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✡ Partnerships Royal Albert Hall 55

London’s Royal Albert
Hall (left) was built
on the site of William
Wilberforce’s house

The joy of celebrating the Balfour

Declaration in the Royal Albert Hall

t is most appropriate that we have chosen the Royal Albert Hall for our that, remembering all that, they will
celebration of the centenary of the Balfour Declaration, for at least two not grudge that small notch – for it is
I reasons. The first concerns the building itself. The foundation stone of no more geographically, whatever it
the Hall was laid 150 years ago, and the building was opened on 29 March 1871 may be historically – that small notch
by Queen Victoria. It was named in honour of her late husband, Prince Albert. in what are now Arab territories being
The idea for such a venue had grown out of the Great Exhibition of 1851. After given to the people who for all these
the closure of that event, plans were put in place for this concert hall. A large hundreds of years have been sepa-
building known as Gore House, built in the 1750s, was purchased along with its rated from it – but surely have a title
three-acre estate. to develop on their own lines in the
land of their forefathers, which ought
It is this building which gives the
venue its significance for us, as this had ‘We are partners to appeal to the sympathy of the Arab
people as it, I am convinced, appeals
been the home of William Wilberforce
MP. Although better known for his in this great to the great mass of my own Christian
fellow-countrymen.
parliamentary work to secure the aboli-
“And now, ladies and gentlemen,
tion of slavery, Wilberforce was also an enterprise... I feel I have done with the gloomy task of
active Christian advocate for the return
of the Jews to their Promised Land, and assured we may enumerating difficulties, and I have
only one more word to say. We are
became the first Vice President of the
London Jews Society, now the Church’s look forward to embarked on a great adventure, and I
say ‘we’ advisedly, and by ‘we’ I mean
Ministry Among Jewish People (CMJ).
The second significance of this a future in which on the one side the Jewish people, and
building is that Arthur Balfour himself I mean, on the other side, the Manda-
addressed a meeting of the English Zi- Palestine will be tory Power of Palestine. We are part-
ners in this great enterprise. If we fail
onist Federation here in 1920. By then
Arab unrest in Palestine had already led made a home for you, you cannot succeed. If you fail us,
you cannot succeed. But I feel assured
some to recommend that Britain should
renege on the Mandate for Palestine the Jewish people.’ that we shall not fail you and that you
will not fail us; and if I am right, as I
and its promises to the Jewish people. Arthur Balfour
In response, Balfour said this: am sure I am, in this prophecy of hope
and confidence, then surely we may
“So far as the Arabs are concerned
– a great, an interesting and an attrac- of their brutal conqueror, who had kept look forward with a happy gaze to a
future in which Palestine will indeed,
tive race – I hope they will remember them under his heel for these many
that while this assembly and all the centuries. and in the fullest measure and degree
of success, be made a home for the
Jews that it represents throughout the “I hope they will remember it is we
world desire under the aegis of Great who have established the independent Jewish people.”
Britain to establish this home for the Arab sovereignty of the Hejaz. I hope We stand today in the shadow of
Jewish people, the Great Powers, and they will remember that it is we who Wilberforce and Balfour, two men used
among all the Great Powers most desire in Mesopotamia to prepare the by God to bring about his purposes for
especially Great Britain, has freed way for the future of a self-governing, the restoration of his people to the land
them, the Arab race, from the tyranny autonomous Arab state, and I hope he had promised to them.