Abstract
George Henry Hall had been His Majesty’s colonial secretary for less than three months when, together with the foreign secretary Ernest Bevin, he met with Chaim Weizmann, president of the World Zionist Organization, and Moshe Shertok, head of Palestine’s Jewish Agency. It was early on the morning of November 2, 1945, and despite the elegance of the foreign office building in which they sat, their conversation was as grim as the November day outside.1 Dispensing with all normal diplomatic pleasantries, Bevin at once accused the Jewish Agency of collaboration in the shocking events of the day before, when terrorists in Palestine had sunk three police naval vessels, severed the railway in 242 places, bombed the stationmaster’s office in Jerusalem, and badly damaged seven locomotives. Bevin asked whether the British government was now to assume that the Jews wished to settle the Palestine question by force, warning that if so, the British would respond in kind.
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Notes
The National Archives [TNA], Colonial Office [CO] 733/457/11, Telegram from George Henry Hall, Secretary of State for the Colonies, to Field Marshal Viscount Gort, British High Commissioner for Palestine, November 3, 1945. For an account of the events of November 1, 1945, see J. Bowyer Bell, Terror out of Zion: Irgun Zvai Leumi, LEHI, and the Palestine Underground, 1929–1949 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1977), 145–6.
For an analysis of the 1945 General Election, see Kenneth O. Morgan, Labour in Power, 1945–1951 (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1984), 34–44.
This withdrawal occurred on May 21, 1945, on which date Clement Attlee wrote to Churchill explaining his reasons and citing the “party differences” that were held over the “problems of reconstruction of the economic life of the country” as the primary cause. The letter in its entirety is published in Attlee’s memoirs, C. R. Attlee, As It Happened (New York: The Viking Press, 1954), 190–3.
The Conservative Member of Parliament Sir Cuthbert Headlam described the election in his diary as a “truly catastrophic election—never was [there] such a crushing disaster.” Sir Cuthbert Headlam, Parliament and Politics in the Age of Churchill and Attlee: The Headlam Diaries, 1935–1951 [Diaries], Thursday, July 26, 1945, edited by Stuart Ball (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 469.
Prior to his time in Parliament, Hall had been a coalminer and a trade unionist, and although he had served well in his various wartime roles, he was not known as a specialist in colonial affairs. Indeed, most historians believe that his appointment as colonial secretary had more to do with his personal friendship with Attlee than his political expertise and experience. David Goldsworthy, Colonial Issues in British Politics, 1945–1961: From ‘Colonial Development’ to ‘Wind of Change’ (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1971), 14.
Quoted in David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East (New York: Owl Books, 1989), 297.
For the most comprehensive account of this long and tangled saga, see Isaiah Friedman, The Question of Palestine, 1914–1918: British-Jewish-Arab Relations (New York: Schocken Books, 1973).
Richard Allen, Imperialism and Nationalism in the Fertile Crescent: Sources and Prospects of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974), 260–72.
Ibid.
Roza I. M. El-Eini, Mandated Landscape: British Imperial Rule in Palestine, 1929–1948 (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), 22.
See Y. Porath, The Emergence of the Palestinian-Arab National Movement, 1918–1929 (London: Frank Cass, 1974), particularly chapters four through seven.
For an in-depth analysis of the 1929 riots and their causes, see Bernard Wasserstein, The British in Palestine: The Mandatory Government and the Arab-Jewish Conflict, 1917–1929 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1978), 215–35.
Martin Kolinsky, Law, Order and Riots in Mandatory Palestine, 1928–35 (London: St. Martin’s Press, in association with King’s College, London, 1993), 123–58.
For an account of the development of Palestinian Arab nationalism in these years and the outbreak of the revolt, see Y. Porath, The Palestinian Arab National Movement: From Riots to Rebellion, Volume Two, 1929–1939 (London: Frank Cass, 1977). For more recent work on the Arab revolt, see Jacob Norris, “Repression and Rebellion: Britain’s Response to the Arab Revolt in Palestine of 1936–1939,” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, Volume 36, Number 1 (March 2008), 25–45; and Matthew Hughes, “The Banality of Brutality: British Armed Forces and the Repression of the Arab Revolt in Palestine, 1936–39,” English Historical Review, Volume CXXIV, Number 507 (April 2009), 313–54.
Michael J Cohen, “Appeasement in the Middle East: The British White Paper on Palestine, May 1939,” The Historical Journal, Volume 16, Number 3 (September 1973), 571.
David A. Charters, The British Army and Jewish Insurgency in Palestine, 1945–47 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989), 15–17.
The Irgun commander-in-chief, David Raziel, was even killed on a British SOE (Special Operations Executive) operation in Iraq in May 1941. John Newsinger, British Counterinsurgency: From Palestine to Northern Ireland (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 6.
J. Bowyer Bell, Terror out of Zion: Irgun Zvai Leumi, LEHI, and the Palestine Underground, 1929–1949 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1977), 62–65. The most detailed account of the Stern Gang can be found in Joseph Heller, The Stern Gang: Ideology, Politics and Terror, 1940–1949 (London: Frank Cass, 1995).
For more on Hashomer Zatzair and Betar, see Elkana Margalit, “Social and Intellectual Origins of the Hashomer Hatzair Youth Movement, 1913–1920,” Journal of Contemporary History, Volume 4, Number 2 (April 1969), 25–46; and Lenni Brenner, “Zionist-Revisionism: The Years of Fascism and Terror,” Journal of Palestine Studies, Volume 13, Number 1 (Autumn 1983), 66–92.
This account of Begin’s early life is taken from the following three biographies: Eitan Haber, Menahem Begin: The Legend and the Man, translated by Louis Williams (New York: Delacorte Press, 1978); Amos Perlmutter, The Life and Times of Menachem Begin (New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1987); and Eric Silver, Begin: The Haunted Prophet (New York: Random House, 1984).
John Keegan, The Second World War (New York: Penguin Books, 1989), 358; Gerhard L. Weinberg, A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 641–2; John Keegan, Collins Atlas of World War II (New York: HarperCollins, 2006), 119; Gerhard L. Weinberg, A World at Arms, 611–16.
Cabinet Office [CAB] 81/46, PHP (45)29(0) Final, “The Security of the British Empire”: report by the Post-Hostilities Planning Staff for the Chiefs of Staff Committee, June 29, 1945, in S. R. Ashton and S. E. Stockwell, eds, British Documents on the End of Empire [BDOEE]: Series A: Volume 1: Imperial Policy and Colonial Practice, 1925–1945: Part I: Metropolitan Reorganisation, Defence and International Relations, Political Change and Constitutional Reform (London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1996), 233–4.
This phrase was coined by John Colville, private secretary to both Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee, in his diary entry of August 6, 1945. John Corville, The Fringes of Power: 10 Downing Street Diaries, 1939–1955 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1985), 612.
Let Us Face the Future: A Declaration of Labour Policy for the Consideration of the Nation (London: The Labour Party, 1945), 11, quoted in Goldsworthy, Colonial Issues in British Politics, 13.
Henry Pelling, The Labour Governments, 1945–51 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1984), 158.
Letter from Harry S. Truman, President of the United States, to Winston Churchill, Prime Minister, July 24, 1945, reprinted in Francis Williams, Twilight of Empire: Memoirs of Prime Minister Clement Attlee (New York: A.S. Barnes and Co., 1962), 183–4.
Michael J. Cohen, “The Genesis of the Anglo-American Committee on Palestine, November 1945: A Case Study in the Assertion of American Hegemony,” The Historical Journal, Volume 22, Number 1 (March 1979), 192.
Ritchie Ovendale, “The Palestine Policy of the British Labour Government, 1945–1946,” International Affairs, Volume 55, Number 3 (July 1979), 411–12.
Ibid., 412.
T. A. Heathcote, The British Field Marshals, 1763–1997: A Biographical Dictionary (Barnsley, South Yorkshire: Leo Cooper, 1999), 283.
John Strawson, “Cunningham, Sir Alan Gordon,” in H. C. G Matthew and Brian Harrison, eds, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).
CAB 131/2, DO(46)40, “[Defence in the Mediterranean, Middle East and Indian Ocean]”: Memorandum by Mr Bevin for Cabinet Defence Committee, March 13, 1946, in Ronald Hyam, ed., BDOEE: Series A: Volume 2: The Labour Government and the End of Empire, 1945–1951: Part III: Strategy, Politics and Constitutional Change (London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1992), 215–18.
IWM, DoD, Captain Ridley Hugh Clark, MC, Hugh’s Wartime Memoirs (Unpublished memoir, April 2006), Papers of Captain R. H. Clark, MC (06/38/1).
Ian F. W. Beckett, Modern Insurgencies and Counter-Insurgencies: Guerillas and Their Opponents Since 1750 (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), 88.
Miriam Joyce Haron, “Palestine and the Anglo-American Connection,” Modern Judaism, Volume 2, Number 2 (May 1982), 201.
Ibid., 202. It was not only Bevin who descended into a “black rage.” Ritchie Ovendale writes: “The British public was outraged by Truman’s statement: seven British soldiers had just been murdered by Zionist terrorists and the British government felt that Truman showed scant appreciation of the needs of British security.” Ovendale, “The Palestine Policy of the British Labour Government, 1945–1946,” International Affairs, 419.
Quoted in Michael J. Cohen, Palestine and the Great Powers, 1945–1948 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), 125.
Ibid.
For a more complete overview of the collapse of Anglo-American cooperation, see Martin Jones, Failure in Palestine: British and United States Policy after the Second World War (London and New York: Mansell Publishing Limited, 1986), 70–143.
Quoted in ibid., 166.
Ibid., 167
Ibid., 168.
Quoted in ibid., 171.
Quoted in Wm. Roger Louis, “British Imperialism and the End of the Palestine Mandate,” in Wm. Roger Louis and Robert W. Stookey, eds. The End of the Palestine Mandate (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986), 11.
A. J. Stockwell, “Gurney, Sir Henry Lovell Goldsworthy,” in Matthew and Harrison, eds, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
Patricia M. Pugh, “Jones, Arthur Creech,” in H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison, eds, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
See Priya Satia, Spies in Arabia: The Great War and the Cultural Foundations of Britain’s Covert Empire in the Middle East (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); and Martin Thomas, Empires of Intelligence: Security Services and Colonial Disorder after 1914 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2008).
For more on the reprisals in Ireland, see Benjamin Grob-Fitzgibbon, Turning Points of the Irish Revolution: The British Government, Intelligence, and the Cost of Indifference, 1912–1921 (New York and Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 168–73.
Barbara D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf, A Concise History of India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 203.
Ibid., 203–4.
Ibid., 206.
Ibid., 209.
Ibid.
Ibid., 211.
Ibid., 213.
John Darwin, Britain and Decolonisation: The Retreat from Empire in the Post-War World (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988), 94–5.
Ibid.
Quoted in Stanley Wolpert, Shameful Flight: The Last Years of the British Empire in India (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 131. Not all shared Attlee’s sense of optimism. Sir Cuthbert Headlam, a member of the opposition Conservative Party, wrote in his diary on February 20: “It seems to me to be a tremendous gamble and a needless policy of despair—unless there is a settlement by the appointed day what will our position be? Shall we really withdraw our troops and leave India to anarchy and chaos? Such a policy would in my opinion be wholly wrong and a great betrayal of the whole Indian population” (Diaries, 489).
Ritchie Ovendale, “The Palestine Policy of the British Labour Government 1947: The Decision to Withdraw,” International Affairs, Volume 56, Number 1 (January 1980), 88.
CO 717/167/52849/2/1948, f 302, [Declaration of Emergency]: inward telegram no 641 from Sir Edward Gent, High Commissioner to Malaya, to Arthur Creech Jones, Secretary of State for the Colonies, June 17, 1948, in A. J. Stockwell, ed., BDOEE: Series B: Volume 3: Malaya: Part II: The Communist Insurrection, 1948–1953 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1995), 19–20.
Robert Jackson, The Malayan Emergency: The Commonwealth’s Wars, 1948–1966 (London and New York: Routledge, 1991), 3–4.
Ibid., 4–6.
Ibid., 6.
John A. Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2002), 60.
Anthony Short, The Communist Insurrection in Malaya, 1948–1960 (New York: Crane, Russak & Company, Inc., 1975), 21.
Richard Stubbs, Hearts and Minds in Guerilla Warfare: The Malayan Emergency 1948–1960 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 70–71.
Quoted in Noel Barber, The War of the Running Dogs: The Malayan Emergency: 1948–1960 (New York: Weybright and Talley, 1971), 62.
Richard L. Clutterbuck, The Long, Long War: Counterinsurgency in Malaya and Vietnam (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1966), 43.
Robert Pearce, Attlee’s Labour Governments, 1945–1951 (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), 18.
Ibid., 32–3.
Ibid., 35.
Ibid., 40.
Edgar O’Ballance, Malaya: The Communist Insurgent War, 1948–1960 (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1966), 106.
See Sir Robert Thompson, Make for the Hills: Memories of Far Eastern Wars (London: Leo Cooper, 1989), especially chapter 9.
See David Rooney, Mad Mike: A Life of Michael Calvert (London: Leo Cooper, 1997), especially chapters 5 and 6.
Michael Calvert, Fighting Mad: One Man’s Guerilla War (Barnsley, South Yorkshire, UK: Pen & Sword, 2004), 94.
Michael Asher, The Regiment: The Real Story of the SAS (London: Penguin Books, 2008), 277.
William Stueck, The Korean War: An International History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 11.
Security Council resolutions quoted in ibid., 12.
Max Hastings, The Korean War (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987), 60–61.
Ibid., 70.
Richard Stubbs, “Counter-Insurgency and the Economic Factor: The Impact of the Korean War Prices Boom on the Malayan Emergency” (Occasional Paper No. 19, The Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1974), 3.
Ibid., 9.
Ibid., 13. Please note that all figures given here are in Malaysian dollars. In the exchange rate at the time, one Malaysian dollar equaled 33 U.S. cents, and 2s 4d sterling. See Ibid., 1, footnote 1.
Ibid.
Anthony Farrar-Hockley, “The Post-War Army, 1945–1963,” in David G. Chandler and Ian Beckett, eds. The Oxford History of the British Army (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 321.
Ibid., 324–8.
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© 2011 Benjamin Grob-Fitzgibbon
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Grob-Fitzgibbon, B. (2011). The Attlee Years: July 27, 1945, to October 26, 1951. In: Imperial Endgame. Britain and the World. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-230-30038-5_2
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