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‘Antisemitism is a stain on our society’
The Home Secretary was speaking at the annual Yom HaShoah ceremony
April 24, 2025 08:28
The Home Secretary was speaking at the annual Yom HaShoah ceremony
April 24, 2025 08:28Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has slammed the antisemitic attacks in the UK that followed October 7 as “sickening and intolerable”, calling each of them “a stain on our society”.
Addressing three and a half thousand people outside Parliament at the annual Yom HaShoah ceremony on Wednesday evening, Cooper said: “More than three quarters of a century [after the Holocaust], we know that antisemitism has remained stubbornly present in our own society, and the torrent of antisemitism that swept through countries, including here in the UK, following the October 7 barbaric terrorist attacks, was sickening and intolerable.”
CST reported a record high of 4,296 anti-Jewish hate incidents in 2023, many of them fuelled by responses to the Hamas terrorist attacks on October 7.
Speaking on behalf of her government and MPs across all political parties, Cooper said: “We will not stand for [antisemitism], not now, not ever – antisemitism has no place in our nation… the government and communities across the country must be unrelenting in our fight to root it out.”
Her words, which were met with loud applause, came a month after she pledged to bring in measures to better protect synagogues.
She told the annual CST dinner that the government would bring in an amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill - currently going through Parliament - to stop aggressive protests taking place near places of worship.
While a weekly anti-Israel protest in Swiss Cottage was moved away from local synagogues by police in February, last Shabbat, which was also a Yom tov – the seventh day of Passover –an anti-Israel protest was allowed to go through an area in Westcliffe-on-Sea with a significant Jewish population while families were walking home from synagogue.
The Yom HaShoah ceremony took place in Victoria Tower Gardens, the site of the proposed UK Holocaust memorial and learning centre. Last month, Cooper also announced that the new offence for climbing on a war memorial would be extended to include the new Holocaust memorial.
Neil Martin OBE, Chair of Yom HaShoah UK and ceremony producer, said: “Having senior tributes from the very heart of our democracy sends a powerful message: that British Jews are not alone – that in these uncertain times, we are seen, heard, and protected.”
The event included a speech by Auschwitz survivor Susan Pollack, who Cooper introduced as “a truly remarkable woman”, who had spent her life “turning trauma into testimony and pain into purpose”.
It also came on the day that the death of Holocaust survivor Eve Kugler was announced, whom Cooper said was “so inspirational to people around the world”.
The ceremony, which was also watched by thousands online, included singing from 300 children 15 Jewish primary schools, who perform Yom HaShoah UK official anthem Never Again, historic 1945 BBC footage of Bergen-Belsen survivors and an interview with 100-year-old Normandy Veteran and Belsen Liberator Mervyn Kersh.
Photo: Yvette Cooper with the children’s choir at the Yom HaShoah ceremony (Meron Persey Photography)