Zionism and the British Labour party: 1917–39

Abstract

Discussions of the British Labour party's attitude to the Arab-Zionist conflict have tended to focus on the controversy surrounding the Palestine policies of two Labour governments. In I929-30, Lord Passfield, and in the immediate post-war period, Ernest Bevin, led the British government's efforts to restrict Jewish settlement in Palestine. While the political turmoil caused by these initiatives makes concentration on them readily understandable, Passfield and Bevin were contre-courant in relation to the development of Labour party policy towards the establishment of a Jewish state. The party's pro-Zionism became firmly entrenched in the interwar years. The factors which brought that about have to be sought beyond the inner circle of policy-makers, in the ideological and political forces which influenced the party's understanding of the Palestine conflict. A study on the Labour party's attitude to Zionism, by Gorny, alludes to this broader setting but in a manner that immediately removes it from historical analysis.' He suggests that it was Labour's 'socialist humanistic tradition' that predetermined its sympathy to the Zionist cause, an argument that assumes that in the Arab-Zionist conflict, the latter have a stronger case by the yardstick of that tradition. Although a broadly humanist influence of Liberal and Nonconformist inspiration can be readily identified in Labour's ideology, this could have been called upon to sanction a variety of political positions. Indeed, Beloff has criticized the opinion that the Labour party has been supportive of Zionism, by arguing that its 'natural affiliations were with nationalists opposing British colonial rule and the Palestinian Arab was a much more obvious object of favourable attention than the Jewish immigrant'.2 Beloff is wrong on empirical grounds, as will be indicated below, but his argument is plausible and indicates that purely in terms of some basic philosophy, the Labour party could have pursued an anti-Zionist direction. It was the pressure of events and of political struggles mediated by ideological assumptions and doctrinal constraints that determined the party's attitude to the Palestine conflict. The Labour party made its first official pronouncement on the Zionist plan for Palestine two-and-a-half months before the Balfour Declaration. At a party conference in August 1917, it committed itself to a Jewish 'return' to Palestine, by approving the War Aims Memorandum.3 The Memorandum, as A. J. P. Taylor points out, 'was to achieve a remarkable success'.4 It was adopted, with minor modifications, by Allied socialist parties;