Who’s Afraid of the Holocaust? – or – What Are The Jews Frightened Of?
- What are the Jews afraid of?
- It’s a question a lot of people have asked after the Chief Rabbi’s extraordinary intervention in the general election campaign. Does he really think that there’s going to be another Holocaust in 21st century England? And the answer to that is: maybe he does.
- But isn’t that stretching credulity a bit far? Gas chambers on Salisbury plain are surely a ridiculously unthinkable notion? Yes, they are (although not more ridiculous or unthinkable than gas chambers in civilised 20th century Germany).
- But in one sense at least, the enduring lesson of the Holocaust is not the atrocities that were carried out against Jews and many other groups of people, as much as the conditions that permitted those atrocities to become thinkable and feasible.
- Germany was one of the most sophisticated and developed rule of law societies in the world in the early 20th century. Its Parliamentary and democratic traditions were refined and entrenched. And yet, in a matter of a couple of years, decades of democratic tradition in all three branches of the State – the Executive, the legislature and the judiciary – were blown aside as so much froth, and the rule of law was completely turned on its head.
- It is that which I and some other Jews fear more than any specific atrocity that might result, whether aimed at us or at any other specific section of society.
- The rule of law is fragile. And it is perhaps more fragile in those countries that take it for granted because they do not remember its absence, then it is in those countries that struggle with it daily and therefore appreciate its delicate nature.
- In the last few decades the United Kingdom has begun to habituate itself to taking liberties with the rule of law. This is not a party-political point. Governments of different complexions have allowed themselves to make constitutional changes without the kind of intense and lengthy consideration and scrutiny, long before the party-political cut-and-thrust of Parliamentary progress, that would once have been required to ensure that the likely implications of the changes were understood by all, and the necessary safeguards, balances and protections incorporated.
- And it isn’t only governments: the relationships between the Government, Parliament and the courts have come under unprecedented pressure in the last few months, and the authorities within each branch of the constitution have found themselves making or accepting enormously radical constitutional change without any kind of preparation, and sometimes without appearing to recognise the wider implications of action taken to secure a specific short-term result.
- It is this that is enough to give a sense of unease to those who fear the fragility of the rule of law.
- Whoever wins the general election needs to take to heart the message of the Holocaust as a wake-up call not in relation to the perpetration of atrocities, but in relation to the need to protect the rule of law. They need to reflect on the pace of change in the United Kingdom’s unwritten constitution, and they need to consider how to slow it down, and how to ensure that our constitution develops, not through knee-jerk reactions for short-term gain, but as part of a consensual process bringing in as many different people as possible, to cherish and protect the core values of our rule of law society while ensuring that it is flexible enough to allow the political and societal pendulum to swing unimpeded backwards and forwards through the generations.
- That may require a written constitution; or the codification of parts of the constitution; or it may not. But it certainly requires thought. Thought about the future of the Union; about the role of referendums in allowing “ordinary” people to feel that they influence politics which therefore becomes relevant to them; about how to protect the judiciary from perceptions of political bias; and about many other aspects of what we have taken for granted for a dangerously long time.
- Constitutional reform is urgent in a number of ways: but it is so urgent that it must not be hurried. Nor must it be carried out in a way that serves, or appears to serve, any one side of any particular argument.
- Otherwise the constitution and the rule of law will become a political football, kicked back and forth between ever-widening gulfs separating self-serving and increasingly fanatical political opinions, from all parts of the political spectrum.
- And that’s what the Jews – and everybody else – should be afraid of.(Daniel Greenberg is a lawyer specialising in legislation, and a Director of the Constitution Reform Group.)
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