The topic of the Holocaust, already the only compulsory history topic for schools following the national curriculum, is soon to be compulsory for every school across the UK. Last month, PM Keir Starmer announced this policy change at a Holocaust Education Trust dinner, stating: “I want you to know … We have heard you. We feel very deeply the responsibility of defending the truth of history.”

Starmer framed this both as an extension of Gordon Brown’s 2006 decision as chancellor to provide government funding to the Holocaust Educational Trust, and as a reaction to the brutal Hamas attack on October 7 and its after-effects in the UK. He talked of “hatred marching on our streets”, “children afraid to wear their school uniforms” and “students targeted on university campuses”.

However, if no plausible solution to antisemitism in the UK can be connected to this policy, then Starmer’s announcement is open to being cynically interpreted. His speech came two weeks after his foreign minister’s tentative statement that 30 of the 350 licences of arms exports to Israel would be suspended because of the “risk that they might be used to commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian law”. Labour has a new image to maintain, after all, and a foreign policy minefield of its own making to traverse. 

To avoid this cynical interpretation, I make two proposals as to what rationale might stand behind his policy: (1) that it will ensure that the next generation learns some crucial truths, and (2) that it will foster a sense of collective identity. Ostensibly either seems plausible; ultimately, I think neither are.

If the former, then ensuring that the next generation learns crucial truths presumably requires a meaningful pedagogical shake-up. During the Holocaust Trust dinner, Starmer praised Testimony 360, a flagship programme providing Virtual Reality Headsets to students ages 9-13 so that they can interact with victim testimony. Some empirical research suggests that Virtual Reality headsets can be used in educational environments to promote empathetic responses. But microengineering affectual responses says nothing yet about how digitising the classroom helps the next generation learn the truths of history, especially if classrooms currently deliver students to universities who cannot even read history.

Something bolder and more substantive must be in the works. But what? Does Starmer intend to go beyond the aims of Testimony 360 — that of “future-proofing” survivor testimony — and “future-proof” the truths of history herself? Students cannot be trusted to reach the proper conclusions — these must now be given in advance!

Dictating the lessons of history to students is not the job of government. A range of textbooks on the Holocaust should be engaged with in schools. Great films like the recent The Zone of Interest should be watched in schools. But one does not strap students into a Shoah simulator until they download the historical truth. It beggars belief that Starmer intends this.

If, however, a pedagogical shake-up amounts to increasing the nationwide frequency of Holocaust exposure (no academy or free school left unturned), then this does not go far enough by Starmer’s own lights. Starmer’s description of antisemitism in the UK (“hatred marching on our streets”) demands more of a response than this. Of course, more-facts-heard-more-often might represent the limit of Starmer’s thinking. He is not above crude metrics: “This was the first year that participation in Holocaust memorial day fell,” he said. “We can’t sit back and accept that”. But then so much for the first rationale.

The second rationale is that of fostering a sense of collective identity. A former German president Joachim Gauck once said, that “while the Holocaust will not necessarily be among the central components of German identity for everyone in our country, it will still hold true that there is no German identity without Auschwitz.” Starmer, dispensing with any such nuance, said during his speech that: “for the first time, studying the Holocaust will become a critical, vital part of every single student’s identity”.

One can only speculate as to what this identity might centre around. Perhaps the sharing in a “common trauma” of the type media commentators said resurfaced for Israelis following October 7? It’s not clear how this would change lives for the better. In any case, there is no evidence that clinical terms like “traumatic memory” can be applied to multi-generational groups. 

Perhaps, though, Starmer’s hope is that British citizens come to identify with those who have experienced a common trauma. This seems more doable. But what reason is there to think this would change lives for the better? It cannot be assumed that attempting to engineer a collective identity is a royal road to peace either at home or abroad.

Peter Novick once observed about the educational approach in America, that “the typical ‘confrontation’ with the Holocaust … in the burgeoning curricula, does not incline us toward thinking of ourselves as potential victimisers – rather the opposite. It is an article of faith in these encounters that one should “identify with the victims,” thus acquiring the warm glow of virtue that such vicarious identification brings.”  

The pessimistic conclusion is that the rationale of fostering a collective identity leaves much to be desired

A national consciousness raising effort which results in such articles of faith can have seismic political consequences. For example, norms like Staatsräson — that Israel is the state’s raison d’état — feature prominently in Germany. Angela Merkel once gave a speech in which she affirmed Germany’s responsibility to preserve the memory of the Holocaust and the security of Israel. These were not just empty words — they are indicative of a cultural-political scene which currently shuts down political protests and stifles foreign policy debates. Germany has the history it has. But following the German educational approach risks different norms of similar consequence in the UK.

The pessimistic conclusion is that the rationale of fostering a collective identity leaves much to be desired. The more cynical conclusion is that no charitable reconstruction of Starmer’s rationale succeeds because his announcement was geared towards nothing much else than cheap political gain.

Tellingly, during his speech, Starmer said of Auschwitz: “I know there is nothing quite as powerful as seeing it for yourself. My wife Vic has been, I must go.” In the same breath as claiming to know that nothing is as powerful as seeing it for himself, he professes from testimony alone to know all that needs to be known.