My Lords, in supporting my noble friend, I will speak to my Amendments 11, 12 and 37 in this group.
As my noble friend Lord Strathcarron said, this well-known memorial commemorates the 1833 Act to emancipate slaves and marks the immense contribution of British parliamentarians who campaigned for abolition, including Wilberforce, Clarkson, Thomas Fowell Buxton and others. It was commissioned by Charles Buxton MP, the son of Thomas Fowell Buxton, and designed in the neo-Gothic style by Samuel Teulon. It was completed in 1866 and originally placed in Parliament Square. It was removed from there in 1949 and reinstated in Victoria Tower Gardens in 1957, being placed carefully at an axis with St John the Evangelist church in Smith Square. It is a grade 2 listed monument both on architectural merit and because of the significance of the historical event that it marks.
The setting of the monument will undoubtedly be harmed by the proposed Holocaust memorial and learning centre. Even the planning inspector, who ultimately recommended the approval of the memorial and learning centre, accepted that there would be significant harm; however, he felt that the other benefits—having ignored the impediments of the 1900 Act—outweighed this harm.
Like my noble friend Lord Strathcarron, I am grateful to the architect member of the London Historic Parks and Gardens Trust who has measured the distance between the memorial and the riverside as approximately 5 metres. If the proposals for the Holocaust memorial go forward, the Buxton memorial will be just 2 metres away from the courtyard drop. Those proposals include the suggestion for a stone bench around that 2-metre edge of the memorial. Were this to occur, it would create a pinch point, with the remaining crowds walking along the riverside. I suggest that that is quite unacceptable. The Buxton memorial is a vital part of British history and it should not be infringed upon or sidelined.
I stress that this is not a matter of prioritising a monument to the abolition of slavery over the extermination of 6 million Jews. We on this side of the argument all say that there should be an appropriately sized and relevant monument to the Holocaust in Victoria Tower Gardens. We reject the grotesque, oversized Adjaye fins as not suitable for this space. These giant fins would overwhelm the Buxton memorial; any poky little path between it and the fins or the learning centre should be at least 8 metres wide, so that the memorial can be properly seen from a reasonable distance.
I do not know whether noble Lords have ever gone up Parliament Street on the southern side and looked across at the Treasury and the FCDO buildings. They are quite magnificent, but you cannot appreciate their beauty since you are only 30 yards away. They are as magnificent as the government buildings in Washington or Paris, but, in Paris, Baron Haussmann made the streets so wide that you can see and appreciate the beauty from a distance. I suggest that we need that same principle to apply to the Buxton memorial and to any properly sized Holocaust monument. They should be magnificent and visible from all parts of the gardens. The awful thing about Adjaye’s giant fins is that, since he could not design a proper monument to honour 6 million Jews, he went for size and the same monument that was rejected by Ottawa.
I am not necessarily a conspiracy theorist, but I have looked at dozens and dozens of artist impressions of the Adjaye monument and I am stumped. I am willing to be corrected and pointed in the right direction, but I cannot find any artist impression which has got more than 16 fins. The thing is going to have 23 fins, as represented in the plan, but I cannot find any artist impression showing me what 23 fins would look like. It has been minimised to show 16 fins, and so these impressions show that the 16 fins do not interfere with the Buxton memorial at all. As I said, I am not a conspiracy theorist but, if anyone has got an artist impression with the 23 fins, please send it to me.
I appreciate that when the great and the good are conned by architectural psychobabble into accepting a design, they do not then want to admit that they got it wrong. I can see my colleagues digging in as deep on this as Adjaye’s bunker. However, if we are forced to accept this second-best solution and have the 23 fins, let us make sure that they are not so gigantic as to dominate the gardens and obscure the Buxton memorial or the view of the magnificent southern gable of Parliament.
If one of the key components here is supposed to be the underground learning centre, grossly inadequate though it is, then surely we do not need such a giant monstrosity on top of it. If we have to have a monstrosity, let us have a smaller monstrosity. My Amendment 11 says that any Holocaust monument must not exceed the dimensions of the Buxton memorial. That would leave ample scope for a good and magnificent Holocaust monument.
The base of the Buxton memorial is octagonal, about 12 feet in diameter with open arches on the eight sides, and is supported on clustered shafts of polished Devonshire marble. I will not go into all of the details, but what was cleverly designed into the memorial is quite magnificent. All of that magnificent work and story is delivered in something that is 12 feet wide and about 40 feet high. If we can commemorate something as important as the abolition of slavery, where some estimates say that 2 million died in transit, we can commemorate the murder of 6 million Jews in a similarly and appropriately sized monument.
Of course, the Buxton memorial was not always there; it was originally in Parliament Square before it was moved. There were heated debates in Parliament on moving it, and the last word must go to Lord Winster, a junior minister under Clement Attlee, who said:
“This memorial is not a statue. It is a memorial fountain which commemorates a noble deed, the reversal of a system which was the very negation of humanity”.—[Official Report, Commons, 13/12/1949; col. 1430.]
I suggest that those words should apply to the Holocaust memorial as well. It is very fitting. That is why the Buxton memorial must not be diminished or hidden by giant, irrelevant bronze fins, à la the discredited Adjaye design.
My Amendment 37 seeks to protect the path used by 95 % of the local people and visitors who use the gardens. The promoters say that they will try to keep open the path alongside the river. I travel through the gardens twice a day when the House is sitting, unless we are sitting so late that the garden is closed. I have only once in 30 years gone along the huge detour of the river path, just to see if it were worthwhile—hardly anyone uses it.
However, on the main footpath, which runs parallel to Millbank, I see daily heavy use. Each morning and evening I will see four or five people exercising their doggies and collecting any mess. The main footpath is essential for them. Every morning, at a regular time, I see two or three nannies with tiny tots in tow. These kiddies are no more than 18 inches high, in their little yellow vests, and each nanny will have two or three of them on either side, safely holding hands or tied together. They make very slow but safe progress along this path. I do not know where they come from or where they go, but I have never seen them on the river path. Indeed, that may be too far for them to walk.
These are some of the main users. The others are individuals—not organised games—playing football or other games. There are those having little picnics, but not hundreds of people and 40 buses squashed into the place to have picnics.
If this main footpath is taken over for construction purposes and cannot be used, thousands of users every day will be deprived of the use of the garden. None of us will want to take a detour round by the river path to get to the route that we normally use.
The promoters need to create access for their construction equipment—possibly at the southern end of the park, where the children’s playground currently is, and possibly a new one—so that the whole of the current path, the main footpath alongside Millbank, remains open during construction and afterwards. It should not be beyond their ability or that of the department to tell the constructors to create a new access route so that the path can be kept open. Those are my amendments and I commend them to the Committee.