The controversy over Britain’s planned Holocaust memorial

BUILDING A MEMORIAL to the victims of the Holocaust is something Britain might be expected to do quite well. Its cities are endowed with many magnificent monuments, after all. Yet nearly a decade after the government drew up a plan to build a new memorial and learning centre in central London, the project is beset by rancour and delay. In January, at a hearing of a parliamentary committee to consider the plan, Ruth Deech, a cross-bench peer in the House of Lords, asked why the government was “so determined to push this project through when it has alienated so many people, it adds nothing, costs a fortune?”

The main problem is the proposed site for the memorial. In 2016, after a public consultation, the government settled on Victoria Tower Gardens, a small park next to Parliament and the Thames. But a law dating from 1900 prohibits the park from being used as anything other than a public garden. Planning permission for a memorial was granted in 2021, but the High Court quashed it the following year. In 2023 the government introduced a bill that would repeal the prohibition.