Recovered Memory

Despite the pronounced scepticism of Lord Carrington and of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (since they saw it as nothing to do with Britain, and as likely to offend key allies and trading partners), Margaret Thatcher and Michael Heseltine allocated Crown property for a National Holocaust Memorial within a few hundred yards of the Cenotaph.

Britain's main contribution to the Holocaust had been Churchill's refusal to bomb the railway lines to Auschwitz, a refusal which much later moved Menachem Begin to inform Margaret Thatcher that her country and her hero had caused the deaths of two million Jews.

He himself had armed Argentina during the Falklands War, only months before the controversy over this proposed monument ostensibly to one thing but really to another.

However, the promise of it had been made to the Board of Deputies of British Jews, in those days a hopeless bunch of zealots, and to the Zealot-in-Chief, the then Labour MP, Greville Janner.

Janner, the second generation MP for the same seat as well as a second generation President of the Board of Deputies, spent many decades screeching "Anti-Semitism! Anti-Semitism! Nazi! Nazi!" at anyone who dared to question how he had made his own considerable pots of money. For example.

Janner was still active in the House of Lords until last year's Police raids on his office there and on his home. But now, apparently, he has dementia.

In a way, haven't we all?

For there is no memorial, anywhere on the face of the earth, to those who fell in and for the Palestine that was a country on the map, with the Union Flag in the corner of its own and with red postboxes bearing the crowned letters GR.

The answer to the supposedly rhetorical question, "Who was the last King of Palestine?" is "George VI."

That British country was bombed out of existence by the founders of modern terrorism. For example, Menachem Begin.

His successors' utter lack of regret about even the most extreme anti-British violence has no mainstream political parallel outside Zimbabwe. It is a wonder that there is not a statue of him in London. But give it time. Probably not very much more time.

Israel is the only country in the world that could have attacked an American naval vessel, killed 34 of her 294 crew members, and injured a further 174, all without the slightest consequence.

The Iranian and Israeli Embassies in London are both in South Kensington. On the former's property, but visible from the street, a memorial to the USS Liberty might usefully be erected.

An annual wreath-laying ceremony would be broadcast on RT, Al Jazeera and Press TV, and on Channel 4 News on a good day. But do not hold your breath for even the slightest coverage anywhere else.

Scandalously, the same would be true of the urgently needed National Memorial to British Palestine. Ideally, one yard closer to the Cenotaph than Janner's erection.

Or possibly in place of it, should it have to go the way of the extravagant headstone of Jimmy Savile.