29/05/2026
The decision by the British Museum to postpone a Jewish Culture Month event because it could not guarantee the safety of those attending is one of the most shameful moments in recent British public life. One of our great national institutions has admitted, in writing, that a coordinated effort by antisemitic activists to infiltrate and disrupt the event was sufficient to make it cancel the programme. The mob did not even have to turn up. The threat alone was enough.
This is not an isolated incident. It sits at the end of a long and increasingly disturbing chain. The Islamist attack on Heaton Park synagogue on Yom Kippur last autumn. The firebombing of four Hatzola ambulances outside Machzike Hadath Synagogue in Golders Green in March. A father and his son stabbed outside their place of worship in April by an attacker shouting antisemitic slogans. Counter-terror police confirming that the IRGC is directing attacks on British soil using disposable young criminals, and that Jewish communities in Harrow and Barnet are being actively surveilled by Iranian agents. Hate marches dominating the streets of our capital week after week under a Mayor who refuses to name what they are.
And now, in May 2026, in the British Museum, we have arrived at the point where Jewish people cannot safely attend a cultural event about their own heritage in the country they call home.
This is the result of years of moral cowardice. When intimidation goes unanswered and institutions decide that the path of least resistance is to capitulate, the mob learns very quickly that it works.
I have campaigned for the proscription of the IRGC for sixteen years and as Chair of the UK-Israel APPG I have raised the safety of British Jews repeatedly in Parliament, and I will continue to do so. But this is no longer a problem that can be solved behind closed doors... Our great institutions must find courage, the Government must use every power available, and every person in public life in this country must decide, openly, whose side they are on.
