Programme and, below, text of the speech given by Andy Woolley on behalf of the Trades Council at this year’s event (2025)

   Holocaust Memorial Day

    Lansdown Hall Stroud

     26^th January 2025

Programme

Welcome by Adam Horovitz, poet and member of Community Solidarity Stroud District. Adam is presenting today’s Holocaust Memorial Day event.

The Red Band will play at various points during the event, starting with

‘Star of the Five Valleys’ (שטערן פון די פינף טאָל Shtern fun di finf tol).

Speakers

Liz Whiteside from Stroud Together with Refugees

Tony Davey, the Mayor of Stroud

Andy Woolley from Stroud Trades Council (see below for the text of the speech)

Red Band – ‘Einheitsfrontlied’ (United Front Song)

Steve Saville, Curate of Stroud Parish Churches

Baron Mendes da Costa from The three Counties Liberal Jewish Community will say Kaddish, the Jewish mourning prayer.

Red Band and Karen Coldrick– ‘Zog Nit Keynmol’ ‘Never Say’ also known as the Partisan’s Song or the Song of the Warsaw Ghetto.

Mustafa Davies from the Stroud Muslim Prayer Hall

Colin Levine from Gloucestershire Na’amod

Rami Emad, Stroud resident and Syrian Refugee

Ela Pathnak Sen from Stroud Against Racism

Adam Horovitz – close

The Red Band will play ‘Bella Ciao’ and ‘The Internationale’. Please join in.

Thank you to the Red Band, Adam for presenting this Holocaust Memorial Day Event, and all our speakers. As we left the Red Band played ‘Di Shvue’ (The Oath): Anthem of the Bund.

The international theme for Holocaust Memorial Day 2025 is

             ‘For a better future’. Let us all commit to that.

The collection went to the cost of hiring Lansdown. Any leftover went to Stroud Together with Refugees

My name is Andy Woolley and I’m honoured to be asked again to speak at this important event on behalf of the Stroud Trades Council representing the major unions with members in the area.  I’m a delegate to the Trades Council from the National Education Union.

In the last two years I have spoken about the fact that the first Nazi concentration camp was Dachau and housed, then exterminated, mainly socialists and trade unionists although, of course, many of them would also have been Jewish, but they were there because of their politics.  I have also warned of the advancing danger of right-wing ideology and the demonisation of “others” in our own country and contrasted that to the rise of Fascism in Europe in the last century something to which I will return.

As someone who grew up when memories of World War 2 were very much alive and who has been to places like the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam and Yad Vashem – the World Holocaust Memorial Centre in Jerusalem as well as having been an official of a trade union which has produced significant material on the holocaust in conjunction with the Holocaust Educational Trust, I am one of those who has always wished that we could say “Never Again” as we promised to do after the Holocaust. 

But we can’t, because we have had many other genocides and conflicts, such as those between the Tutsis and Hutus in Rwanda, the treatment of the Rohingya in Myanmar, the civil war in Somalia, the treatment of Muslims in India, the treatment of the Huyghars and Tibetans by China, the ethnic conflicts in the former Soviet Union and the assassination and disappearances of trade unionists and socialists in Argentina under the fascist Junta and in Colombia under successive right-wing governments and the repression of trade unionists in Iran.  These are just some of the many things that have happened since we said “Never Again”.

Most, if not all, of our affiliated unions are affiliated nationally to the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign and as a local trade council we are affiliated to the Stroud PSC as are, I know, a number of you in the audience, all of us here today remembering the horrors of the Holocaust.  I think this is because we believe this support is also part of trying to ensure that there is a “Never Again”.  I leave you to decide.

I return to what is happening here in Britain. Since last time we met at this occasion we have seen the most appalling riots, fuelled by false rumours about the horrific Southport murders and the demonisation of asylum seekers.  We have seen those who peddle this race hatred and the demonisation of those fleeing from persecution and seeking a better future emboldened by the World’s richest man and the newly incumbent President of the USA, a man who is offended by a Bishop preaching from the pulpit “love thy neighbour”.  More worryingly, it is promulgated by some of those in our own Parliament.  Equality and Diversity is under attack, support for minorities is under attack and the rights of trade unionist are under attack.  

Farmers seeking a continuing exemption from the taxes the rest of us pay are portrayed as victims whilst doctors, teachers and other public sector workers getting a pay rise, which goes just a small way to making up for years of pay decline, are seen by many in the media as selfish and greedy and the cause of our economic woes.

Our social media is filled with hate and vileness against others, denial of climate change and obnoxious abuse of those who disagree.   Our mainstream media give undue attention to those who peddle division. Many of the leading figures being public school educated millionaires trying to pass themselves off as “men of the people” and promising those in need a return to a wonderful Britain that never existed in reality.  Trade Unionists and Socialists, alongside others, including many in the Jewish communities in Stroud, in London and elsewhere saw off Mosley and his Blackshirts in the thirties.  We need to be ready to do the same again, peacefully but forcefully, starting now.

Remembering the Holocaust is not just something we need to do on or around 27 January every year.  If we really mean “Never Again” it has to inform all our actions, our interactions with others and our efforts to bring tolerance and understanding to our own country and peace to the World.

So, finally, I’ll read again, the poem by Pastor Martin Niemöller that I read two years ago:

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me

Let us all speak out and say, loud and clear, “Never Again”.