Another voice | 1 March 2008

The truth about the Auschwitz ‘gimmick’ row is that Labour exploited Jewish sensitivities

David Cameron, said the Times last Saturday, ‘was facing intense political criticism last night after including student “trips to Auschwitz” on a list of government gimmicks.’ The Daily Mail was more shrill: ‘Pressure was piling on David Cameron last night to apologise,’ said the paper. ‘Senior figures from the Jewish community expressed dismay after an attempt by the Conservative leader to attack the Prime Minister spectacularly backfired.’ The Guardian confined itself to saying that Mr Cameron had ‘found himself at odds’ with Jewish leaders after including student trips to Auschwitz ‘in a list of “Gordon Brown’s 26 gimmicks”’. Meanwhile Stephen Pollard, in his Spectator blog on 22 February, was expressing horrified disbelief at Cameron’s remark.

So I found and studied the Tory briefing note which had caused all this trouble. It is hard to conclude that most of Cameron’s critics had read it properly, or that some of them had read it at all. Nobody who did so would be left in any doubt that what the Conservative leader had been criticising as gimmickry was not the idea of sponsored trips to Auschwitz for older schoolchildren, but the implication that central government would pay for it all. The truth (the Tory press release said) was that schools would have to find £100 per student from their own budgets, while the government would pay the rest (about £250).

So I looked up the Department for Children, Schools and Families announcement to see whether Cameron was right to claim that the government had implied the whole thing was being funded by a new grant from Whitehall. He was indeed right. ‘Two pupils from every sixth form and college in the country,’ said the departmental press release, ‘will be able to visit Auschwitz and learn about the Holocaust thanks to £4.65