Page 44 - Balfour100-E

44 Defending the Declaration Preparations ✡

In May 1939 the British Government led by Neville Chamberlain introduced a

White Paper proposing severe restrictions on Jewish immigration to Palestine
1
in response to the Arab revolt of 1936-39. The following extract from Hansard
2
gives part of the defiant response from Winston Churchill

Defending the Balfour Declaration

❛

I say quite frankly that I find this a
melancholy occasion. Like my right
hon. Friend the Member for Spark-
brook (Mr Amery), I feel bound to vote
against the proposals of His Majesty’s
Government.
As one intimately and responsibly
concerned in the earlier stages of our
Palestine policy, I could not stand by
and see solemn engagements into which
Britain has entered before the world
set aside for reasons of administrative
convenience or – and it will be a vain
hope – for the sake of a quiet life. Like
my right hon. Friend, I should feel per-
sonally embarrassed in the most acute
manner if I lent myself, by silence or
inaction, to what I must regard as an act
of repudiation... I was from the begin-
ning a sincere advocate of the Balfour
Declaration, and I have made repeated
public statements to that effect.
I regret very much that the pledge
of the Balfour Declaration, endorsed as
it has been by successive Governments,
and the conditions under which we
obtained the Mandate, have both been
violated by the Government’s propos-
als. There is much in this White Paper
which is alien to the spirit of the Balfour living in Palestine. It was made to world he and others sent to us: “the Jewish
Declaration, but I will not trouble about Jewry and in particular to the Zionist people who have through centuries of
that. I select the one point upon which associations. It was in consequence of dispersion and persecution patiently
there is plainly a breach and repudia- and on the basis of this pledge that we awaited the hour of its restoration to its
tion of the Balfour Declaration – the received important help in the War, ancestral home.” Those are the words.
provision that Jewish immigration can and that after the War we received from They were the people outside, not the
be stopped in five years’ time by the the Allied and Associated Powers the people in.
decision of an Arab majority. That is a Mandate for Palestine. It is not with the Jews in Palestine
plain breach of a solemn obligation. I This pledge of a home of refuge, of that we have now or at any future time
am astonished that my right hon. Friend an asylum, was not made to the Jews to deal, but with world Jewry, with Jews
the Prime Minister, of all others, and at in Palestine but to the Jews outside all over the world. That is the pledge
this moment above all others, should Palestine, to that vast, unhappy mass of which was given, and that is the pledge
have lent himself to this new and sud- scattered, persecuted, wandering Jews which we are now asked to break, for
den default. whose intense, unchanging, uncon- how can this pledge be kept, I want to
To whom was the pledge of the querable desire has been for a National know, if in five years’ time the National
Balfour Declaration made? It was not Home. To quote the words to which my Home is to be barred and no more Jews
made to the Jews of Palestine, it was right hon. Friend the Prime Minister are to be allowed in without the permis-
not made to those who were actually subscribed in the Memorial which sion of the Arabs?