The promise of a socialist dawn in Britain

pipisme

On 7 February 1938 Mosley gave an interview to the Moscow correspondent of the Manchester Guardian. He denounced the Soviet regime as an evil tyranny which was responsible for the deaths of millions of people such as in the forced collectivisations. Thousands of innocent people had been imprisoned, tortured and executed in the show trials. He condemned the Soviet Union as a degenerate capitalist state. He said that because he could no longer in conscience 'shake hands with men with blood on their hands', he would resign as British Ambassador to the Soviet Union later that day.

The interview was published in the Manchester Guardian the following day. On the same day Mosley, Jessica, his wife, and Freddie and Julia, their two children flew back to London, their plane landing at Croydon Airport.

During the following months Mosley wrote articles for left-wing journals and spoke at Labour Party meetings. He wanted to return to the House of Commons in a by-election but in the Spring and Summer of 1938 was not selected as a Labour candidate.

Robert Croft Bourne, the Conservative MP for Oxford, died on 7 August 1938, while walking on the moors in Argyllshire in Scotland. [1] For the by-election on 27 October, the Conservatives chose Quintin Hogg as their candidate, while the Oxford Labour Party chose Mosley as their candidate.

[1] As in OTL.
 

pipisme

Although there were Liberal and Traditionalist party candidates in the Oxford by-election, the main contest was between Conservative and Labour. Mosley fought the by-election as if it were winnable in spite of Labour never having won the constituency. In the general election Labour replaced the Liberals in second place, but the Tories won with a majority of 17.7%.

Jessica Mosley campaigned with her husband and observers had no doubt that she and their two children definitely won votes for Labour. The Tories were complacent and waited until the last week of the campaign before they took the election seriously.

As expected the Tories won, but their majority was slashed. The result was as follows [1937 general election]:
Quintin Hogg [Conservative]: 11,823 - 44.1% [47.1%]
Oswald Mosley [Labour]: 9,812 - 36.6% [29.4%]
Liberal Party candidate: 4,156 - 15.5% [20.3%]
Traditionalist Party candidate: 1019 - 3.8% [3.2%]
 
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pipisme

Willie Brooke, the Labour MP for the Yorkshire constituency of Batley and Morley, died on 21st January 1939. The constituency Labour Party selected Oswald Mosley as their candidate for the by-election which was held on 9 March 1939. The result of the election was as follows: [January 1937 general election]:
Oswald Mosley [Labour]: 48.2% [52.8%]
Conservative candidate: 35.3% [29.5%]
Liberal candidate: 16.5% [17.7%]
The turnout was 73.7% [80.4%].
The swing from Labour to Conservative was 5.2%.
 
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vimes

Just a note to say I appreciate this thread very much and the amount of work going into it. Likewise for the attempt to redeem the sadly feckless Liberals.
 

pipisme

I will now turn to events in Palestine which as in OTL was administered by Britain under a League of Nations mandate. In this TL the number of Jewish immigrants to Palestine from 1919 to 1932 was similar to our TL. From 1933 to 1936 it was substantially less because the Nazis had not come to power in Germany. [1]
 

pipisme

In February 1937, the Colonial Secretary, James Maxton, established a royal commission to investigate the causes of the Arab unrest in the British Mandate of Palestine. He appointed Drummond Shiels as its chairman, and there were six other members. Shiels had been a Labour MP for Edinburgh since 1928. He was Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the India Office from April 1933 to June 1935, then at the Colonial Office to January 1937. [1]

The commission heard evidence from representatives of the Arab and Jewish communities in Palestine. It published its report in November 1937. It made the following recommendatons:
[1] The Mandate should continue until such time as Palestine has become independent as a joint Arab and Jewish state.

[2] Palestine should not be divided into separate Arab and Jewish states.

[3] Progress towards independence should be as rapid as possible, and ideally within the next ten years.

[4] Jerusalem should become an international city under a League of Nations mandate.

[5] Levels of Jewish immigration to Palestine at 7,000 to 8,000 a year were at a sustainable level, but should be limited to a maximum of 10,000 a year, but higher in exceptional circumstances such as progroms.

[1] Here is the entry for Shiels in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/36068.
 
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pipisme

The report of the Shiels Commission [officially termed a Royal Commission] was generally rejected by both Arabs and Jews because it rejected the idea of an Arab state in Palestine, and a Jewish state in Palestine.

In January 1938 the British government issued a White Paper on Palestine. This stated that the government agreed with the recommendations of the Royal Commission. On 8 and 9 February 1938 the House of Commons debated the White Paper. Moving its acceptance the Colonial Secretary, James Maxton, said that it expressed the government's believed that an undivided Palestine in which Arabs and Jews lived in harmony was the right course.
 

pipisme

The government motion for the debate on Palestine was [1]:
That this House approves the policy of His Majesty's Government as set out in Command Paper No. 5984".
Click to expand...
When Maxton had finished his speech and sat down, the Conservative Party leader, Leo Amery, rose to move the Conservative amendment, which was as follows [2]:
To leave out from the word 'House' to the end of the Question and to replace it with the following: is of the opinion that the policy of His Majesty's Government is contrary to the spirit of the Balfour Declaration and that the partition of Palestine into Arab and Jewish states would be in the spirit of the said Declaration and would best ensure self-determination for the Arab and Jewish inhabitants of Palestine.
Click to expand...
[1] This wording is copied from that of the government motion for the debate on Palestine on 22 and 23 May 1939in OTL, except that I have substituted 5984 for 6017 as the number of the Command Paper.

[2] "to the end of the question" is parliamentary jargon for "to the end of the government motion".
 
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pipisme

Amery said that the policy of the government as regards Palestine was contrary to the intention of the Balfour Declaration. He told the House that he was one of the Secretaries to the British War Cabinet in 1917, and that the phrase 'the establishment in Palestine of a National Home for the Jewish people' in the Balfour Declaration, was intended and understood by all concerned to mean that Palestine would ultimately become a Jewish Commonwealth or a Jewish State, if Jews came and settled there in sufficient numbers. The term 'national home' was used deliberately instead of 'state' because of opposition to Zionism in the British cabinet. [1]

[1] See the section headed Jewish national home vs. Jewish state in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration.
 

pipisme

William Wedgwood Benn, the leader of the Liberal Party, said that they would be voting in favour of the government motion and against the Conservative amendment.

Lloyd George and Churchill both spoke in the debate. Lloyd George said that the Balfour Declaration was drafted to appeal to both Arabs and Jews. Churchill, speaking from the Conservative back benches, said that he supported the government's Palestinan policy. It was basically a continuation of the same policy which had been followed by successive governments since 1919 and the establishment of the British mandate in Palestine. He would be voting for the government's motion.
 

pipisme

Winding up for the government at the end of the second day of the debate, the Dominions Secretary, Frederick Pethick-Lawrence, poured scorn on the Conservative proposal for a partition of Palestine. He asked if they had any proposals for the border between the Arab and Jewish states. Wherever it was drawn there would be a Jewish minority in the Arab state and an Arab minority in the Jewish state. The White Paper was in accordance with the letter and spirit of the Balfour Declaration and of the policy of successive governments since the end of the Great War. It was the only hope for a peaceful Palestine.

There were two votes at the end of the debate. On the vote on the government motion, the government won by a majority of 112. The Conservative amendment was defeated by a majority of 106. Churchill voted for the government in both votes.
 

pipisme

The Round Table Conference on Palestine met in St. James' Palace in London from June to August 1938. It was opened by the Prime Minister, William Graham, on 13 June, but led by the Colonial Secretary, James Maxton. The Jewish Agency delegation was led by Chaim Weizmann and there were representatives from American Zionists and British Zionists. The Palestinian Arab delegation was led by Jamal al-Husayni [1], and there were also representatives from the governments of Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Transjordan, and Yemen.

At the beginning of August it was agreed that elections would be held for a Constituent Assembly in Palestine which would be elected by the Single Transferable Vote. The Assembly would be responsible for domestic matters, though not finance. It would draw up a constitution for an independent Palestine. The conference ended on 4 August.

[1] Here is the Wikipedia entry for al-Husayni: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamal_al-Husayni.
 
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pipisme

Elections for the 150 seats in the Palestinian Constituent Assembly were held on 5 June 1939. The number of seats won by each party were as follows:
Palestinian Arab Party: 55
Liberal Party: 36
National Bloc: 18
Mapai [acronym for Hebrew Workers' Party of the Land of Israel]: 12
National Defence Party: 11
Hatzohar [Union of Revisionist Zionists]: 7
General Zionists: 4
Reform Party: 3
Socialist League of Palestine: 3
Palestinian Communist Party: 1
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Total: 150
------------
The turnout was 78.5%.

The National Bloc and the National Defence Party were Arab parties. The Liberal and Reform parties were originally Arab parties but they were developing links to Jewish voters. The Reform Party strength was in Jerusalem.
 
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pipisme

It had been decided at the London Conference that any Palestinan government formed after the elections would be broadly-based with representatives from the Arab and Jewish communities. On 8 June a coalition government comprising the Palestinan Arab Party [PAP], the Liberal Party and Mapai took office. It 103 out of the 150 seats in the Constituent Assembly. The British High Commissioner appointed Emil Ghuri of the Palestinan Arab Party as chief minister. [1] He was a Christian Arab. Among the ministers in his cabinet were Hasan Sidqi al-Dejani of the Liberal Party and David Ben-Gurion of Mapai. [2]

When drawing up a constitution the Assembly, and in particular the government, needed to decide whether Palestine would be a unitary or a federal state

[1] Here is the entry in Wikipedia for Ghuri: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emil_Ghuri.

[2] Here is information about al-Dejani: http://btd.palestine-studies.org/content/hasan-sidqi-al-dajani.
 
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