During a debate on the Second Reading of the Holocaust Memorial Bill in the House of Lords on 4th September, Guy - who is a trustee of the Imperial War Museum Foundation - called on the Government to rethink plans to site the Memorial and Education Centre in Victoria Tower Gardens, next door to Parliament.
He warned that the current proposals simply foster division: "The building of a memorial to those who perished and those who survived—and an education centre to stand as a warning to those who would seek refuge in the ideology of the far right in future—is something we should all unite around. This Bill, regrettably, simply sows division. My feelings towards it can be summed up in four words that have characterised much of this debate: 'Great idea, wrong place'."
Guy said that there was an ideal place for the Memorial and Education Centre which would avoid "the terrible consequences for the environment, the real security threat not just for Parliament but for the media who work around here, the lack of space for a proper education centre, the dreadful design without meaning or feeling and the funding black hole ... of perhaps £100 million" of the current scheme.
He said that "the right answer is for a memorial and education centre to be housed just a stone’s throw from Parliament at the Imperial War Museum, which has held the national collection for the Holocaust for a quarter of a century ... The IWM has all the qualities needed to make a truly international success of a memorial and education centre: space, expertise, history, and, above all, as a potent and visible imposing national symbol of remembrance, authority. The IWM is already the place to which people from across the UK and internationally who want to remember the Holocaust, and those who want to learn from the atrocity, gravitate."
He pointed out that the IWM has held the national collection of the Holocaust since 2000, and in November 2021 opened new Holocaust galleries which, using the most up-to-date research and evaluation, including archive material available only since the end of the Cold War, tell the horror of the Holocaust through individual stories based on over 2,000 photos, books, letters and personal objects. He added that these galleries rightly take their place alongside new, equally impressive Second World War galleries, costing £31 million, with two suites of learning centres using the most up-to-date digital technology to tell stories and encourage discussion and reflection. Since the end of 2021, 1.2 million visitors have gone through these galleries and over 20,000 students have taken part in learning programs.
He concluded: "Why on earth would we want to build another memorial and learning centre, which would inevitably be inferior to that offered by the IWM, when we already have the resources there and, in the beautiful Harmsworth gardens, space to build a fitting, dignified memorial without the terrible disruption and the risk of shoehorning it into Victoria Tower Gardens? That site has everything that Victoria Tower Gardens does not: it is accessible, it is safe, it has history, it has potential, and it works with the environment rather than against it."
The full text of the debate, including the response from the Minister Lord Khan of Burnley, is here.
