONE prime minister - definitely not sufficient! – no…no less than ALL the still alive FIVE Prime Ministers had been wheeled out by the UKHMF for a concerted PR exercise that would try and bully us into giving up our fight!  Do we take this as a badge of honour?  For sure!  We are definitely doing something right to deserve this treatment….

After months of Brexit misery, what a relief for these poor beleaguered politicians - mostly ex-politicians! - to be able to finally agree about something– and what a pleasure for them to come together for the sole innocent pursuit of lambasting a misguided group of angry Londoners standing up against the destruction of one of their city’s most precious and unique parks…

It was very interesting to watch the very carefully crafted PR video in which all five PMs talk about the urgent need for a UK  Memorial and Learning Centre- File: https://we.tl/t-ltEAS96hu4, and interesting to note that not one of them mentioned VTG by name, though they all spoke of the need to have the memorial ‘near’ or ‘next to’ the Houses of Parliament.   

But what do ‘near’ and ‘next to’ really mean? 

Would this scheme be even better if the buildings touched? Will being 20m away really make a difference?  Or 50m? Or 100m? And why has our original suggestion of College Green as an alternative site not ever been considered?  In our books College Green is both ‘near’ and ‘next’….and there is already a deep basement underneath it that could be used without decimating a row of trees…. And do the 5 Prime Ministers really think that the .8 of a mile to the IWM will really affect the impact of the Learning Centre on the totality of the UK’s perception of the Holocaust horrors?

So many un-answered questions. The reality is that this obsession with physical proximity to Parliament matters more to the politicians and backers than it will do to those visiting the building.  Hopefully the Learning Centre’s content (still to be disclosed!) will be more powerful than its geographical location; co-location with the IWM would definitely ensure this would be the case.

Baroness Deech’s  following comments are very apt:

“Prime Ministers, past and present, should not be politicising a sensitive and serious issue about how best to combat antisemitism today. They should not be putting pressure on Westminster City Council to approve a design that would contravene planning law and despoil a royal park. This deployment of politicians cannot be allowed to further obscure the facts that the memorial is inappropriate and in the wrong place. There is no evidence that the existing UK memorials or the new one will have a deterrent effect on antisemitism. Nor should it be rammed through in a hostile and divisive atmosphere. What is needed is a memorial that speaks to the heart, and a learning centre that places the Holocaust in the context of Jewish history and the current situation of Jews. This is not the design and not the place. “

Apart from yesterday’s Prime Ministerial froth, a lot more is going on with this project at the moment. 

The applicants have now submitted new documents with some very minor, insignificant changes, which they are bandying about in the hope that we will duped into believing that they have genuinely ‘listened’ to us.  In reality, this is all total unconvincing window-dressing of the worst variety, symptomatic of the UKHMF has been playing since the very beginning.  Their PR people desperately need to up their game.

In parallel with the submission of new drawings, the applicants have also engaged contractors to excavate over the next 3 weeks the soil below the proposed basement of the Learning Centre, to evaluate the soil composition as wells as potential for archaeological findings. 

What we desperately need to know is more about the deep root structure of the trees, as there is a real risk that the wonderful Plane Trees will be irreparably damaged during the course of the basement excavations. We have now asked WCC to ensure that trench excavations are conducted along the lines of the outer envelope of the sunken building, and that independent observers are allowed to examine the findings and the trenches. 

The Environment Agency has furthermore highlighted in its report that flood defence is a very serious concern: 

“We object to the submitted application and recommend refusal of planning permission until a satisfactory Flood Risk Assessment (FRA) has been submitted. The Flood Risk Assessment (FRA) supporting this planning application has failed to demonstrate how the proposed development will be safe for its lifetime taking into consideration the impacts of climate change and has not demonstrated how the proposed development will ensure the integrity of the flood defence is maintained during the works.”

The silver lining is that we are benefiting from the heightened exposure…yesterday we scored a huge number of additional objections on the Planning Portal and on the petition.  Please keep them coming and please put all the energy you can into helping us get our message through: YES to a Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre;  NO to it being in Victoria Tower Gardens…