| Original Full Text | When Terror Works: The Case of Jewish Terrorism in Mandate Palestine, 1944-1948 James Alexander Samuel Sunderland Merton College, University of Oxford A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History Hilary Term 2024 2 Table of Contents Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................................ 4 Introduction ...................................................................................................................................... 5 Thesis and Chapter Breakdown ............................................................................................. 7 Methodology: .................................................................................................................... 11 Historiography, Source Material, and Access .......................................................................... 13 Positionality and Mistaken Identities ..................................................................................... 19 Chapter 1 - ‘We learned from the history of our people and ourselves’: The Question of Terror and the Genealogies of the Irgun and Lehi’s Terrorism ........................................................................... 24 If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck .......... 24 ‘Nothing New Under The Sun’: The Genealogy of the Irgun and Lehi ...................................... 29 Revisionism’s New Jews and Models of Revolt ........................................................................ 46 Perceptions of the Irgun and Lehi in Britain ........................................................................... 58 Does it Quack Like a Duck? ................................................................................................ 67 Chapter 2 - The Role of Palestine in British Imperial Thought .......................................................... 71 1850 – 1914: Blending Messianism with Strategy .................................................................... 72 The First World War and the Balfour Declaration: Ethnic Propaganda ..................................... 77 The Interwar Years: ‘The Clapham Junction of the Middle East.’ ............................................. 81 The Arab Revolt, Appeasement, and the Second World War: Palestine ‘Related to the World Picture’. ............................................................................................................................ 87 Post-1945: Oil Reserves and the Russian Threat. .................................................................... 92 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 102 Chapter 3 - ‘An Endless Vista of Unrelieved Bloodshed’: British Personnel React to Terrorism ....... 105 Material .......................................................................................................................... 107 ‘Tis But A Scratch’: The Complexities of British-English ....................................................... 110 The State of British Personnel, 1945-1948 ........................................................................... 113 ‘Bits Of Humanity Laying About’: The Sensory Experience of Terrorism ................................ 121 Trauma, PTSD, and Psychological Damage Among British Personnel .................................... 133 Britain Loses Control ........................................................................................................ 141 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 157 Chapter 4 - ‘Gelignite is News’: Social Reactions to Terrorism in Palestine ...................................... 161 ‘A Sort of Mecca for Jews’ – Societal Perceptions of Jews, Zionism, and Palestine ..................... 166 If it Bleeds, it Leads - News Coverage and Palestine .............................................................. 173 Fascism Redux – Palestine and the British Fascist Revival ...................................................... 185 Riots in Britain ................................................................................................................. 192 3 Rex V Caunt – Stirring Hatred in Britain: ............................................................................ 199 What to Do? ................................................................................................................... 204 Lingering Bitterness – PM Begin Comes to Britain ............................................................... 207 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 212 Chapter 5 – ‘This International Liability’: Terror and its Political Entanglements ............................. 214 The Men of the Hour ....................................................................................................... 218 Financial Pressures ........................................................................................................... 224 The America Issue: .......................................................................................................... 237 Security: .......................................................................................................................... 249 Atop the wasp’s nest ......................................................................................................... 257 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 260 Conclusions – Terror, Nostalgia, and the Situation Today ............................................................... 265 A Postscript ..................................................................................................................... 276 Appendix....................................................................................................................................... 279 Bibliography .................................................................................................................................. 286 4 Acknowledgements Although few people are likely to ever read this thesis, and even fewer the acknowledgements, it would still be remiss of me if I did not sincerely express my gratitude to those who have made this DPhil possible, and the process of researching and writing the thesis more enjoyable. First and foremost, my thanks go to Professor James McDougall for all of his support at every turn of this process. He has been exceedingly patient in reading drafts, discussing ideas, and making suggestions which have improved this work and challenged me to think deeper about numerous issues. I must also thank him for putting up with my tantrums and outbursts as well as offering wise counsel at difficult points during the last three and a half years. I could not have asked for a kinder, wiser, more helpful, or more patient supervisor. Many archivists and librarians have been extremely kind in sharing their time and knowledge with me. I am indebted to Debbie Usher at the Middle East Centre Archive at St Antony’s College, the staff of the National Archives in London, Dr. Julia Walworth and her team at Merton College, the staff of the Bodleian Library, and the various librarians and archivists who aided my research in Israel. Thanks also to Yoni Eshpar for his help in accessing the UN headquarters/former High Commissioner's residence in Jerusalem. I would also like to thank the AHRC and Clarendon Fund for their generous funding. I would not have reached this stage of academic life without the support of my parents. From an early age they nurtured my intellectual curiosity and encouraged my interest in everything from history to literature to music. Testament of their willingness to support even my odder intellectual pursuits can be found in the fact that they expressed only mild surprise when I declared, aged 18, that I was off to SOAS to pursue a degree in Israeli Studies (having told them a month earlier I intended to apply to University College Dublin to study folklore). This thesis on Jewish terrorism is the culmination of that journey and is therefore dedicated to them both – whether they want it to be or not. I would also like to thank Pat and the late David Sunderland for their support and for keeping me grounded by demonstrating a degree of scepticism about the interest to be found in studying British-ruled Palestine. Thanks also to the Sunderland and Sewell clans in Ireland. I would like to thank Sophia Goode for proofreading several chapters of this thesis and for helpful suggestions that have made this thesis more accurate, understandable, and grammatically correct. One day I may indeed remember how to use the correct apostrophe. Maybe. Dr Mie Astrup Jensen has been an amazing source of wisdom, kindness, and friendship. I am always inspired and amazed by her and her work and the passion and dedication she has for making the world a better place through her research. I am indebted to Dr Eirik Kvindesland, who has provided insightful feedback on several chapters and has been a source of inspiration in his work and enthusiasm for the history and historiography of the Middle East. I have also eaten more than my fair share of meals on his St Antony’s tab in the process of writing this thesis, so I thank him for both intellectual and physical sustenance. Seamus Nevin must be thanked for many fascinating and hilarious conversations about history, politics, and goings on in Oxford. Dr Katy Phipps has been an amazing friend supplying interesting conversations, incredible hospitality, and more alcohol and bowls of chips than I care to admit. What started as a pint amongst ‘academic siblings’ has become a friendship that I am incredibly grateful for. I would like to thank Dr Alicia Vergara Steinmann with whom I have shared some of my happiest times at Oxford, and who has been there for me through some of my worst. Her humour, passion, intellectual curiosity, and infectious smile have kept me going in the last year of the DPhil. Many discussions with Dr Ali A. Youha over breakfast, lunch, and cake have helped me better understand the social and political sciences, and he has kept me entertained with stories and anecdotes for long hours. His generosity, kindness, warmth, and sense of humour have made the last stages of this process just that much easier. I would also like to thank Dr Daniel Amir, Almira Farid, Ruth Foster, Professor Motti Golani, Shelly Harder, Dr Jono Jackson, Miss Myra Kitchen, Caroline Morita, Mary O’laughlin, Anat Peled, Anne and Jeremy Phipps, Grace Richardson, Madeleine Saidenberg, and – last but not least – Dr Yair Wallach who helped to set me along this path many years ago now. 5 Introduction In 2017, as Britain marked the centenary of the Balfour Declaration, dignitaries from the British and Israeli Governments, along with distinguished guests including UK Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mervis, Archbishop Justin Welby, former PM Tony Blair, and former Secretary of State John Kerry gathered for a lavish banquet at Lancaster House in London. As part of the festivities, the original declaration was on display for guests to view. The photographers hired for the event caught on camera the choreographed entrance of the current Lords Roderick Balfour and Jacob Rothschild, the then Prime Minister Theresa May, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into the room where the declaration was displayed. Politically trained eccedentiesiasts all, with their faux chumminess and feigned interest in the tiny slip of paper in front of them which they have each undoubtedly seen in reproduction hundreds of times before, they stand around the display case and pose for the camera. The message of the night was clear. Britain is proud of its historical role in the formation of the state of Israel and both nations wished to present a clear and direct link between the Balfour Declaration and friendly British-Israeli relations today. Such was the fictitious historical continuity that was presented to the guests of the event. The respective prime ministers of the two nations gave speeches at the dinner, with Netanyahu lauding Britain’s role in the creation of Israel, telling the assembled guests that ‘the history of modern Zionism is intertwined with the history of Britain, the actions and words of Britain.’ Presenting an ahistorical account of Britain in the late 19th and early 20th century, the Israeli premier then proceeded to paint a picture of near universal support for the ideas of Theodor Herzl, stating that ‘British sympathy for Zionism was everywhere.’ Only briefly did Netanyahu dwell on the troubled 30 years that comprised the British Mandate for Palestine, declaring that ‘the real tragedy of the Balfour Declaration, is that it took three decades to fulfil its promise,’ and noting that along the way to statehood there had been ‘painful retreats,’ as some Zionists saw – and 6 still see it – from the terms of the Balfour Declaration. Nevertheless, he was keen to stress that despite these issues, ‘we [Zionists] always remember proud British Zionists like Lord Balfour, Lloyd George, and Winston Churchill.’1 Nowhere was Zionist violence against the British during this period mentioned. This was particularly ironic given Netanyahu’s Likud party was formed by Menachem Begin, the Irgun terrorist leader turned politician who would become Israel’s 6th Prime Minister in 1977. Netanyahu himself owed much of his early success to the backing of Begin’s successor as Prime Minister, Yitzhak Shamir, who had been one of the leaders of Lehi, an organization that had once tried to kill Churchill using a letter bomb. As Netanyahu’s speech demonstrated, the Israeli national narrative is in some ways deeply contradictory. Without Britain, Zionism would not have been able to flourish, whilst at the same time the British were hated occupiers – especially in the final years of the Mandate. Meanwhile, Theresa May skipped over the period of the Mandate nearly completely, stating simply, ‘We are proud of our pioneering role in the creation of the State of Israel.’2 The focus was on how that shared history could further bring the two states together politically and economically, with May telling the audience, ‘we are proud of the relationship we have built with Israel. And as we mark one hundred years since Balfour, we look forward to taking that relationship even further.’3 As history fell victim to political expediency, thirty years of tensions, mutual recriminations, and violence were overlooked in favour of a more beneficial narrative 1 Benjamin Netanyahu Speech at Lancaster Hall, YouTube (recorded 2nd November 2017, uploaded 6th November 2017): https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=843&v=hG9Vqm_qHtk&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.balfour100.com%2F&source_ve_path=MTM5MTE3LDM2ODQyLDM2ODQyLDM2ODQyLDM2ODQyLDM2ODQyLDM2ODQyLDM2ODQyLDM2ODQyLDM2ODQyLDEzOTExNywyODY2MywyODY2MywyODY2MywyODY2Ng&feature=emb_logo (19th March 2024) 2 Theresa May Speech at Lancaster Hall, Gov.UK (uploaded 3rd November 2017): https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pm-speech-at-balfour-centenary-dinner (19th March 2024) 3 Speech by Theresa May at Lancaster Hall, Gov.UK (uploaded 3rd November 2017): https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pm-speech-at-balfour-centenary-dinner (19th March 2024) 7 of a positive shared history which formed a basis for continued cooperation on everything from trade to security. The centenary of the Balfour Declaration offered an expedient moment for Britain and Israel to reaffirm the political bond between the two countries and highlight the historical nature of their alliance. Britain’s promise to help facilitate a ‘national home for the Jewish people’ in Palestine offered the perfect sentiment for politicians to weave their narrative around.4 Little wonder then, that the 75th anniversary of the end of British rule in Mandate Palestine in May 2023 received no such fanfare by either government. What started with an (admittedly self-serving) declaration of British support for Zionist aims in the Balfour Declaration would end three decades later with Zionist terrorists and British forces engaged in acts of violence against each other and mutual recriminations and accusations of a betrayal of trust. Even such forked-tongued eloquence as possessed by Netanyahu would struggle to turn such a landmark date into a shared celebration. Thesis and Chapter Breakdown This thesis considers the impact of Zionist terrorism in Palestine and abroad by the Irgun and Lehi between 1944 and 1947. This period covers the time between the 1st February 1944 when, with only 350 fighters and a dearth of weapons (the group had only one machine gun, ninety pistols, and five tons of explosives), Menachem Begin declared a rebellion by the Irgun against British rule in Palestine, and the 11th December 1947 when Arthur Creech Jones, the British Colonial Secretary, announced to the House the Government’s decision to formally terminate the British Mandate over Palestine on the 15th May 1948.5 Although Irgun and Lehi 4 London, The British Library, ‘The Balfour Declaration,’ MS 41178 A. 5 Avi Shilon, Menachem Begin: A life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), pp. 49; [Hansard] Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, 11th December 1947, vol. 455, column 1207. 8 violence against British forces continued throughout the final six months of British rule as the two Zionist groups’ suspicions of British perfidy led them to continue their attacks, by December 1947 the end of the Mandate was guaranteed. It is not my intention to engage in the futile rhetoric over who drove the British out of Palestine in this thesis. As Motti Golani has noted, ‘the question of “who expelled the British from Palestine” has long since ceased to engage historians of the late British Mandate period.’ Like any historical event, the British decision to leave Palestine was multi-causal – the result of years of political frustration and fatigue with futile attempts to find a solution for the country’s future that would be acceptable to both Jews and Arabs, international recrimination, and terrorism fatigue. However, this is not to say that discussions around certain groups’ impact upon the British decision to abrogate the Mandate are themselves not worthy of examination. In examining the effects of Zionist terrorist groups this thesis seeks instead to re-evaluate their impact. Many former members of the Irgun and Lehi, from Begin and Shamir downwards, have emphasized the role the two groups played in forcing the British out. For instance, in his autobiography, written nearly fifty years after the events he describes, Yitzhak Shamir addressed the issue head-on, asking: ‘did Lehi really believe that it could throw the British out of the country […]? Yes, we believed this and I think we also succeeded.’6 Meanwhile, as explored bellow, many historical approaches have played down the impact of the groups. This thesis aims to challenge that view. In an age where our leaders tell us that we will not bow to terrorism and will not let it affect our way of life, the study of Mandate Palestine offers us a depressing example of just how shallow such statements are when societies are faced with protracted campaigns of fear. After all, as Martha Crenshaw has pointed out ‘terrorism is a form of violence that is primarily 6 Yitzhak Shamir, Summing Up: An Autobiography (Boston: Litte Brown and Co., 1994), pp. 51. 9 designed to influence an audience.’7 Terrorists would not bother to terrorize if it produced no discernible result on their targets. Therefore, we can assume that, at the very least, the Irgun and Lehi believed they were able to influence Britain using the medium of bullets and explosives. As this thesis will demonstrate, this was not just a belief held on their end, but a reality as British society, British personnel in Palestine, and the Labour Government were forced to respond to Zionist violence. Terrorism is a contentious and highly charged term. Therefore, the starting point of this thesis is necessarily a discussion of the term within the context of the actions of the Irgun and Lehi (as well as the Haganah where appropriate). As shall be seen, these groups were firmly embedded within a tradition of terrorism which they were knowledgeable of, many of their members having been brought up within the crucible of radical Jewish action in Eastern Europe, and to read about, admire, and emulate the actions of Irish Nationalism in the 1910s and 1920s. In locating the Jewish organizations within this context it shall be shown that the phrase ‘Zionist terrorism’ is an acceptable, and indeed appropriate, phrase for the acts carried out by the Irgun and Lehi. A second chapter locates Palestine within the framework of British imperialism from the mid-19th century through to the late 1940s. In doing so, it seeks to challenge the conventional wisdom that Palestine, with few material resources and no end of difficulties, was easily shed by Britain given its supposed Imperial unimportance. Discussing Palestine’s crucial geographical location within the British imperial jigsaw, this chapter demonstrates that British officials had long salivated over the geostrategic possibilities of the tiny country. Thus, the decision to abrogate the Mandate was, for Britain, a desperate and extreme choice. In accurately locating Palestine’s importance in the British Imperial system, this chapter therefore 7 Martha Crenshaw, Explaining Terrorism: Causes, Processes and Consequences (London: Routledge, 2011), pp. 2. 10 demonstrates the profound loss of perceived geopolitical security to British interests abroad and calls for a deeper examination of just why Britain would be forced to give up such a vital asset. These first two chapters provide a necessary theoretical backdrop to the last years of the Mandate and set the parameters and theoretical bounds within which this thesis exists. The next three chapters lay out the impact of Zionist terrorism on various British actors and groups affected by this violence. The third chapter thus begins an in-depth focus on the very last years of the Mandate through the eyes of those who witnessed it. Although largely forgotten by the historiography (see below), the accounts of those who served in Palestine highlight the impossible situation Britain found itself in between 1944 and 1948. Although tasked with running the country and maintaining peace and order, British police personnel, soldiers, and government administrators found themselves constantly under attack and pushed to the very edge of their psychological resilience. The eventual loss of many senior staff as well as the increasing propensity of policemen and soldiers to go AWOL demonstrates the acute impact of acts of terrorism on the British administration in Palestine and its ability to stay in the country long-term. After examining terror from the perspective of those in the ground in Palestine, the succeeding chapter looks closer to home, exploring the impact of terrorism on the British people at home in the United Kingdom. The reaction of the general public to events in Palestine has been little commented on in the literature surrounding the Mandate, and this chapter addresses that lacuna by exploring the fear, frustration, and anger felt by the public. This manifested in a number of ways, from private expressions of shock and disgust at one end of the spectrum, to antisemitic rioting and fascist sympathies at the other extreme. Although the 1947 riots and the rebirth of British Fascism have been dealt with in a burgeoning literature 11 concerning British fascism after the Second World War, this has been little commented on the literature surrounding the Mandate itself.8 Finally, the impact of the Palestine problem on the issues facing British political elites is considered. Palestine was an albatross around the Labour Government’s neck, and one that had a powerful and painful peck. The violence in Palestine by Zionist actors had a number of effects, interrelated as it was to the financial position of Britain and the wider Empire, relations with the United States, and security at home. By playing off of these issues and weaknesses, the Irgun and Lehi were able to bring pressure to bear on the Government and help force them to make a decision about the future of Palestine. Methodology: Over the past few decades, history as a discipline has increasingly fragmented into a kaleidoscope of different fields – social history, economic history, feminist history, political history, queer history – with each often having its own journals, conferences, organisations, and methodologies, often seemingly at loggerheads with one another. The result has often been increasingly over focussed views on specific phenomena. Much of the work on the Mandate’s end aims to take purely a political or military approach to the history of the period. Approaching the topic from a political history perspective, books such as Motti Golani’s Palestine Between Politics and Terror, 1945-1947, Norman Rose’s ‘A Senseless, Squalid War’: Voices From Palestine 1890s-1948, and Saul Zadka’s Blood in Zion have created a top-down 8 See for example: Graham Macklin, Very Deeply Dyed in Black: Sir Oswald Mosley and the Resurrection of British Fascism after 1945 (Tauris: London, 2007); Joe Mulhall, British Fascism after the Holocaust: From the Birth of Denial to the Notting Hill Riots 1939-1958 (Routledge Studies in Fascism and the Far Right: London, 2020); Dave Renton, Fascism, Anti-fascism, and Britain in the 1940s (Macmillan: Basingstoke, 2000); Daniel Sonabend, We Fight Fascists: The 43 Group and the Forgotten Battle for Post-war Britain (London: Version, 2019); Paul Stocker, Lost Imperium: Far Right Visions of the British Empire, C.1920-1980 (Routledge Studies in Fascism and the Far Right. London, 2020). 12 narrative which privileges the actions and voices of the political and military elites, from Attlee and Bevin in Britain, to Cunningham and General Barker, Begin and Shamir in Palestine. This is perhaps not surprising. Palestine was a continual political and military quagmire for Britain, with little consensus over what Britain ultimately intended to do with Palestine, or how to ‘pacify’ two populations – Palestinian Arab and Jewish – at loggerheads about the political future of Palestine. Attempts by political and military elites to ‘solve’ the Palestinian situation have therefore naturally received much attention. Yet they leave us with an incomplete and misleading picture of the Mandate’s final days. However, this work takes a different approach by considering the Mandate’s end from a number of different perspectives. Although, as mentioned above, the final chapter does deal with the political elites, the impact of Zionist terrorism is considered not purely as a political or military problem, but as a social and psychological issue which affected the ability of Britain to rule Palestine or the British public to accept the continued risk to the safety of British citizens. A deeper understanding of the Mandate’s end can only be gleaned through combining these threads of social, economic, psychological and political history as one coherent tapestry. In order to do so, the thesis aims to create a cumulative argument, combining these different threads in a more holistic approach to the study of Zionist terrorism, highlighting under examined and unexplored impacts of terrorism and their effects. This is, as noted on the front page, a DPhil in History. However, this thesis at times strays from the typical historical methodologies, heavily drawing on the methods of other disciplines. Largely drawn from the social sciences, these include borrowings from terrorism studies, risk, and social psychology. Integrated properly within wider historical discussions of this period, these adopted approaches allow for new perspectives in our understanding of this historical moment and of the impacts of Zionist terrorism. Many of these have been used in the study of other time periods and historical locales, yet have been applied only to select cases. 13 For instance, a psychological reading of the military situation on the Western Front during the First World War has long been normal, with the Lancet journal recognizing the symptoms of ‘shell shock’ as early as 1915, countless historical accounts of the war delving into the topic, and a fictive account of the trauma suffered by the men who served even winning Pat Barker the Booker Prize.9 Similarly the experience of trauma by American servicemen serving during the American invasion of Vietnam has increasingly been one of the dominant methods of exploring the history of this period and its aftermath.10 Yet, no one has previously examined the psychological impact of acts of terror upon those who served in Palestine. This thesis aims to correct that omission. These approaches thus enhance the historical study of the Mandate’s final days. Historiography, Source Material, and Access Treatments of the British political arena in the immediate post-war years rarely dwell on Palestine for long. The major focus is often on internal Labour affairs, the expansion of state welfare, domestic developments, and contentions such as nationalisation. Where the British Empire and imperial control is discussed, the narrative normally focuses – perhaps not unnaturally – around the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947 and the beginning of the decline of British imperialism in Africa. In a handful of cases, such as Alan Bullock’s definitive account of Ernest Bevin’s time as Foreign Secretary between 1945 and 1951, the issue of Palestine takes on a larger importance, but this is rare. Even in Attlee’s own autobiography, Palestine receives just a few paragraphs, with more attention being paid to domestic matters and 9 Charles S. Mayers, ‘A Contribution to the Study of Shell Shock: Being an Account of Three Cases of Loss of Memory, Vision, Smell, and Taste, Admitted into the Duchess of Westminster's War Hospital, Le Touquet,’ The Lancet, 185/4772 (1915) pp. 316-320; Pat Barker, The Ghost Road (London: Viking Press, 1995). 10 See for instance; Jonathan Shay, Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character (London: Simon & Schuster, 1995); Wilbur J. Scott, Vietnam Veterans Since the War: The Politics of PTSD, Agent Orange, and the National Memorial (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004) 14 relations with America, the Russians, and Western Europe.11 Even in his discussion of Middle Eastern affairs, Attlee focusses more upon the issues he encountered during his premiership with the Egyptians and Persians.12 When it comes to social histories of the period, discussion is even scantier. In his near universally acclaimed history of the immediate post-war years, spanning the six years of Attlee’s two ministries, David Kynaston barely refers to the Palestine issue.13 From such accounts it would be logical to assume that events in Palestine were of little import to British society after the war. Palestine in these narratives is peripheral to bigger changes and more momentous events in British politics and society. Yet this is not the case. There is a wide breadth of literature dealing with the Mandate itself, both as a whole and examining certain periods, including the end of British rule. These treatments have mostly been written by Israeli, Palestinian, British, and American scholars and offer a wide array of approaches. As a recent edition of Contemporary Levant noted ‘historians have long-tended to write about the nearly-thirty years of British occupation in Palestine from a backward-looking stance, and discussed the ultimate end to the Mandate and the creation of Israel in 1948 in a teleological, predetermined fashion traced to the entrance of British troops into the old city of Jerusalem under the command of General Allenby in late 1917.’14 Yet the last few couple of decades have seen a wealth of new approaches to Mandate history, reassessing not just the political but the military, security, social, gendered, technological, and economic effects of the Mandate and placing Palestine within global and transnational networks of community, Empire and anti-colonial resistance.15 11 Clemment Attlee, As It Happened: His Autobiography (London: Odhams Press Limited, 1954), pps. 196-202. 12 Attlee, As It Happened, pps. 202-204. 13 David Kynaston, Austerity Britain: 1945-51 (London: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2008). 14 Lauren Banko, “Historiography and Approaches to the British Mandate in Palestine: new questions and frameworks,” Contemporary Levant, 4/1 (2019), pp. 2, 15 For example, on the military and security history of the Mandate see: Steven Wagner, Statecraft by Stealth: Secret Intelligence and British Rule in Palestine (New York: Cornell University Press, 2019); Matthew Hughes, Britain's Pacification of Palestine: The British Army, the Colonial State, and the Arab 15 Despite this, approaches to the end of the Mandate remain remarkably stagnant. The supposed end of the Empire and deteriorating British power16, an inability to solve the issues between Palestinian Arabs and Jews in the Mandate17, and US pressure18 have all been pointed to as reasons for the Mandate’s termination, whilst terrorism has been relegated to a minor issue at best. Perhaps one of the few exceptions to this is Bruce Hoffman who highlights the ‘salient role’ played by Zionist terrorism in ‘helping to create and foster’ a ‘sense of hopelessness and despair’ that ultimately ‘influenced the Labour government’s decision to Revolt, 1936-1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019); Hillel Cohen, Army of Shadow: Palestinian Collaboration with Zionism, 1917-1948 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008); Bruce Hoffman, Anonymous Soldiers: The Struggle for Israel, 1917-1947 (New York: Alfred Knopf, 2015). On the social history of the Mandate see: Sarah Irving et al., The Social and Cultural History of Palestine Essays in Honour of Salim Tamari, ed. Lauren Banko (Edinburgh: Edinburg University Press, 2023); Tom Segev, One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate (London: Abacus, 2002); Roberta R. Greene, Shira Hantman, Yair Seltenriech, Mustafa Abbasi, and Nancy Greene, Living in Mandatory Palestine: Personal Narratives of Resilience of the Galilee During the Mandate Period 1918-1948 (New York: Routledge, 2018). On gendered approached to the Mandate see: Margalit Shilo et al., Jewish Women in Pre-State Israel: Life, History, Politics, and Culture (Waltham: University of New England Press, 2008); Caroline Kahlenberg, “New Arab Maids: Female Domestic Work, “New Arab Women,” and National Memory in British Mandate Palestine,” International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 52/3 (2020); Paola Zichi, “Prostitution and Moral and Sexual Hygiene in Mandatory Palestine: The Criminal Code for Palestine (1921–1936),” Australian Feminist Law Journal, 47/1 (2021); Deborah Bernstein, נשים המנדטורית אביב בתל ולאומיות מגדר: בשוליים [Women on the Margins, Gender and Nationalism in Mandate Tel Aviv] (Jerusalem: Yad Ben Zvi. 2008). For technological approaches see: Fredrik Meiton, Electrical Palestine: Capital and Technology from Empire to Nation (Oakland: University of California Press, 2019); Andrea L. Stanton, "This Is Jerusalem Calling": State Radio in Mandate Palestine (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2021). For economic approaches see: Sherene Seikaly, Men of capital: scarcity and economy in Mandate Palestine. Stanford: Stanford University Press (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016). For global and transnational approaches see: Munir Fakher Eldin, “British Framing of the Frontier in Palestine, 1918– 1923: Revisiting Colonial Sources on Tribal Insurrection, Land Tenure, and the Arab Intelligentsia,” Jerusalem Quarterly 60/1 (2014); Weldon C. Matthews, Confronting an Empire, Constructing a Nation: Arab Nationalists and Popular Politics in Mandate Palestine (London: I.B. Taurus, 2006); Rona Yona, “From Russia to Palestine via Poland: The Shifting Centre of Interwar Labour Zionism,” Contemporary European History 30/1 (2021); Seán Gannon, The Irish imperial Service: Policing Palestine and Administering the Empire, 1922-1966 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018); Lucy Chester et al., The Breakup of India and Palestine: The Causes and Legacies of Partition, ed. Viktor Kattan (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2023). 16 Penny Sinanoglou, Partitioning Palestine: British Policymaking at the End of Empire (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2019); Peter Clarke, The Last Thousand Days of the British Empire (London: Allen Lane, 2007). 17 Tom Segev, One Palestine, Complete, pp. 490; Motti Golani, Palestine between politics and terror, 1945-1947 (Waltham: Bandeis University Press, 2013). 18 Tom Segev, One Palestine, Complete, pp. 489-490; Ritchie Ovendale, Britain, The United States, and the End of the Palestine Mandate, 1942-1948 Woodbridge: Royal Historical Society, 1989); Michael J. Cohen, Britain’s Moment in Palestine: Retrospect and Perspectives, 1917-48 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2014). 16 leave Palestine.’19 Nevertheless, Hoffman’s history of the Irgun points to a ‘concatenation of other developments’ that led to the Mandate’s termination, stopping short of labelling Zionist terrorism a major reason for the end of Britain’s Mandate for Palestine.20 This thesis seeks a somewhat different approach by demonstrating the profound impact acts of terror against British targets had on those who suffered from them, witnessed them, and responded to them. As such it seeks to demonstrate that terrorism was a major reason for the impossibility of continuing the Mandate. Few periods of such short duration have been examined in such depth as the British Mandate and its final few years. Israeli and American scholars in particular have pored over the archival record, scouring the available documentation from the British Government, Jewish Agency, and other institutions in order to construct their narratives. Yet this work seeks to make a claim to originality by examining this record alongside less studied and more quotidian sources which add the viewpoint from the grass roots level. Accounts by those who served in Palestine as policemen, soldiers, and administrators of all levels help to enrich our understanding of how British personnel experienced Palestine and were affected by the events they witnessed or were involved in.21 These sources largely come via oral interviews carried out between the late 1980s and first decade of the 21st century, carried out by interviewers at the Imperial War Museum and at St Antony’s College, Oxford. On the other hand, interviews, diary entries, and combined data from surveys give us a fairly impressive overview of the opinions of British society when it came to the question of Palestine. This extraordinary collection of material is preserved through the Mass-Observation archives, housed in Sussex and available online. Designed to better understand the attitudes and feelings of ‘ordinary’ 19 Bruce Hoffman, Anonymous Soldiers: The Struggle for Israel, 1917-1947 (New York: Knopf, 2015), pp. 473. 20 Hoffman, Anonymous Soldiers, pp.473. 21 For example, Tom Segev’s One Palestine Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the Mandate and Shay Hazkani’s Dear Palestine: A Social History of the 1948 War. 17 British citizens, the project collected data on a wide range of issues, of which Palestine was only one. As noted, the voice and opinions of the general public are generally absent from discussions surrounding the last years of the Mandate. This thesis attempts to incorporate these neglected sources alongside more widely used material. Ironically, visits to archives in Israel, much awaited on my own part since throughout the first year and a half of this thesis (the Covid-19 pandemic preventing any chance of reaching the country) proved to be underwhelming. Although there was no shortage of files in the Jabotinsky Archives, the place resembling a political Genizah to the memory of Jabotinsky and the Revisionist cause, few could shed new light on the activities of the Irgun and Lehi, having been thoroughly examined from many angles before. Israeli national-historical memory today venerates the members of the ‘underground,’ and largely accepts the often overblown and self-serving accounts of former members of the two organizations preserved in the archives. Meanwhile, attempts to access material through the Israel State Archives and the Haganah Historical Archives (part of the IDF & Defence Establishment Archives) proved largely unsuccessful with access often restricted or made more difficult by the very custodians of the historical record whose purported aim is to make historical documentation available more widely to researchers and the general public. When I first began to use archival records contained within the Israel State Archives to study the Mandate during my undergraduate degree, accessing material was easier than it is now. In January 2019 an amendment to the archive law expanded the classification period of certain materials from 70 to 90 years.22 Thus, overnight, files on the final years of the Mandate suddenly became subject to classification again. The political reasoning for this change – though not explicitly stated – was obvious, with the amendment allowing the classification of 22 Shay Hazkani, “Israel’s Vanishing Files, Archival Deception and Paper Trails” Middle East Research and Information Project (Summer 2019): https://merip.org/2019/09/israels-vanishing-files-archival-deception-and-paper-trails/ (30th December 2023). 18 materials relating to Israeli actions during the Nakba. Research is further hindered by the fact that the archive is in the process of digitising its material to make available online. However, this process has been slow. Despite over 85% of documents having been scanned, each document must then be manually checked by one of the archive’s just under 700 staff to see whether any material needs to be redacted.23 A mixture of political censorship and bureaucratic workload therefore prevents access to historical documents. The case of the Haganah Historical Archive is perhaps even more worrying. The IDF & Defence Establishment Archives declare quite candidly on their website that each file or document due for declassification must be examined first by the archive’s staff. This, the website openly states, is ‘to avoid injury to the state's security, foreign relations or to any right of privacy.’24 Thus, anything that may damage Israel’s image abroad is liable to remain classified. As in the case of the Israeli State Archives, a small declassification team must work through many thousands of documents.25 Again, this is a blatant attempt to suppress files relating to the Nakba, but in both the case of the Israel State Archives and the Haganah Historical Archive, the inadvertent result has been to limit access to files relating to the end of the British Mandate. For example, a great number of files on the actions of the Irgun and Lehi remain classified despite the fact that they seem unlikely to meet the criteria that would call for their continued classification. In the most absurd case, I encountered an empty envelope from a Zionist official, that was still classified. 23 Ofer Adaret, “Despite Digitalization, Most Israeli State Archives Files Can't Be Found Online,” Haaretz (16th May 2023): https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-05-16/ty-article/.premium/only-14-of-israeli-state-archives-files-are-online-even-though-most-have-been-scanned/00000188-20ef-d18b-a79d-24ff8c7a0000 (30th December 2023). 24 IDF & Defence Establishment Archive website, “Declassification”: https://archives.mod.gov.il/sites/English/About/Pages/declassification.aspx (30th December 2023). 25 IDF & Defence Establishment Archive website, “Declassification Criteria”: https://archives.mod.gov.il/sites/English/About/Pages/declassification-Criteria.aspx (30th December 2023). 19 Despite pushback from many researchers, scholars, and NGOs such as Akevot Institute for Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Research, there seems little prospect of these restrictions loosening at any point in the near or medium term future. Around 1.3 million files in the Israel State Archives alone remain hidden from public view. Many more are partially redacted.26 The desire of the state to suppress and obscure material that does not fit with official state-supported narratives is a disturbing trend which does not sit easily with Israel’s (increasingly questionable) claims to be a robust democracy. As the former Chief Archivist at the Israel State Archives, Yaakov Lozowick, noted in 2017, ‘Israel does not deal with its archival material as befits a democratic state. The vast majority of archival material is closed and will never be opened. The minority that will be opened will have unreasonable restrictions. There is no public accountability or transparency in the release of records.’27 As long as this remains the case, historians of Israel and the Yishuv will face limitations to their research. Positionality and Mistaken Identities ‘So you’re Jewish then?’ Regularly the very first questions I get when I tell people what this thesis is about, this assumption has by turns amused, fascinated, enraged, and baffled me. Why must the logical conclusion of why an individual wishes to write about Jewish violence in Israel/Palestine be that they must be Jewish? Writing about the Arab or Iranian Middle East, or about ‘Islamic’ terrorism does not lead to the conclusion that the researcher must be Arab or Iranian, Pakistani or a Muslim convert even, in fact far from it – many of the most recognized scholars of the history of these regions are (mostly white) men and women with no connection 26 Eldad Ben Aharon, Eitay Mack, “Israeli archives censorship regulations and oral history,” The Jerusalem Post (22nd August 2020): https://www.jpost.com/opinion/israeli-archives-censorship-regulations-and-oral-history-639569 (31st December 2023). 27 ‘State Archivist Report,’ 2018: https://web.archive.org/web/20190327103653/https://www.archives.gov.il/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/state_archivist_report_2018.pdf (January 1st 2024). 20 to Islam beyond a knowledge of it from their studies. Yet, for some reason, at every turn I have been met with the tacit or implicit assumption that I, as a scholar of British-Jewish relations in British Mandate Palestine, must be Jewish. And this is before I mention that I speak and read Hebrew – a skill which only further seems to lead people to make assumptions about my religious or racial background. It is certainly true that a great many scholars who have examined the period of British rule over Palestine and its bloody end are indeed Jewish. Figures such as Motti Golani, Michael J. Cohen, Bruce Hoffman, Saul Zadka, Tom Segev, and A.J. Sherman may indeed come to different conclusions about the nature of British rule and the impact of Jewish terrorism on the British decision to leave Palestine for good, but all share the fact that they are Jewish (though of course, they may define their Jewishness differently). Perhaps this is why certain assumptions are made about my own religious or ethnic identity. It is not at all obvious why I, a scholar from a non-religious, working class background, raised in a town with practically no Jewish population (the last census confirmed that the percentage of the population of Doncaster who identified as religiously Jewish stood at the grand total of 0.0%28) would take an interest in the last days of the British Mandate for Palestine and Jewish terrorism, when very few non-Jews do so. Indeed, my only connection to Zionist or Israeli history comes purely through hearing stories from a grandfather who served in a non-combat role with the RAF during the Suez Crisis in Egypt alongside French and Israeli forces (he would occasionally talk about ‘that bad fella’ – he meant Nasser). Yet these stories made little impression on me when I was growing up. On more than one occasion it has been remarked by Israelis and Jewish-Americans who I have come into contact with during the course of this work that something about myself, 28 Office for National Statistics, “How life has changed in Doncaster: Census 2021” (19th January 2023): https://www.ons.gov.uk/visualisations/censusareachanges/E08000017/ (3rd January 2024). 21 combined with my topic of study, had led them to assume that I must be Jewish. This assumption has been presented to me in a range of ways, from the Israeli museum worker who, relying on antisemitic stereotypes, stated that I must be Jewish since ‘I looked Jewish,’ (something about my nose he asserted) to an Israeli friend at Merton who used to introduce me to acquaintances as her ‘most Jewish friend.’ These comments, ranging from banterous to deeply troubling, have demonstrated an, at times, uncomfortable ability for me to ‘pass’ in certain spaces as Jewish. Although raising various ethics questions, this phenomenon has had its advantages. In Israel an assumption that I was a British-Jew led many curators, institutional staff (such as at the Jabotinsky Institute), and museum staff to indulge me with their own views of British rule and generally be more proactive in assisting me with my research with the assumption that I was sympathetic, being a Jew first and a Brit second (to paraphrase a conversation between Golda Meir and Henry Kissinger). Whenever I revealed that I was not in fact Jewish, my sympathies were often a keen topic of discussion and a probing of my views and biases was often obvious to me. Never did I withhold the fact that I was not Jewish, people’s racialized assumptions leading to incorrect readings of my identity rather than I myself seeking to introduce or spread this incorrect assumption. My position, ultimately, as an outsider to Jewish and Zionist history allows me both certain privileges and opens me up to certain criticisms and attacks. When it comes to the question of the Irgun and Lehi carrying out acts of Zionist terrorism, I face no censure from my own community (the denizens of South Yorkshire having no strong feelings on this matter) which would make my day-to-day life potentially uncomfortable. Additionally, not coming from the traditional Israeli studies background where a majority of researchers are Jewish if not Israeli, I bring a very different perspective to the often navel gazing approach of some who seek to explore the Mandate’s history. On the other hand, there are drawbacks. Labelling a group comprised entirely of Jews as engaged in Zionist terrorism, as a non-Jew, has led to spurious 22 accusations of antisemitism. These have not come from people within the academy, but often from members of the public who have read some of my public facing articles and taken issue with them. Yet such attacks can have a real impact on responses to my work and potentially to my reach and influence and are thus a concern for any researcher. People are often surprised to learn that my interest in the British Mandate and the actions of the Irgun and Lehi date back over ten years to my late teens. Indeed, I began my BA studies at SOAS knowing full well that this was an area of research I wished to pursue and was largely why I took a degree in Middle Eastern Studies and learnt Hebrew as an undergraduate. Yet, as a millennial, having grown up in a post-9/11 world (I was four years old at the time of the attack) perhaps it is not surprising I would be drawn to such a topic. I came of age in a securitized world, where violence emanating from the Middle East was presented – often in Orientalist terms – as a major threat to the lives of those in the ‘West.’ If my parents’ generation and my grandparents’ generation grew up in a world where the major geopolitical challenge and threat to their safety revolved around the events of the Cold War (i.e. through Communist expansion in Europe and later the risk of nuclear warfare), then my generation grew up in a world where terrorism seemed to be the main factor informing the geopolitical and security zeitgeist. ‘Terrorists’ became the bogeymen of the early twenty-first century, and the image of the terrorist was one shaped by post-9/11 events in the Middle East and curated by media organizations and governments. Thus, terrorism as a topic was ubiquitous in the media I consumed both intentionally and passively growing up. Being aware of the impact of this upon my positionality and being able to reflect upon it is thus important in not being drawn into cliched and trite arguments about terrorism (some of which are touched upon in the first chapter). Regardless of my own positionality or those of any reader or examiner of this thesis, I hope that this work makes a compelling argument for a re-evaluation of the impact Zionist 23 terrorism had upon British society and politics, and in the manner and timing of the end of the British Mandate over Palestine. Chapter 1 - ‘We learned from the history of our people and ourselves’: The Question of Terror and the Genealogies of the Irgun and Lehi’s Terrorism If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck There is nothing Terrorism Studies scholars seem to enjoy more than arguing about the definition of terrorism. It seems as if no article, book, or treatise on the phenomenon we call terrorism is complete without a lengthy and often quite fruitless conversation regarding the exact definition of terror. As an example of this decades-old trend, in 1988, two scholars asked 100 of their fellow researchers to define terrorism. They received back 109 different definitions.1 More recent volumes have encountered the same problem of definitional diffusivity, with Alex P. Schmid tracking over 250 differing definitions by academics, legislators, and government agencies – most of which originate in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.2 This frustration has even led some in the field to claim that any attempt to define terrorism is a ‘futile enterprise.’3 International law also offers us no answers in the search for a widely accepted definition. Since 1997 the UN has been attempting to negotiate the Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism (CCIT).4 This is in many ways the culmination of 1 Jacob L. Stump and Priya Dixit, Critical Terrorism Studies: An Introduction to Research Methods (London; New York, 2013), pp. 8 2 Alex P. Schmid, “Appendix 2.1,” in The Routledge Handbook of Terrorism Research, ed. Alex P. Schmid (London: Routledge, 2011), pp. 99-148. 3 Walter Laqueur, No End to War: Terrorism in the Twenty-First Century (London: Continuum, 2003), pp.238 4 The CCIT defines terrorism as follows: ‘1. Any person commits an offence within the meaning of this Convention if that person, by any means, unlawfully and intentionally, causes: (a) Death or serious bodily injury to any person; or (b) Serious damage to public or private property, including a place of public use, a State or government facility, a public transportation system, an infrastructure facility or the environment; or (c) Damage to property, places, facilities, or systems referred to in paragraph 25 efforts by international organizations to define terrorism. Such legalistic efforts have a long history, first taking place under the auspices of the League of Nations between 1934 and 1937 and gathering pace again under the UN from the 1970s onwards in the aftermath of Lod Airport Massacre and the Munich Olympics.5 Despite the creation of a definition of terrorism under the CCIT, the definitional issue has remained ongoing, with several member states challenging it – not least because they fear that their own actions may become subject to the very label they are being asked to endorse. Of course, there is no intrinsic essence to terrorism. Like all social constructs and terms, its definition will be deeply imbued with the biases, ideological baggage, and self-interests of the definer. A definition of terror will thus never be indisputable or entirely fixed. There remain colossal definitional chasms between many theorists’ points of view. Can states commit terrorism? Is an attack terrorism if it does not target civilians? Who exactly can be classed as a civilian anyway? These and other important questions remain points of contention. Despite this, scholars continue to argue that in order to truly understand the phenomenon of terrorism ‘our first priority ought to be the formulation of a comprehensive, uniform – and above all functional – definition of just what we consider terrorism to be.’6 Scholars remain committed to searching out some metaphysical essence that can be located in all iterations of what we call terrorism. It is, of course, hardly pedantic for social scientists, historians, legislators, or others to quibble over the precise definition of terrorism. Labelling a person or group as a ‘terrorist’ 1 (b) of this article, resulting or likely to result in major economic loss, when the purpose of the conduct, by its nature or context, is to intimidate a population, or to compel a Government or an international organization to do or abstain from doing any act.’ “Report of the Ad Hoc Committee established by General Assembly resolution 51/210 of 17 December 1996 Sixth session (28 January-1 February 2002),” (January 20th 2024) pp. 19: https://web.archive.org/web/20190126194737/https://www.un.org/documents/ga/docs/57/a5737.pdf 5 See: Ben Saul, “The Legal Response of the League of Nations to Terrorism”, Journal of International Criminal Justice 4/1 (2006), pp. 79. 6 Caleb Carr, “”Terrorism”: Why The Definition Must Be Broad,” World Policy Journal 24/ 1 (2007), pp. 47. 26 and/or their actions as ‘terrorism’ carries heavy consequences, making them a pariah and often bringing military, economic, and political repercussions down on the individual’s or group’s, head/s. However, perhaps those seeking to define terror should look not just to the actions and ideologies of purported terrorists, but also to the perceptions of both the groups labelled terrorists and those who have been terrorized in seeking to understand just what societies mean when they refer to ‘terrorism.’ This chapter thus takes a different approach to the question of what we mean by terrorism. Although this approach is not new, it is certainly an underutilized method, and one which will be fleshed out here in the context of events in Palestine between 1944 and 1948.7 Rather than checking an attack against the criteria of any social studies paper, societies tend to rely more upon common narratives shared in public spaces and what is sometimes referred to as the ‘genealogical turn’ in order to decide if an event classifies as terrorism in their view. This idea, put forth by the ‘Cambridge School’ of historians and owing much to an interpretivist analysis of history as well as to the earlier works of Foucault and Nietzsche, challenges the centrality and categorical nature of definitions within the study of history.8 The foremost proponent of this historical methodology (largely within the framework of intellectual history) has been Quentin Skinner, who has argued that, in tracing ‘the genealogy of a concept, we uncover the different ways in which it may have been used in earlier times. We therefore equip ourselves with a means of reflecting critically on how it is currently understood.’9 This is a useful tool for historians and political theorists, especially when considering how society may 7 Michael V. Bhatia, "Fighting Words: Naming Terrorists, Bandits, Rebels and Other Violent Actors," Third World Quarterly vol. 26, no. 1 (2005): pp.16; Scott Englund, Michael Stohl, and Richard Burchill, “Introduction: Constructions of Terrorism,” in Constructions of Terrorism: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Research and Policy, ed. Michael Stohl, Richard Burchill, and Scott Englund (Oakland: University of California Press, 2017), pp. 1, 4-10; Verena Erlenbusch-Anderson, Genealogies of Terrorism: Revolution, State Violence, Empire (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018), pp.1. 8 Martyn Frampton, “History and the Definition of Terrorism,” in The Cambridge History of Terrorism, ed. Richard English (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), pp. 31-32 9 Quentin Skinner, ‘A Genealogy of the Modern State,’ Proceedings of the British Academy 162/1 (2009), pp. 325. 27 perceive a phenomenon – i.e., not through definitional scrutiny, but with comparison to past events of the same or similar nature of which they have experience or knowledge. When we apply this logic to the concept of terrorism, the concerns of inward-looking academic attempts to create a precise definition seem to fade in importance as rather futile attempts to chase the spectres of some sort of Platonic form behind the concept of terrorism. After all, if terrorism is a social construct, then what we perceive terrorism to be matters a great deal. When we see images of violence on TV, or in the news, we implicitly sort that violence into categories (terrorism, war, genocide, crime, etc.). Although these boundaries may sometimes be fluid and open to contestation there is often a sufficiently widespread acceptance of which label to apply that the pertinent label sticks - and sticks quickly. Abductive reasoning comes into play in people’s minds: If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck. Or, in our case: If it seems like terrorism, if it uses familiar terrorist methods, and explodes like terrorism, then it probably is terrorism as far as society is concerned. It is this conception that matters ‘on the ground’ so to speak. The intuitive naming of something as terrorism is of course an inherently political act, but when sufficient societal consensus exists over the naming of a form of violence which they see or experience in these terms, this is what the historian must pay heed to. Indeed, this terrorism ‘duck test’ was even adopted at the international level by Jeremy Greenstock, the former Permanent Representative of the United Kingdom to the United Nations in his analysis of terrorism, when he stated that ‘there is common ground amongst us all on what constitutes terrorism. What looks, smells and kills like terrorism is terrorism.’10 That is not to say that this ‘common sense’ logic of identification is without flaws, but that this is often what happens in practice. 10 Quoted in: Verena Erlenbusch-Anderson, Genealogies of Terrorism, pp. 1. 28 At the confluence of this use of a genealogical understanding of a phenomenon in the modern world on one hand and of the ‘duck test’ on the other then, we find the Wittgensteinian logic of language and naming. ‘In most cases, the meaning of a word is its use’ Ludwig Wittgenstein claimed in his Philosophical Investigations.11 What resembles other iterations of terrorism and looks just like it, will inevitably be referred to as terrorism – regardless of whether social scientists, legal scholars, and others object that it does not fit the requisite criteria to be labelled thus. As the political philosopher Verena Erlenbusch-Anderson has described, the process of defining terrorism is one of ‘incorrigible positions, which are unacknowledged suppositions that correlate with a particular epistemic standpoint or cultural system.’12 In plain English, when identifying something as terrorism our viewpoint is shaped by implicit assumptions about what we already recognize as terrorism.13 Of course, the reality of an attack may be more complex than this. An event may simultaneously have the characteristics of an act of war, terrorism, and display patterns similar to genocide. Yet the desire to label and compartmentalize – not least on the part of those attacked – in order to understand what the response should be (a declaration of war, counterterrorism operations, policing operations), inevitably kicks in. It is in this light that we turn to the question of whether the actions of the Irgun and Lehi can be labelled as ‘terrorism’ - a question upon which much of this thesis relies. In order to examine this question, it is not therefore necessary here to try and fit the goals, methods, and actions of these two organizations into the frameworks and definitions of different scholars of terrorism. Instead, it is far more useful to examine how the actions of the Irgun and Lehi drew upon the ideas and strategies of other historical groups who had utilized violence widely understood to be terroristic in nature. What, in short, was their own genealogy as the Irgun and 11 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: B. Blackwell’s, 1958), §43. 12 Verena Erlenbusch-Anderson, Genealogies of Terrorism, pp.3. 13 Ibid. pp.3. 29 Lehi perceived it? It is also useful to understand as a corollary of this, whether the British perceived these similarities and/or characterized the Irgun and Lehi in the same manner. In other words, was ‘terrorism’ as a term synonymous with the actions of the Irgun and Lehi? It is important here to stress that we are seeking here to say whether, at least some, actions of the Irgun and Lehi constituted what was widely understood at the time to be ‘terrorism’. I am not labelling these groups, or their members as ‘terrorists’. As has already been laid out earlier, understanding ‘terrorism’ is about understanding how an event or phenomenon was catagorized, but labelling an entity as ‘terrorist’ is to both make a moral judgement and to flatten and limit the identity of any person or group that utilises terrorism to one aspect through which all their other actions must be interpreted. Such a debate would also lend itself to the inevitable wearisome discussions, exceedingly prevalent in the post-9/11 era, of the ‘terrorist personality’ – something to be avoided in any serious academic discussion. Avoiding this discussion is especially important since ‘terrorists don’t just do terrorism’ as Richard English has put it.14 Terror is likely just one tool in a group’s arsenal in their attempts to achieve their goals. And, as Michael Bhatia has warned, ‘once an act or attack is classified as criminal or terrorist in nature, the term has a habit of then being used to describe both the group itself and then all the acts which that group engage in.’15 ‘Nothing New Under The Sun’: The Genealogy of the Irgun and Lehi ‘Q: Was the Irgun influenced by guerrilla groups in other countries militarily and ideologically? 14 Richard English, Does Terrorism Work? A History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), pp. 16. 15 Michael V. Bhatia, "Fighting Words: Naming Terrorists, Bandits, Rebels and Other Violent Actors," pp. 15. 30 A: We learned from the history of our people and ourselves.’16 So claimed Begin in an interview in January 1992. Nevertheless, it is patently obvious from the sources we have that both the Irgun and Lehi drew heavily on the ideas and methods of a variety of different groups. Members of both organizations drew parallels between their own struggle and those of other groups in efforts to seek inspiration, discover successful tactics of armed groups, and achieve the success some of these groups had achieved. In at least one case they even received advice and assistance from those who had been members of other armed organizations abroad, as we shall see. Indeed, the wealth of different inspirations these armed Jewish groups drew upon, would seem to call for a total re-examination of the political and military genealogy not just of the Irgun and Lehi, but of Revisionist Zionism itself – with these militant groups continuing to have a central role in how Revisionism understands its own history and ideological raison d’être today. The evidence below demonstrates that it is high time we moved beyond the simplistic understanding of Revisionism, sadly still prevalent today in some academic and political circles, as comprising of Jabotinsky’s 19th-century liberalism blended with or overtaken by a younger generation’s illiberal beliefs and militant ideas.17 Instead, Revisionism must be understood as a ‘mixed’ ideology which drew on a wealth of different historical and ideological precedents from various times. Models from ancient Judea, 19th-century Italy, nationalist Poland, the Irish War of Independence, the USSR, and Fascist Italy all provided inspiration at various points. 16 Saul Zadka, Blood in Zion: How the Jewish Guerrillas Drove the British out of Palestine (Brassey’s: London, 1995), pp. 195. 17 See for instance, Arie Dubnov, “Right-wing Zionist Radicalism and the Politics of the Comparative Gaze: A look at Three Revisionist Fantasies”, transcript of a paper delivered at Indiana University, Bloomington, 23rd March 2018, pps.1-2: https://jewishstudies.indiana.edu/docs/2017_18/Dubnov_Right%20wing%20radicalism%20for%20Indiana.pdf (17th January 2023); these arguments also echo, James Sunderland, “Republicans and Revisionists: a study of the impact of the model of Ireland in militant Revisionist-Zionism and the British response,” Masters Dissertation, SOAS, University of London, 2018. 31 Armed struggle was at the core of the Irgun and Lehi’s understanding of the situation in Palestine. Although there were other influences that inspired them (Nationalist Poland, Garibaldi, and Communist Russia for example), it was to the models of the IRA, Russian Anarchists, and 1st century Judea that both groups repeatedly returned. Why? All of the above examples (including those of Poland, Italy, and Russia) have one thing in common – all were struggles by small groups against a larger state power. At least two of the three that will be discussed in depth here could be understood through the prism of national liberation struggles - Anarchism being perhaps the exception, though as we shall see, Russian Anarchists often made common cause with ethno-separatist groups as well. Tying all of them together was their form of violence: terrorism. All three groups were recognized as organizations that used terrorism to achieve their aims, either by themselves (in the case of the Anarchists), by their victims (in the case of Anarchists and the IRA), or were envisioned as such by the Irgun or Lehi themselves (as in the case of the Sicarii). Thus, this chapter points to two things: firstly, both the Irgun and Lehi were engaged in acts that were perceived to be terroristic in nature, and secondly, they did so whilst engaging in what they perceived to be an anti-colonial struggle akin to that of the IRA in Ireland, ethno-separatist forces in the Russian Empire, or even – in their understanding – the Sicarii in their fight against Rome. They would certainly not be the last anti-colonial group to utilize terrorism, and indeed the actions of the Irgun and Lehi would set important precedents for groups across the world seeking to shake off what they perceived as colonial or western control over their countries. A closer look at the actions of the groups that the Irgun and Lehi drew upon allows us better to understand the Jewish organizations’ positions on the use of terrorism as a tool to utilize in their struggle against Britain. One group in particular was fascinating to both the Irgun and Lehi – the Irish Republican Army (IRA). This link remains understudied, an especially surprising fact considering the depth of the connection and the influence the Irish War of 32 Independence had on the minds of the members of the Jewish underground.18 This inspiration went back some years prior to the formation of either groups and to the militaristic viewpoint of Abba Ahimeir, who had first called for Zionism to emulate Sinn Fein’s struggle against the British as early as November 1927 in an article for Haaretz, months before he split from the Socialist-Zionist Hapoel Hatzair to champion his own brand of Maximalist Zionism.19 Doubtless familiar with Ahimeir’s work, and seeking their own militaristic path, material on the Irish struggle for independence became almost compulsory reading for a generation of young Revisionists in Europe and Palestine.20 From the leadership to the ordinary members, references to Ireland permeated both armed groups’ declarations and informed their actions. The IRA were widely understood in Britain to be terrorists, with the phrase bandied around freely in descriptions of the group in the press and parliament, and indeed used to label a number of other associated Irish Nationalist groups which were not always violent in nature.21 The IRA itself however clearly viewed itself as a military force, regardless of its scattered nature and cell based structure, and this was crucial to the pride many members took in their membership of the organisation.22 Nevertheless, the Irgun and Lehi could not have failed to understand that the British viewed the IRA not as heroic revolutionaries, but bloodthirsty terrorists who had murdered many British soldiers and members of the administration in Ireland. However, not every member of the Irgun and Lehi drew the same conclusions from the lessons of the Irish struggle for independence. For Avraham Stern, the Easter Rising of 18 For the most comprehensive studies of the links between Irish and Jewish nationalism see Aidan Beatty and Dan O'Brien, Irish Questions and Jewish Questions: Crossovers in Culture (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2018). 19 Peter Bergamin, The Making of the Israeli Far-Right: Abba Ahimeir and Zionist Ideology (London: I.B.Taurus, 2021), pp.80-82. 20 Colin Shindler, The Rise of the Israeli Right: From Odessa to Hebron (Cambridge: Cambridge Core, 2015), pp. 198. 21 Charles Townshend, The Republic: The Fight for Irish Independence (London: Penguin, 2014), pp. 155. 22 Ibid., pp.369. 33 1916 offered a paradigm of how martyrdom could lead to a national revolution.23 Whilst Irish forces managed to seize key areas of Dublin, they were quickly overwhelmed by the British who ensured that the leadership of the rebellion was largely executed. Nevertheless, their actions triggered a wider armed resistance to British rule. Colin Shindler has asserted that Stern likely saw himself as a sort of modern messiah Ben-Yosef, a catalytic, messianic figure who would die in order to ignite the flames of national struggle.24 Stern’s belief in the powers of martyrdom bear a striking similarity to Abba Ahimeir’s thoughts as laid out in his 1926 tract The Scroll of the Sicarii which praised the hero who makes history through deeds, willing to sacrifice himself if necessary for the cause.25 Although several shades more nihilistic, Stern’s conception of Zionism and the path from political movement to state remained much closer to Ahimeir’s that it did to Jabotinsky. Stern’s decision to translate parts of P.S. O’Hegarty’s book, The Victory of Sinn Fein, which dealt with the Irish national campaign, including Easter 1916, into Hebrew as ‘The Uprising in 1916’ lends credence to the theory that Stern saw martyrdom as the way towards revolution and statehood.26 O’Hegarty described the events of Easter 1916 as a ‘deliberate blood sacrifice’ led by men who ‘did not expect to win’ but nevertheless ‘offered up their lives as a sacrifice’ to help save the ‘soul of Ireland’ even though ‘they knew that the people were against them and that the people would hate them for it’.27 Given his belief in the Revisionist mantra that Judea would arise ‘in blood and fire,’ this idea of ‘blood sacrifice’ and martyrdom for the nation would have deeply resonated with Stern, perhaps explaining what drew him to 23 Colin Shindler, The Triumph of Military Zionism: Nationalism and the Origins of the Israeli Right (London: I. B. Tauris, 2006), pp. 145, 248. 24 Colin Shindler, The Hebrew Republic: Israel's Return to History (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017), pp. 23. 25 Bergamin, The Making of the Israeli Far-Right, pp. 180-184. 26 Shindler, The Triumph of Military Zionism, pp. 145, 248; P.S. O'Hegarty, "Ha'hitkomemut Bishnat 1916", in Bamachteret 5 (Shevat 5701 - January-February 1941) in Lohamei Herut Israel vol 1 (Tel Aviv 1982) 27 P.S. O’Hegarty, The Victory of Sinn Fein: How it Won it and How It Used It (Dublin: Talbot Press, 1924), pp. 4-5. 34 this text, and to this specific aspect within it.28 The model of Easter 1916 also clearly allowed Stern and Lehi to believe that, despite their anti-British activities being reviled by the Yishuv, they would ultimately be proved right and their struggle posthumously recognized. Yet others were to draw different lessons from the Irish exemplar. The adoption of the nom de guerre ‘Michael’ (after Michael Collins – the towering figure of Irish Republicanism and pioneer of guerrilla warfare) was the clearest sign of the impact of the model of Ireland upon Yitzhak Shamir. Many biographies and histories of Lehi mention Shamir’s decision to name himself after Collins but few delve into the implications inherent in choosing that name. In Summing Up, his autobiography, Shamir remarked that he read ‘whatever I could lay my hands on’ on the topic of the Irish struggle as a young university student. ‘Oddly enough,’ he remarks, ‘it was to the heroes of the Irish revolution that I was to pay tribute years afterwards,’ by adopting ‘Michael’ as his alias. This choice, Shamir asserts, was born out of an affinity with the ‘spirit and circumstances of [Collins’] struggle against the British’.29 Despite Shamir’s decision to present the choice as a mere curiosity, the choice of the name Michael was intentional and calculated. The members of Lehi chose their aliases extremely carefully to reflect their beliefs and ideological convictions. Stern had chosen ‘Yair’ in reference to Elazar Ben-Yair, the zealot leader at Masada, an expression of his profound belief in the power of martyrdom. Yellin-Mor was ‘Gera’ after the Israelite judge Ehud Ben-Gera who assassinated Eglon, King of Moab, reflecting Yellin-Mor and Lehi’s belief in the justice of the tactic of political assassinations.30 In this context, Shamir’s choice of Michael takes on a greater meaning. In adopting the name of Michael Collins, Shamir was seeking a 28 P.S. O'Hegarty, "Ha'hitkomemut Bishnat 1916", in Bamachteret 5 (Shevat 5701 - January-February 1941) in Lohamei Herut Israel vol 1 (Tel Aviv 1982), pp. 53 -56 29 Yitzhak Shamir, Summing Up: An Autobiography (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1994), pp. 8. 30 Shindler, Israel, Likud and the Zionist Dream, pp. 180. 35 legitimacy the Lehi lacked within the Yishuv by claiming the mantle of leader of the resistance to British rule in Palestine as well as signposting the type of violence he and his comrades would use in their struggle – a violence the British had dubbed terrorism. Begin’s engagement with the model of Ireland dates back as far as 1938 when he defended the concept of ‘Military Zionism’ at the Betar world conference in Warsaw. In a characteristically verbose speech, Begin berated the conference that the ‘world’s conscience has ceased to respond’ and that it was time to look to the ‘war of liberation’ that Ireland had fought as an exemplar of how Zionism could achieve a Jewish state through force of arms.31 As leader of the Irgun, Begin returned to the Irish exemplar when he declared the Revolt in 1944. Indeed, the attacks targeting the tax houses in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa on 27th February 1944 – among the Irgun’s first attacks under Begin - display striking similarities with the first IRA attacks after de Valera’s release from prison and return to the helm of Sinn Féin in 1920 when Dublin Customs House had come under attack.32 The similarity of target seems intentional given Begin’s knowledge of the Irish struggle. The Irgun attacks sought the same result as the IRA’s attack – publicity and the subsequent denting of British prestige.33 Begin hoped that such spectacular attacks on British institutions would lead to the old Irish dilemma – the British would be forced to choose between self-defeating repression or coming to terms with the terrorists.34 Even those at the bottom of the fighters’ hierarchy drew inspiration from Ireland. Captured, put on trial, and eventually executed for his part in the Acre prison break of 4th June 1947, Avshalom Haviv – an Irgun fighter – showed an impressive familiarity with Irish history 31 Quoted in Avi Shilon, Menachem Begin: A Life (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2012), pp. 19-20. 32 J. B. Bell, On Revolt: Strategies of National Liberation (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976), pp. 45. 33 Bell, On Revolt, pp. 68. 34 Ely J. Tavin and Yonah Alexander, Psychological Warfare and Propaganda: Irgun Documentation (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1982), pp. 68. 36 and culture, even quoting George Bernard Shaw in his affidavit. Haviv drew parallels with the British occupation of Ireland, commenting, ‘there too you seized a small country and cultured people by force of arms and deceit’.35 Haviv presented the Irish struggle as a long and bloody conflict but one from which the Irish were destined to emerge victorious since ‘the blood of the fighters and of the tortured only solidified the people round the banner of revolt’.36 Therefore, ‘if you were wise’, Haviv berated his British captors, ‘and learnt from history, the example of Ireland […], would be enough for you to understand that you ought to hurry to leave this country of ours, enveloped in the flames of holy revolt which are not extinguished but, on the contrary, flare up with every drop of blood shed by you or in the fight against you.’37 Fully anticipating the death sentence that was to be handed down to him, Haviv described how the martyr becomes a hero whose spirit ‘even if deprived of a transient body’ will continue to inspire others to revolt, just as it had been, he claimed, in Ireland.38 Luckily for the Irgun at least, they had support for their cause direct from Ireland in the form of Robert Briscoe. A former gun runner for Michael Collins, Jewish Republican, committed Zionist, Irish TD (member of the Dáil Éireann), and future Mayor of Dublin, Briscoe had an impressive résumé. He had first become involved with Jabotinsky’s New Zionist Organization (NZO) in late 1937 and quickly rose to be one of the four men pulling the strings of the organization in the UK, as well as the political representative of the organization in Ireland, with Jabotinsky and the three other leaders of the London branch clearly recognizing the potential of Briscoe’s personal weight and influence.39 In his autobiography, For the Life of Me, Briscoe details his work on behalf of Jabotinsky as well as his sympathy for the Irgun, 35 Tavin and Alexander, Psychological Warfare and Propaganda, pp. 74. 36 Ibid., pp. 75. 37 Ibid., pp. 75. 38 Ibid., pp. 76. 39 ‘Letter of E. Ben Horin to Robert Briscoe,’ 25th January 1938, Jabotinsky Archive, P 253-3. 37 stating, ‘I appointed myself to a full professorship with the Chair of Subversive Activity against England.’40 So it was that on the 12th January 1938, Jabotinsky was ushered into the office of the Irish Taoiseach, Éamon de Valera, by Briscoe.41 What was discussed between them is not entirely clear (no minutes were kept of the meeting) but Briscoe claims that it was around this time that he tutored Jabotinsky on Irish Fenian methods used to expel the British from Ireland by force and that de Valera seemed impressed by Jabotinsky’s arguments to him.42 De Valera’s subsequent support for Briscoe would certainly seem to suggest at least some sympathy for the Revisionist project and the work of the Irgun. However, it seems unlikely that Jabotinsky would have been much interested in talk of violence and unrest against Britain or of organising the Irgun along IRA lines as Briscoe states they discussed together, since, despite speaking a great deal about the military ethos, Jabotinsky was inclined towards a more ceremonial form of militarism.43 To Jabotinsky, the military ethos was as much, if not more, about the uniforms and pageantry as it was about the weaponry. Besides, Jabotinsky still held faith in 1938 that Britain may yet deliver on what he perceived to be its promises to the Jewish people. It seems likely that Briscoe’s description of the meeting is thus included in his autobiography in order to paint Jabotinsky, and thus the Irgun (Jabotinsky was the somewhat uncomfortable commander of the organization before his death in 1940), as the original instigators of the revolt against Britain as early as 1938, two years before Stern formed Lehi. Although the Maximalists within the Revisionist movement such as Ahimeir, Uri Zvi Greenberg, and Yehoshua Yevin, had been interested in Ireland’s possibility as a model of 40 Robert Briscoe, For the Life of Me (Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown and Company, 1958), pp. 264 41 Ibid., pp. 264. 42 Ibid., pp. 264 43 Ibid., pp. 264-265. 38 national liberation since the late 1920s, Briscoe privileges Jabotinsky’s interest in Ireland here, bypassing the Maximalists. This makes it appear that the Irish inspiration inherent within the Revolt was Jabotinsky’s legacy, and not that of the Maximalists – a convenient manipulation for Begin (to whom Briscoe appears to have transferred his allegiance after Jabotinsky’s death) anchoring him to Jabotinsky and not to the more radical – and politically inexpedient – legacy of Maximalism.44 Whatever the case may be, Jabotinsky was clearly pleased with the meeting, writing a letter of thanks to Briscoe and proclaiming, ‘I don’t think I’m ever likely to forget those days in Dublin.’45 So high was Jabotinsky’s regard for Briscoe that less than two months later he was drawing up plans to send him to America to raise support for Revisionist aims there. Having received the assent of de Valera, Briscoe gladly complied with Jabotinsky’s wishes. Although Briscoe talked at nearly every venue he could (basing himself in New York but travelling to Washington as well), expounding the central tenets of Revisionism, defending the Irgun, and drawing parallels between Palestine and Ireland and Irish nationalism and the struggles of the Revisionists, the trip was a complete flop – A fact that even Briscoe was willing to admit.46 A meeting with the former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States and influential Jewish-American, Louis Brandeis, in which Briscoe laid out the revisionist position and spoke about the strength of the Irgun, led to a mild reprimand from the judge who stated he could not agree with Briscoe’s views or of his activities. Perhaps sensing Briscoe’s hurt, the elderly judge offered him a cup of tea and wished him luck.47 A falling out between Briscoe and Benjamin Akzin, a legal scholar who was meant to act as an advisor to Briscoe, and which seems to have been engineered by a jealous Haim Lubinsky (the ranking Irgun officer sent to 44 Briscoe, For the Life of Me, pp. 299. 45 ‘Postcard from Ze’ev Jabotinsky to Robert Briscoe,’ 18th January 1938, Jabotinsky Archives, P 253-5. 46 Jabotinsky Archives, P 253-8; Briscoe, For The Life Of Me, pp. 276. 47 Briscoe, For The Life Of Me, pp. 274. 39 America with Briscoe) hampered the mission.48 A hoped for meeting with the President was also frustrated by State Department officials and by Rabbi Steven Wise.49 Wise and Briscoe had a mutually contemptuous relationship in these years. Briscoe once sent Wise a telegram reading: ‘You have chosen the wrong vocation. Mephistopheles as in Faust would suit you better.’50 Nevertheless, Briscoe went to great efforts to facilitate links between the Irish diaspora in America and Revisionist circles. As one NZO official remarked of Briscoe in 1939, ‘From his arrival in the States the Irish flocked to him. The Irish political organisations, the Social Clubs, the Religious Guilds, and the Members of Lodges sent their representatives to meet and help him in every way. They supplied him with introductions to their friends in all parts of the U.S., and made sure that wherever he went there would be an open door of [sic] people ready to assist him.’51 This foundation and these links would prove fruitful in later Irgun efforts to fundraise and publicize their attacks towards the end of the Mandate, something we shall return to in the fifth chapter. Briscoe was also in correspondence with Begin he claims, advising him on both military and political strategy, though the correspondence sadly seems to have been lost, if it ever even existed.52 Clearly the members of the Irgun and Lehi drew differing conclusions from the Irish exemplar – from the power of martyrdom, to which buildings to target – yet what is so striking is that this model of Irish anti-colonial terrorism and guerrilla warfare inspired them all so 48 ‘Letter from Ze’ev Jabotinsky to Robert Briscoe,’ 26th February 1939, Jabotinsky Archives, P 253-5; ‘Unsigned letter possibly from Eliahu Ben-Horin to Jabotinsky,’ undated except for 1939, Jabotinsky archives, P 253-5. 49 Judith Tydor Baumel, The "Bergson Boys" and the Origins of Contemporary Zionist Militancy (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2006), pp. 272-279; Briscoe, For The Life Of Me, pp. 275; ‘Unsigned letter possibly from Eliahu Ben-Horin to Jabotinsky,’ undated except for 1939, Jabotinsky archives, P 253-5. 50 Briscoe, For the Life of Me, pp. 275. 51 ‘Unsigned letter possibly from Eliahu Ben-Horin to Jabotinsky,’ undated except for 1939, Jabotinsky archives, P 253-5. 52 Briscoe, For the Life of Me, pp. 299. 40 deeply. The appeal of acts of terrorism carried out by small cells is obvious when one considers the miniscule size of the Irgun and especially the Lehi, and the lack of public support that they enjoyed. In looking to Irish history, Begin, Shamir, and Stern could hardly seek to emulate Parnell’s parliamentarianism, nor could they become Jewish Wolfe Tones leading the masses into battle. And none of them would have sought the same fate that had met Parnell or Wolfe Tone – the first died without seeing his dreams realized and the second died an ignominious death either at his captors’ hands or at his own. Instead, emulating Irish acts of political violence that aimed at creating fear in order to impact British policy was the only realistic course of action on the operational level. Another important influence upon the Irgun, and especially the Lehi, was the readily available example of Anarchist terror. During the 19th and early 20th century, Anarchist terrorism had been a constant source of anxiety and distress across Europe. From a spate of attacks in fin de siècle and Belle Époque France culminating in the death of President Sadi Carnot and the rise of the Bonnot Gang in the early 1910s, to the assassination of Alexander II by Anarchists in Russia and Russian Anarchist participation in the revolutions of 1905 and 1917, the Anarchist threat seemed extremely dangerous and ever present across Europe. Depictions of Anarchist violence were ubiquitous, found everywhere from Conrad’s The Secret Agent to Antoni Gaudí’s stone sculpture of an Anarchist wielding an Orsini bomb (the weapon of choice for 19th century Anarchists) which can still be seen on the edifice of the Sagrada Família.53 Immediately labelled as ‘terrorists’ by the state, and indeed, sometimes by themselves, there is no questioning the contemporary understanding of Anarchist violence was that it was a form of terrorism.54 53 James Crossland, “Radical Warfare’s First “Superweapon”: The Fears, Perceptions and Realities of the Orsini Bomb, 1858-1896”, Terrorism and Political Violence 34/1 (2023), pp. 11. 54 John M. Merriman, The Dynamite Club: How a Bombing in the Fin-De-Siecle Paris Ignited The Age of Modern Terror (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016), pp. 94-95; Peter Marshall, Demanding The Impossible: A History of Anarchism (London: Harper Collins, 2008), pp. 629-634. 41 In the Russian Empire especially, Jews were overrepresented in Anarchist circles, representing almost 50 per cent of Anarchist terrorists.55 As well as larger anarchist circles in cities such as Kiev, Odessa, Vilna, Minsk, and Moscow itself, even the smallest shtetls often had tiny Jewish anarchist groups comprising of anything from two to a dozen members.56 It was into this milieu that a number of the most prominent leaders and strategists of the Irgun and Lehi were born. Both Begin and Eitan Livni, the Irgun’s Chief Operational Officer, were born within the Russian Empire. Of the leaders of the Lehi – both under Stern and the triumvirate of Shamir, Yellin-Mor, and Eldad – only Eldad was born outside of the boundaries of the Empire. Stories of Anarchist terrorism would have been a familiar part of all of these figures’ early years and a source of fascination and inspiration. In 1924, Ahimeir, whose model of militaristic revolution both the Irgun and Lehi adhered to, had delved into Russian Anarchism within his doctoral thesis at Vienna, considering it as a common harbinger of the arrival of a revolution.57 The leaders of the Revolt may have taken a less academic interest in Anarchism, but they too certainly saw its revolutionary potential. In seeking to understand the intellectual foundations of the Lehi, many historians and political theorists point to the influence that the actions of the Anarchists of Naradnaya Volya who had assassinated Alexander II in 1881 had upon Stern’s thinking, whilst at the same time remarking that this was mixed with the novel influence of nationalists such as the IRA and Polish Marshal Josef Pilsudski.58 This mixing of ideologies, a hallmark of Lehi throughout its existence, was hardly new however. Across the Polish Kingdom and Transcaucasian 55 Ekaterina Stepanova, “Terrorism in the Russian Empire,” in The Cambridge History of Terrorism, ed. Richard English (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), pp. 305-309. 56 Paul Avrich, The Russian Anarchists (AK Press: Edinburgh, 1967), pp. 43; Yves Ternon, "Russian Terrorism, 1878–1908," in The History of Terrorism: From Antiquity to ISIS, ed. Gérard Chaliand (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2016), pp. 162. 57 Bergamin, The Making of the Israeli Far-Right, pp. 28-29, 37. 58 Shlomo Shpiro, “The Intellectual Foundations of Jewish National Terrorism: Avraham Stern and the Lehi,” Terrorism and Political Violence 25/4 (2013), pp. 609. 42 Governorates, Anarchist groups were often linked to, or in some cases, merged with ethno-separatist movements.59 The influence of Anarchism upon the Lehi in particular is more than evident from the Bakunin-esque written statements of Stern: ‘The greatest danger... is equality, comfort and satisfaction. ... The revolution will only come through people who have nothing, who are ready and know how to give up everything in life, except for the struggle for freedom.’60 The writings of Bakunin and other Anarchist thinkers had been consumed, digested, and turned over in his mind by Stern during his time in Florence in the early 1930s. Yet Stern was a poet, a romantic with very few of the practical skills needed to carry out any act of terror (he did not even carry a gun, as other members of the Lehi did). ‘Today I write with a pen, tomorrow with a sword,’ Stern had declaimed in one of his poems.61 His death at the hands of British policemen rather prevented Stern from ever wielding that sword even if he had been capable of doing so. It was left to the triumvirate of Shamir, Yellin-Mor, and Eldad to put Anarchist principles into practice on the operational level, recruiting members, acquiring weapons and explosives, and arranging Lehi into secret cells which hid in plain sight in a manner close to that described by Sergey Nechayev, a close friend of Bakunin.62 Lehi attacks were also deeply reminiscent of 19th and early 20th century Anarchist attacks. Whereas the Irgun, by and large, targeted the infrastructure of the British administration in Palestine, Lehi’s approach was to carry out attacks on individuals which closely resembled ‘propaganda of the deed.’ This Anarchist tactic advocated targeting members of the ruling classes through bombings and individual acts of assassination. The assassination of Lord Moyne in 1944 was 59 Stepanova, “Terrorism in the Russian Empire,” pp. 306. 60 Natan Yellin-Mor, Lohamei Herut Yisrael [The Fighters for Israel’s Freedom] (Jerusalem: Shikmona, 1974), pp. 83; Shlomo Shpiro, “The Intellectual Foundations of Jewish National Terrorism: Avraham Stern and the Lehi” pp. 610. 61 Yellin-Mor, Lohamei Herut Yisrael, pp. 59-60. 62 Sergey Nechayev, The Catechism of a Revolutionary (1869), point 14. 43 the apogee of Lehi’s ‘propaganda of the deed’ tactics. Letter bombs sent to members of the British Government, the opposition, and several former high-ranking military and administration officials in 1947 (all of which miraculously failed to detonate) also display this same logic.63 Lehi in particular also looked further back in history for useful models they could emulate, particularly to 1st century Judea and to groups such as the Sicarii who carried out acts of political assassination against the Romans or those they considered to be in league with them. These acts of armed violence were radically reinterpreted through the lens of events in modern Palestine. This inspiration was hardly novel, with Maximalist poetry by Greenberg and Yaakov Cahan drawing on ancient themes and images of the zealots.64 Ahimeir had written his Scroll of the Sicarii in 1926, though it had only become public in 1933, presented as evidence in the case against him and two members of his band of Brit HaBiryonim (themselves named after a band of ancient Zealots) in their trial for the murder of the Zionist leader Haim Arlosoroff.65 The reinterpretation of ancient Jewish history was already in vogue in Maximalist circles well before Stern arrived on the scene then. Entire books have been written about whether we can class certain ancient groups as carrying out ‘terrorism’, since the term would not exist until many hundreds of years later. As the historian of medieval Europe Warren C. Brown has argued, ‘terrorism is a historically and culturally contingent concept; it is modern, and it is Western.’ Thus by using the term terrorism to describe pre-18th century acts of violence ‘we risk misreading them, by filtering what they say through ideas about what terrorism “is” that may be misleading.’66 In applying the 63 H. E. Watts, ‘Report: Outrage June 1947 Postal Packets,’ 13th June 1947, The National Archives, EF 5/12, 13th June 1947 – disconcertingly, the file contains one of the actual letter bombs, complete with gelignite stains, and detached detonators! 64 Bergamin, The Making of the Israeli Far-Right, pp. 171. 65 Bergamin, The Making of the Israeli Far-Right, pp. 171-173, 180-184. 66 Warren C. Brown, “Terrorism, History and Periodisation,” in The Cambridge History of Terrorism, ed. Richard English, pp. 59. 44 epithet ‘terrorism’ to the actions of the Sicarii we obscure contemporary understandings of the group (they were often viewed as ‘robbers’ or ‘bandits’ by Josephus), overruling the contextually specific norms of 1st century Judea.67 This certainly carries dangers for the historian. Yet, as discussed at the beginning of this chapter, we are less interested in this case of decontextualized understanding of violence and terror, and more with how the Lehi themselves understood groups like the Sicarii. Lehi, as we have already seen, adopted a wide variety of influences and sought to filter them through the prism of their own struggle against the British. The example of first-century Judea was no different. For Stern the struggle of the Sicarii was understood as part of the Jewish ‘wars of liberation’ – an undeniably modern concept – which had relevance for Jews in Palestine in the 1930s and 1940s.68 Ahimeir had similarly reinterpreted the Biryonim in much the same way some years earlier in order to suit his own agenda, making his modern iteration of the group the supposed leaders of Revolutionary Zionism that would fight the oppressors – this time the British Empire, rather than the Roman one.69 In characterising the 1st century Sicarii as fighting for national liberation against ‘foreigners [who] defiled the Holy of Holies of the nation’ Stern was both reinterpreting ancient Jewish history and tying the rag-tag collective he led to these ancient groups, thus giving his struggle an air of legitimacy.70 In particular it was the violence unleashed by the Sicarii, the Zealots, and the Bar Kochba rebels that enraptured Stern. Again, as with the Anarchist example, the way the Sicarii terrorised Judea and the Romans through acts of assassination can be seen to have parallels with Lehi’s own methods. The Sicarii were the perfect blend of holy warriors and terrorists in the eyes of the Lehi. Unfortunately, this had 67 Warren C Brown, “Terrorism, History and Periodisation,” pp. 64-65 & Erlenbusch-Anderson, Genealogies of Terrorism, pp. 4-5. 68 Avraham Stern, Be-dami tehi la-ad: Shirim, Michtavim Ve-Maamarim [In My Blood Shall You Live Forever: Songs, Letters, and Essays] (Tel-Aviv: Yair Publishers, 1990), pp. 144-145. 69 Bergamin, The Making of the Israeli Far-Right, pp. 171. 70 Shpiro, “The Intellectual Foundations of Jewish National Terrorism: Avraham Stern and the Lehi,” pp. 610. 45 a less ‘heroic’ side than that which many former Lehi members choose to reminisce about in their post-underground tracts. The Sicarii also assassinated Jews whom they perceived to be cooperating or complicit with the occupying Roman forces. Soon enough this logic was applied to the Yishuv and the Lehi’s own ranks, with internal violence being used to eliminate those deemed traitors and keeping other recruits in line. In at least one case Shamir carried out the ‘hit’ himself. The body of Eliyahu Giladi has never been recovered, despite efforts by his family to appeal to Shamir when he was Israeli PM to grant them such closure.71 In many ways the turn towards using terrorism by the Irgun and Lehi, based on the models of the IRA, Anarchist terrorism, and the Sicarii, was an inevitable one. Garibaldi and Marshal Pilsudski, held up by Jabotinsky as figures worthy of emulation, were certainly awe-inspiring figures to the Irgun and Lehi, but accepting the military limitations of the two groups, their members sought instead to be modern day Michael Collinses, de Valeras, Sicarii assassins, and lone Anarchist fighters. Open military engagements were not an option for the Irgun. Instead, the logic of small, cell-based groups appealed, utilizing forms of violence which had a long history of being labelled ‘terrorism.’ Whilst Begin denied that other models besides the history of the Jewish people inspired the actions of the Irgun, the evidence was there for all to see. It is certainly true that different organizations can use the same methods without one group being inspired by the other, but here we have clear demonstrations of the Irgun and Lehi actively studying and copying previous terrorist groups. Perhaps, given his religious outlook on many matters - including at times issues relating to the underground72 – Begin should have reflected on the words of Ecclesiastes before giving his reply: ‘What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say, 71 Shindler, Israel, Likud and the Zionist Dream, pp. 181. 72 Avi Shilon, “Menachem Begin’s Attitude toward the Jewish Religion,” Middle East Journal 70/2 (2016), pp. 249–274. 46 "Look! This is something new"? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time.’73 Both the Irgun and Lehi demonstrated a pattern of eclectic borrowing and absorbing ideas, methods, and strategies from previous groups which utilized terrorism. These ideas and methods, crafted in geographically disparate areas long before either militant Jewish group came into existence, were filtered by the Irgun and Lehi through the prism of their own struggle and ideology and made to serve their own ends. However, as we shall explore later, this eclectic genealogy meant their actions were likely to be perceived, and labelled as, terrorism by those on the receiving end. Revisionism’s New Jews and Models of Revolt As Begin’s comment displays, all nationalist projects like to appear to be ouroboric, with only the nation’s or race’s past informing their actions in the present. Of course, this is nearly always untrue. Yet the decisions of which groups to emulate – and which not to – were admittedly determined to a significant degree by the Zionist conception of the ‘New Jew’ that Zionist aimed to create and by the Zionist desire to reconnect with the ancient Jewish past. Each model was viewed through the ideological lens of a specifically Revisionist viewpoint of Zionism which determined its suitability as a model for the Irgun and Lehi. To understand the genealogy of terror in Palestine then, we must consider more deeply the Revisionist outlook on the idea of the New Jew. This was a core concept to Zionism’s development, first seriously developed by Max Nordau at the second Zionist Congress in 1898, and which looked to create a new, muscular, and active Jew.74 This would be 73 Torah, Eccles., 1:9. 74 George L. Mosse, "Max Nordau, Liberalism and the New Jew," Journal of Contemporary History 27/4 (1992), pp. 570. 47 the antithesis of the diasporic Jew in the eyes of Zionism, demonstrating the way in which the antisemitic perception of Jews as weak, effeminate, and cowardly permeated the Zionist perception of the Jewish people in Europe.75 As this idea grew and took hold within Zionism, it evolved in several different directions, with Revisionism having its own unique take on the New Jew, as articulated through Jabotinsky’s writings, and inculcated in his followers at an early age through their participation in the Betar youth movement.76 The New Jew of the Revisionist mind was a very different being to the one in the mainstream Labour Zionist view. Whereas the Labour pioneer – epitomized by the Sabra working on the Kibbutz – was the symbol of the New Jew to mainstream Zionism, to Jabotinsky the New Jew would arrive wielding a gun, not the plough or spade of the farmer. Settling the land was a start, but it was not enough in Jabotinsky’s eyes: ‘We need young people who will know how to ride a horse and climb trees and swim in water and use their fists and a rifle, people possessed of a healthy imagination and a strong will that aspires to express itself in the war of life.’77 Militarism, at the very least a defensive form of it, was a necessity for the Zionist project in Jabotinsky’s eyes since, ‘without an armed force that will physically prevent any possibility of disturbing the settler, settlement is impossible.’78 Only through the ability to use force could Jews claim the land. Although these words were aimed at the Palestinian Arabs, they were equally true when perceiving the British presence in Palestine. Little wonder then that in fighting against the British, the Jewish underground often saw itself as the rightful leadership of the Yishuv. In their view, they were the true defenders of the nation, their claims 75 Etan Bloom, “Towards a Theory of the Modern Hebrew Handshake,” in Jewish Masculinities German Jews, Gender, and History, ed. Benjamin Maria Baader, Sharon Gillerman, and Paul Lerner (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012), pp. 157, 162-163. 76 Arye Naor, "Jabotinsky's New Jew: Concept and Models," The Journal of Israeli History 30/2 (2011), pp. 145. 77 Ze’ev Jabotinsky, Al sifrut ve-omanut [On literature and art] (Jerusalem: Eri Jabotinsky, 1948), pp. 164. 78 Ze’ev Jabotinsky, Ba-derekh le-medinah [On the way to statehood] (Jerusalem: Eri Jabotinsky, 1959), pp. 260. 48 legitimised by their willingness to fight and die for the homeland.79 In praising their own military stance, the Lehi, imbued with the Revisionist belief that they were the vanguard of Palestine’s defence, again drew on Ireland, declaring ‘we are just as entitled to declare ourselves to be the recognized and sovereign Hebrew government as were the band of Irish freedom-fighters who declared their sovereign rule in Easter 1916.’80 The Lehi may have broken with Revisionism, and claimed to have repudiated Jabotinsky’s teachings – instead taking Ahimeir’s Maximalism to its logical violent conclusion – but the leaders of Lehi could never fully break from a Jabotinsky-esque world view.81 This was especially true of the triumvirate of Shamir, Yellin-Mor, and Eldad, all of whom had grown up in the ranks of Betar. This was the intellectual and cultural crucible in which their world view was forged at an early age, and despite the ideological break between Lehi and Jabotinsky, it was impossible for them to completely escape this Revisionist Weltanschauung. However, it is true that the Jewish underground, whilst taking on board the Revisionist ideal of the New Jew, went further than their mentor. Jabotinsky had, as mentioned above, always been more committed to ceremonial militarism, and at times displayed an ambivalent attitude towards violence and the military ethos. In 1938 he had been forced to change the Betar oath so that the phrase ‘I shall not raise my arm except in self-defence,’ was amended to add ‘and for the conquest of my homeland’ whilst continuing to preach the need for self-defence rather than offence.82 However, this change was made at the Betar conference in Warsaw – the very same one where Begin stressed the need for an Irish inspired war of liberation. Jabotinsky’s riposte to this call for more militant action was brutal: ‘no earthly 79 Reuven Firestone, Holy War in Judaism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 92. 80 Quoted in Joseph Heller, The Stern Gang: Ideology, Politics, and Terror, 1940–1949 (London: Cass, 1994), pp. 124. 81 Shindler, The Hebrew Republic: Israel's Return to History (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2017), pp. 17. 82 Heller, The Stern Gang, pp. 41; Naor, "Jabotinsky's New Jew: Concept and Models," pp. 150. 49 strategist would say that in the present situation we are capable of performing the act of a Garibaldi or a de Valera. That is mere idle chatter. Our situation is far removed from that of the Italians or the Irish, and if you feel there is no alternative to the proposals made by Mr Begin and if you are armed – commit suicide.’83 Offensive action was clearly not always a necessity, or indeed even an option, in Jabotinsky’s eyes. Yet, a new generation, taking on board the image of the militarised New Jew from Jabotinsky, was now looking to turn theory into praxis.84 These younger members, as we have seen, were less discerning when it came to looking for models for their own militarism. They were drawn to the example of modern terrorist movements – as well as other nationalistic examples in the cases of Italy and Poland – which aligned closely with the image of fighting youth which Betar had inculcated in them.85 Whether it was the IRA fighter, the Anarchist assassins, or the Blue Shirts of Italy, the Jewish underground as it developed looked to other youthful and militant movements for inspiration. Such movements were part of the Zeitgeist, ubiquitous across Europe in the late 19th and early 20th century, and they were part of the cultural context of young Betar members. The IRA and anarchist terrorists epitomised the idea of fighting youth so prevalent within Betar and Revisionist imagery. A brief look at the history of Anarchist terror speaks to the youthful nature of the movement. Dmitry Karakozov, the first – though by no means the last – Anarchist to make an attempt on the life of Tsar Alexander II, was just 25 at the time of the assassination attempt.86 Ignacy Hryniewiecki, the man who finally succeeded in killing Alexander 15 years later in 1881 was likewise 25 years old when he dropped the bomb which 83 Quoted in Heller, The Stern Gang, pp. 41. 84 Eran Kaplan, The Jewish Radical Right: Revisionist Zionism and Its Ideological Legacy (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005), pp. 10. 85 Naor, "Jabotinsky's New Jew: Concept and Models," pp. 150. 86 Claudia Verhoeven, The Odd Man Karakozov: Imperial Russia, Modernity, and the Birth of Terrorism (New York: Cornell University Press, 2009), pp. 27-32. 50 was to kill them both at the Tsar’s feet.87 François Claudius Koenigstein, better known as Ravachol, something of a legendary and heavily romanticized figure amongst Anarchist circles in Europe, was sentenced to death aged 32.88 Spanish Anarchist Santiago Salvidor was the same age when he became one of the first Anarchists to actively target civilians in his attacks, bombing the Liceu Opera House in 1893.89 Émile Henry, a young French Anarchist who also targeted civilians in his bombing of a Parisian café in 1894, was just 20 when he carried out his first bombing and just 21 years old when he was sent to the guillotine by the French state.90 Anarchist action was a young man’s game. So young did Henry appear to the spectators as he was led to the scaffold that someone in the hushed crowd remarked: ‘The poor lad! You wouldn’t think him more than fifteen years old.’91 Thus the appeal of Anarchist style terror was clear. As mentioned above, the Anarchist movement and its actions were part of the cultural background of European Jews, who were overrepresented in the Anarchist ranks. It was a tangible part of life for Jews and demonstrated to the members of the Irgun and Lehi the impact that young men like themselves (and nearly always men, it must be said) could have on the course of history. The IRA was similarly a movement of youth, a fact recognized by both themselves and by their enemies. IRA members were highly aware of their youth, and the fact that they faced opprobrium from the older generation for their actions, but believed their young age gave them a nobility and purity as well as demonstrating their braveness.92 The Irish Times eulogised a young IRA captain as representing ‘all that was brave and virile, all that was chivalrous, 87 Avrahm Yarmolinsky, Road to Revolution: A Century of Russian Radicalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Legacy Library, 2014), pp. 281. 88 Merriman, The Dynamite Club, pp. 82-85. 89 Ibid. pp. 129. 90 Ibid. pp. 102-105, 199. 91 Ibid. pp. 198. 92 Peter Hart, The I.R.A. and Its Enemies: Violence and Community in Cork, 1916-1923 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 169. 51 unselfish and highspirited [sic] in the best of the young manhood of the nation.’93 The fact that so many recruits were so young often shocked British troops who found their enemy to be ‘callow youths who do not really realise what they are doing’ – or as one Auxiliary cadet succinctly put it, they were fighting ‘fucking schoolboys.’94 This was perhaps a little unfair – the average age of fighters was between 24 and 25 – but the IRA fighters were indeed often very young.95 The IRA was a manifestation among the Irish gentiles of Jabotinsky’s aforementioned idea that what the Jews needed was ‘young people who will know how to ride a horse and climb trees and swim in water and use their fists and a rifle.’96 The disciplined nature of IRA units leant them an air of chivalry and bravery that The Irish Times had picked up on, something which would have, perhaps even unconsciously, appealed to the Irgun and Lehi given their upbringing within, and close involvement with, the Betar youth movement.97 Although split into cells which did not know of each other for security reasons, the IRA viewed itself as a military force, and discipline was kept through both a hierarchical structure and through the institutions that one would find in a regular military force, including a General Head Quarters and military trials – though by the very nature of the underground, these were held wherever it was safe to do so and were not based in fixed locations.98 Admittedly, things did not always go smoothly. Briscoe talks of a court martial he attended in County Waterford where a young man was brought before a court-martial for non-fatally shooting another man in the backside during a nocturnal ambush on a British convoy. The court broke down in hysterics and did not return a verdict after hearing the defendant had accidently shot the man, crouched a few feet ahead of him in the dark, because he mistook the man’s pants – which were showing through his split trousers – for a British face and promptly 93 Quoted in Hart, The I.R.A. and Its Enemies, pp. 169. 94 Quoted in Hart, The I.R.A. and Its Enemies, pp. 168. 95 Hart, The I.R.A. and Its Enemies, pp. 170. 96 Ze’ev Jabotinsky, Al sifrut ve-omanut [On literature and art] pp. 164. 97 Hart, The I.R.A. and Its Enemies, pp. 169. 98 Townshend, The Republic, pp. 369; Briscoe, For The Life Of Me, pp. 114. 52 showered him with buckshot.99 What initially looked like treachery was in fact farce. However the self-image of the IRA was romanticized and idealized after 1922 by many former members – Briscoe included – at exactly the time many young Revisionists would have been reading about the model of Ireland.100 This sense of chivalrous dignity and pride in their military organization by young IRA members would have been deeply appealing to men brought up to adhere to Jabotinsky’s concept of Hadar – a word with no English equivalent, though containing something of each of the ways it is often translated: ‘majesty,’ ‘pride of bearing,’ ‘dignity,’ or ‘splendour.’101 Hadar was another key part of Jabotinsky’s vision of the New Jew, and required Jews to acquire grace, pride, and finesse in every part of their lives – from the way they ate at the dinner table to the way in which they walked in the streets – that Jabotinsky perceived to be lacking in diasporic Jews.102 This focus on ‘thousands of “trifles”’ as Jabotinsky himself referred to it, may indeed seem pedantic, but as Hillel Halkin has noted, ‘learning not to slurp one’s soup was indeed trivial. Unlearning a way of life [i.e., that of the diaspora] […] was for Jabotinsky as indispensable a part of the Zionist revolution as returning to the soil and to healthy physical existence were for Labour Zionism.’103 This remaking of the diasporic Jew into the New Jew as a proud and dignified individual was at the core of Betar, and a section on the concept of Hadar was incorporated into Jabotinsky’s manifesto ‘The Idea of Betar,’ composed in 1934.104 How best to embody the ideas inherent in Hadar was also taught to young Betarniks at the short-lived Betar Leadership Training School in Palestine between 1929 and 1933 where 99 Briscoe, For The Life Of Me, pp. 114-115. 100 Townshend, The Republic, pp. 369. 101 Hillel Halkin, Jabotinsky: A Life (London: Yale University Press, 2014), pp. 147; Naor, "Jabotinsky's New Jew: Concept and Models," pp. 142; Eran Kaplan, “A Rebel with a Cause: Hillel Kook, Begin and Jabotinsky’s Ideological Legacy,” Israel Studies 10/3 (2005), pp. 91. 102 Halkin, Jabotinsky, pp. 149. 103 Ibid. pp. 148-149. 104 Ibid. pp. 147. 53 Ahimeir taught on Jewish culture and history.105 The school even had an instructor, Abba Gilvitz, whose role was to be the instructor in ‘Ceremony and Hadar’ for the young students.106 Although he often reinterpreted Jabotinsky’s ideas, especially after his mentor's death, Begin was to return constantly to the themes of honour and national pride in his works and in his speeches, both in the underground and later as PM.107 The idea was at the core of Revisionism and was a central tenet of the Betar way of life as preached in Eastern Europe and Palestine. Hardly surprising then that the model of the IRA should appeal so much to the likes of Begin, Shamir, Yellin-Mor, and Eldad who had grown up to respect the ideals the IRA strove for, and which in both the hagiography of Revisionism and Irish nationalism were presented as hallowed ideals which the organizations were always to keep to. Certainly these ideals – honour, national pride, youthful chivalry and bravery – could be found elsewhere in Europe. From the self-improvement preached by Baden Powell to his Scouts to the more extreme versions of national pride and militarism inculcated among groups like the Hitler youth, these ideals were part of the Zeitgeist. But only in Ireland was this combined with an anti-colonial and anti-British element that was not only militaristic, but actually militarized. This, in part, helps to explain the choice of models and the self-fashioning of the Irgun and Lehi’s theoretical and practical genealogy – but not entirely. Why was there a centuries long gap in their sources of emulation between 1st century Judea and 19th century Anarchists? And why were certain potential models, such as the Arab Revolt – which had occurred less than 5 years before Begin declared the Revolt, and which had happened in the same land – ignored or overlooked? 105 Bergamin, The Making of the Israeli Far-Right, pp. 130-131. 106 Bergamin, The Making of the Israeli Far-Right, pp. 136. 107 Avi Shilon, "Menachem Begin's Attitude toward the Jewish Religion," The Middle East Journal 70/2 (2016), pp. 264. 54 For Begin and the Irgun this large chronological gap was not, as at first glance it may appear, about negating the diaspora – the common Zionist position in these years that Jews in the diaspora were weak and their history and religious practices were not worth saving.108 For Begin, the diaspora and Zionism were part of the same historical continuum, with Zionism not as distinct from Jewish tradition, but as part of it.109 As such, Begin was not seeking to denigrate the exile by overlooking any potential models from this period. Rather he was seeking purely to connect the ancient past to that of his Revolt. Indeed, one of Begin’s first operations was the so-called Wall Plan which saw the Shofar blown by the Western Wall on Yom Kippur, a religious act that the British had prohibited, fearing as they did an ensuing clash between Jews and Palestinian Arabs. From a purely strategic point of view, the plan seems nonsensical – but seen in the context of Begin’s utilization of religious symbols as national ones, the operation made a great deal of sense. Begin’s act of transgression at the Wall transformed the space into a symbol of national sovereignty, just as it had been in the Second Temple period, over which Britain’s control was as unacceptable as Roman control had been to the ancient heroes that both the Irgun and Lehi looked back to. This was exactly how Begin justified the operation, stating that it was necessary ‘to remove the shame imposed by the oppressive regime on the last vestige of our former independence, the Eternal Wall, the symbol of the sanctity of the Land of Israel.’110 The Lehi operated in much the same way, co-opting religious imagery from the period of exile, with Stern’s poetry and pronouncements drawing heavily on Jewish history and 108 Shalom Ratzaby, “The polemic about the “negation of the Diaspora” in the 1930s and its roots,” Journal of Israeli History 16/1 (1995), pp. 28. 109 Avi Shilon, "Menachem Begin's Attitude toward the Jewish Religion," pp. 251-252. 110 Shelomoh Lev-‘Ami, “Ha-Protokolim shel Mifkedet ha-Irgun ha-Tseva’i ha-Le’umi, Yuli– November 1944” [“The Minutes of National Military Organization Headquarters, July–November 1944”], Ha-Tsiyonut, Vol. 4 (1975) pp. 395–396. 55 religious themes.111 As Shlomo Shpiro has explored, this imagery, when blended with Stern’s ideas around the national struggle, blended to suggest an intellectual continuity between the Jewish past and present.112 This lent an air of religious legitimacy to Lehi’s struggle and to their methods. The war for national liberation thus became the logical conclusion of Jewish religious tradition in Stern’s eyes. Stern’s literary output followed in the footsteps of the Maximalist poet Uri Zvi Greenberg whose poetry drew heavily on Jewish themes in expressing its radical Zionist outlook. Drawing links with the ancient past and the Sicarii, Greenberg’s poem Sicarii II for example, draws upon the name of the ancient group in calling for a new Jewish resistance in the aftermath of the 1929 riots.113 This co-option of ancient Jewish history and of religiosity for the cause were not new phenomenon then to Revisionism, but they did display a break with Jabotinsky’s Revisionism, and look closer in ideological outlook to Ahimeir, Yevin, and Greenburg’s Maximalism. Members of Betar, including Ahimeir himself, had marched down to the Western Wall on the first day of Tesha B’Av (marking the destruction of both Temples) in 1929 and unfurled the Jewish flag – a nakedly political act which incensed the Palestinian Arab population of the Old City and across Palestine and angered the British authorities who were tasked with managing the violence and riots that were unleashed in the aftermath of the march.114 Despite a prohibition against the blowing of the shofar at the Western Wall by the British, the following year, Moshe Segal, a member of Brit HaBiryonim blew the horn at the Wall during the Yom 111 For instance, see Avraham Stern, Be-dami tehi la-ad: Shirim, Michtavim U-Maamarim [In My Blood Shall You Live Forever: Songs, Letters, and Essays] (Tel-Aviv: Yair Publishers, 1990). 112 Shpiro, “The Intellectual Foundations of Jewish National Terrorism,” pp. 611. 113 Yisrael Medad, “Rereadings | Yisrael Medad on the poetry of Uri Tzvi Greenberg,” Fathom, January 1921: https://fathomjournal.org/rereadings-yisrael-medad-on-the-poetry-of-uri-tzvi-greenberg/ (12th February 2023). 114 Bergamin, The Making of the Israeli Far-Right, pp. 157. 56 Kippur services.115 Begin’s Wall Plan was thus merely the continuation of the Maximalist’s earlier actions. Several times now then, we have seen that the leaders of the Revolt owed as much, if not more, to Maximalist Revisionism as to Jabotinsky’s idea of Revisionism. Begin’s ideas were often continuations or adaptions of Maximalist ideas, repackaged under the less toxic brand of Jabotinsky’s brand of Revisionism. It certainly helped that Jabotinsky was not around to refute many of these ideas after 1940, ideas and actions he would have been horrified at. Both the Irgun and Lehi drew upon modern forms of terroristic violence – Anarchist style assassinations, IRA style attacks on buildings that were symbols of British rule, and attacks by small cells upon British targets – whilst seeking a link with the ancient national past to lend them legitimacy. After all, if this was to be a war for national liberation, it was important for Begin and Stern to claim that the Jewish underground drew upon its own Jewish, national history. This lent the Revolt a legitimacy it might have not otherwise had and allowed it to be presented as an autochthonous struggle – first begun in 1st century Judea, and finally come full circle in the Mandate. In tying together the Western Wall with Jewish history as well as religious and nationalist ideas Begin was making a claim to Palestine as a Jewish space. Begin was not alone in this argument. A large number of other leaders of national movements also used, co-opted, or re/created religion and archaeological and/or religious sites in their nationalist rhetoric.116 However, as we have seen, despite this need to publicly express the Jewish nature of the struggle in Palestine, both the Irgun and Lehi borrowed extensively from other examples that fitted their models of the sort of fight the New Jew should pursue. Yet, the one strange omission on the part of the Irgun and Lehi’s thinking was the Arab Revolt, which was 115 Bergamin, The Making of the Israeli Far- Right, pp. 173. 116 Avi Shilon, "Menachem Begin's Attitude toward the Jewish Religion," pp. 257. 57 contemporary to their own struggle, happened in the same land, and waged against the same enemy – though the troops and police the Irgun and Lehi faced were perhaps of a less battle-hardened nature than those the fighters of the Arab Revolt had faced.117 As well as this, both the Irgun and Lehi reached out to Palestinian Arabs at various points to call for some form of alliance against the British – although of course always aware that they may in due course have to take up arms against the Palestinian Arabs as well.118 Yet, any consideration of the Arab Revolt did not play a major role in the Irgun and Lehi’s own ideology or struggle. This omission is however not as surprising as it may at first appear. With the exception of Stern and Shamir, many of the leaders of the Irgun and Lehi in the period between 1944 and 1948 had not experienced the Arab Revolt, having arrived in Palestine after it had been crushed.119 Besides this, the struggle the Palestinian Arabs had waged against the British had been very different to the one the Jewish underground was waging. Whereas the Arab Revolt largely took place in the countryside and arid parts of Palestine, the Jewish Revolt took place largely in major cities.120 In this regard, the models of Ireland and Anarchists in Europe were more pertinent to the Irgun and Lehi, happening as they did largely in towns and cities (although the IRA admittedly also operated in the countryside, its leaders were largely based in Dublin). Figures like Michael Collins, the urban terrorist figure par excellence, were more useful to emulate.121 This ability to traverse and fight in dense urban spaces was indeed to prove useful to the Irgun later on when their commander Amichai ‘Gidi’ Paglin launched a full- 117 Matthew Hughes, "A History of Violence: The Shooting in Jerusalem of British Assistant Police Superintendent Alan Sigrist, 12 June 1936," Journal of Contemporary History 45/4 (2010), pp. 739-40; Eric Lowe, Forgotten Conscripts: Prelude to Palestine's Struggle for Survival (Victoria, B.C.: Trafford, 2007), pp. 55. 118 Heller, The Stern Gang, pp. 126. 119 Shamir arrived in Palestine in 1935, Begin in 1942, Yellin-Mor and Eldad in 1941. 120 Michael J. Cohen, Britain’s Moment in Palestine: Retrospective and Perspectives, 1917-48 (Abingdon, Routledge: 2015), pp. 250. 121 Tim Pat Coogan, Michael Collins: A Biography (London: Hutchinson, 1990), pp. xxii 58 scale attack on Jaffa in the War of Independence, facing both Arab forces and the British, who were nominally in control of the city’s defence ahead of their evacuation of the city.122 Although the Arab Revolt could have offered examples of how to successfully acquire, smuggle, and conceal weapons, or of how to use violence to wring concessions from the British (i.e., the 1939 White Paper), it appears that nowhere were there such conversations within the ranks of the Irgun and Lehi. After all, in the latter case, it was not concessions that were thought but a complete abrogation of British rule over Palestine. Although the Arab Revolt provided the catalyst for the creation of the Irgun, with David Raziel and others including Stern rejecting the Haganah’s belief in Havlagah (‘restraint’ in the face of Palestinian Arab attacks) it offered an inspiration for the Irguns’s formation rather than its actions.123 Perceptions of the Irgun and Lehi in Britain The question that arises from this very evident borrowing of methods from other groups that utilized terrorism, is whether ordinary British citizens, the UK press, or Parliament saw the Irgun and Lehi in the same way – as perpetrators of terrorism, or as something else. How were the activities of the Irgun and Lehi characterized and was the genealogy we have traced above recognized by the public or by state actors? Of particular interest is the way perceptions of the actions of the Irgun and Lehi were filtered through the lens of Ireland between 1916 and 1922, at first as analogy, but increasingly in recognition of the theoretical and practical links between the Jewish underground and Irish Nationalism. 122 Sharon Rotbard, White City Black City: Architecture and War in Tel Aviv and Jaffa (London: Pluto Press, 2015), pp. 98-108. 123 Hoffman, Anonymous Soldiers, pp. 56-58, 80. 59 An examination of the practice of naming the actions carried out by the Irgun and Lehi demonstrates a straightforward understanding of them in Britain. An examination of debates in the House of Commons shows that members were not shy about naming the Irgun and Lehi as terrorists and labelling their acts as terrorism and terrorist outrages between 1944 and 1948. This was something of a change from pre-Second World War rhetoric which often cast the two groups as ‘Jewish extremists’ engaged in ‘criminal activity.’124 The Haganah on the other hand sought out opportunities to cooperate with the British during the Arab Revolt and received training and support largely in the form of Orde Wingate’s Special Night Squads, becoming useful British allies, thus largely saving them from such opprobrium.125 Although after 1944 the actions of the Irgun and Lehi were still sometimes characterised as criminal during debates, the rhetoric shifted away from viewing them as ‘extremists,’ and more as ‘terrorists.’ After the assassination of Lord Moyne, Churchill castigated this ‘shameful crime’ as being perpetrated by ‘a new set of gangsters worthy of Nazi Germany.’ These people were ‘terrorists,’ engaged in acts of ‘terrorism’ as he repeatedly stressed in his address to the House.126 The rhetoric of ‘Jewish Terrorists’ was one that was to remain a constant in ministers’ and MPs’ speeches in the House from that point onwards when dealing with acts of political violence in Palestine.127 Whilst many debates on the violence in Palestine took place within general discussions about the future of the country, on seventeen occasions between 1944 and 1948 debates were specifically brought to the floor with names such as ‘Palestine (Jewish Terrorism)’ 124 [Hansard] Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, 28th June 1939, volume 349, column 405. 125 Mathew Hughes, “Terror in Galilee: British-Jewish Collaboration and the Special Night Squads in Palestine during the Arab Revolt, 1938–39,” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 43/4 (2015), pp. 591. 126 [Hansard] Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, 17th November 1944, volume 404, column 2243. 127 [Hansard] Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, 31st July 1947, volume 441, column 636. 60 or ‘Terrorist Activities,’ all referring to the actions of the Irgun and Lehi.128 British politicians labelled the two groups primarily as ‘terrorists,’ with a number of other epithets used to show British disdain towards them – the likes of ‘criminal idiots,’129 ‘unbalanced people,’130 and the characterization of violence as ‘criminal behaviour’131 carried out by a ‘semi-Fascist organisation,’132 were secondary to the main characterization of the Irgun and Lehi as terrorists engaging in terrorism. Meanwhile the Haganah were generally still generally characterized as a ‘defence force’ even during the Mandate’s final days despite their active participation in the Hebrew Resistance Movement between October 1945 and August 1946.133 The characterization of the Irgun and the Lehi in the British press was equally to the point. Reference to the groups as ‘terrorists’ or as engaging in ‘terrorism,’ can be found across the entire spectrum of the British press and in both local and national reporting.134 Despite the variance in proposed solutions to issues in Palestine – from partition and evacuation to the use of force to quell unrest – the language used to name the Irgun and Lehi shows a high degree of agreement about the nature of the violence Britain faced. Between the press and the politicians who shaped discourse and responses to violence in Palestine, there were few rhetorical differences. Britain was facing terrorism. In terms of the perceptible genealogy, it is certainly true that comparisons to the IRA, particularly by parliamentarians and intelligence sources, helped to cement the idea that the Irgun and Lehi were indeed committing acts of terrorism and were not purely petty ‘criminals’ 128 See Hansard search results here: https://hansard.parliament.uk/search/Debates?startDate=1944-01-01&endDate=1948-12-31&searchTerm=terrorist&house=Commons&partial=False; https://hansard.parliament.uk/search/Debates?startDate=1944-01-01&endDate=1948-12-31&searchTerm=terrorism&house=Commons&partial=False 129 [Hansard] Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, 31st January 1947, volume 432, column 1333. 130 [Hansard] Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, 31st July 1947, volume 426, column 1070. 131 [Hansard] Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, 31st January 1947, volume 432, column 1311. 132 [Hansard] Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, 31st January 1947, volume 432, column 1323. 133 See for example the comments of Sydney Silverman, [Hansard] Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, 31st January 1947, volume 432, column 1333. 134 Saul Zadka, Blood in Zion (London: Brassey’s, 1995), pp. 178-183. 61 or ‘gangsters.’ The IRA represented arguably the most acute threat to British sovereignty and the Empire in the first half of the twentieth century, and, in utilizing terror as one means of exerting pressure on the British Government, had eventually helped to achieve the end of British rule in the Southern Counties and the creation of the Irish Free State. Thus, comparisons to the IRA demonstrate two things. Firstly, the British recognized the Irgun and Lehi as similar organizations to the IRA – ones that utilised terror as a means of achieving their nationalist ends. As we shall see, when referring to the Irgun and Lehi in parliament, MPs’ use of the terms ‘terrorist’ and ‘terrorism’ went hand in hand with comparisons to the IRA. Secondly, any comparison to the IRA shows the profound impact the Jewish Underground had on British perceptions of the situation in Palestine – a comparison to a group like the IRA, which had wrought terror and instability in Ireland, was designed as a tocsin, warning of the dangers the Irgun and Lehi posed to British rule in Palestine and carrying connotations of British failure. Those first to raise the parallels between Ireland and Palestine were the intelligence branches, who were evidently alarmed by the similarities. In 1944, MI5 sent Alexander Kellar, their pre-eminent expert on the Jewish insurgency, to Palestine to assess the situation. Writing his observations on the Irgun and Lehi, he concluded that the groups’ ‘ring-leaders’ were ‘cast in the fanatical mould’ and ‘like the I.R.A during the “Black and Tan” period they will probably prove difficult or perhaps impossible to break’ when subjected to interrogation.135 The report’s observation of the similarity between the psychology of the insurgent ‘ring-leaders’ and IRA leadership does not seem to be based on any understanding of the role the Irish struggle had in the ideology or thought of militant Revisionists, but rather seems to be included to highlight the insurgent leaders’ toughness. This description and the evident reasoning behind it 135 Alexander Kellar, ‘Visit to the Middle East,’ dated 1944, TNA, KV 4/384. 62 point to this comparison being used to stress the seriousness of the situation Britain faced in defeating the Irgun and Lehi. Kellar’s refence to the Black and Tans is also telling. Referencing the branch of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) widely despised by the Irish population for their heavy-handed approach who were sent in to (unsuccessfully) quell unrest in Ireland demonstrates an implicit assumption about the type of fight on Britain’s hands. The situation in Palestine was thought of in the same terms as Ireland – a counterinsurgency, against an underground which could melt into the general populace, and who used acts of terrorism to achieve the maximum effect.136 The report, however, failed to alarm Westminster, with foreign secretary Anthony Eden concluding that the only ‘really important thing is to round up the terrorists’ and expressing confidence in the ‘practical steps [that] have been and are being taken to round up the Stern Group and other terrorists’ which would ensure that they ‘can be broken.’137 At this point, the alarm caused by similarities between the IRA and Irgun and Lehi was muted, quite possibly since Britain was in the final stages of all-out war against Nazi Germany. Palestine ranked low on either Eden’s or the Government’s list of priorities. After 1945, however, the parallel between Ireland and Palestine began to cause more distress. Army intelligence noted that the Irish War of Independence had established a precedent of how armed struggle could influence British policy and that this knowledge would now figure in the thinking of not only the Irgun and Lehi, but also the Haganah.113 Voicing fear that a proposed attempt to disarm the Yishuv would result in widespread violence and force the Haganah and the elite Palmach to take an offensive line against Britain, the report by the military headquarters in Palestine suggests that armed Zionist groups may ‘hope to keep going 136 Alan Cunningham, “Palestine-The Last Days of the Mandate,” International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944-) 24/4 (1948), pp. 485-486. 137 Anthony Eden, ‘Telegram from Eden to Killearn,’ November 30th 1944, TNA, FO 921/154. 63 long enough to wear us down into granting them their ambitions.’ This tactic ‘must end in disaster’ the British predicted, but noted that the Haganah and Palmach would nevertheless continue such actions in the ‘hope to gain as great a measure of success as did the Irish in 1922’ through acts of attrition.138 The report seems to suggest that British forces believed that the two Jewish Agency-aligned fighting forces may well take direct inspiration from the Irish War of Independence should they come under attack, looking to the IRA as a model for smaller forces which achieved their aims against the British through constant, small-scale pressure against British targets. The next comparison by the intelligence community came in the summer of 1946. Reports warned the Government that the Irgun and Lehi were planning to send five ‘cells’ to London to ‘work on IRA lines,’ though the exact meaning of this was vague.139 What then did ‘IRA lines’ mean? Given the lack of explanation of how this would work in practice, it yet again appears that the comparison was a sign that the intelligence community saw the Irgun and Lehi as serious threats of the same calibre and type as the IRA. There was intense fear that the two Jewish groups would seek to use similar methods as the IRA, but this time in the UK (mainland attacks were something the IRA carried out infrequently but major plans for kidnap and wider terrorism were largely shelved140), particularly that high profile figures would be targeted for assassination. So serious was this threat that Sir Percy Sillitoe, MI5’s new Director-General, personally briefed Attlee in August 1946 that the PM’s name was known to be on a Lehi hit list.141 Many of these comparisons were mostly analogous in nature, yet occasionally intelligence reports did show an awareness that the Irgun and Lehi might at least be inspired by 138 ‘Appreciation of the Likely Reaction of the Jews to Broadside,’ 15th November 1945, TNA, WO 169/19745 139 ‘J. C. Robertson Report,’ 27th August 1946, TNA, KV 5/30. 140 See: Gerard Noonan, The IRA in Britain, 1919-1923: “In The Heart of Enemy Lines” (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2014). 141 Calder Walton, Empire of Secrets (London: Harper Press, 2013), pp. 77. 64 the precedent of Ireland in thinking about their own struggle. This pattern – of initially relying on the comparison as an analogy, before recognizing the possibility of intentional similarities – was to also be demonstrated by statements by MPs in the House of Commons. Similarities between the IRA and the Jewish underground in Palestine were noticeable to many back bench Members of the House. Many of these members had experience of the Irish War of Independence, whether through living through it in Britain, being born into Irish Loyalist families, or in some cases having fought in it and drew upon this in their interjections in the Commons. The ‘duck test’ was alive and well in the Houses of Parliament in 1946. On July 31st 1946, the Conservative MP for Brighton Pavilion, William Teeling, born in Dublin to a Loyalist family in 1903, rose to speak on the issue of Palestine. Fearing that the Jewish Agency would not be able to keep control of the situation in Palestine he contended that, ‘everything will be in the hands of the terrorists; there will be the same situation as with the I.R.A in Ireland after the 1914-18 war.’142 Although displaying a certain naiveté about the role of the Jewish Agency and underestimating the power they wielded among the Yishuv, Teeling’s comparison is telling. The Irgun and Lehi were taken to be the newest iterations of IRA in Palestine, whilst – in a somewhat warped historical parallel – the Jewish Agency were painted in the hue of John Redmond’s Irish Parliamentary Party. Others drew even more exacting parallels between Ireland and Palestine. Sir Thomas Moore, the Conservative MP for the Ayr District of Burghs, who had been a staff officer in Dublin in 1916, addressed the Commons on the issue of Palestine in December 1947. Urging a quick evacuation of troops since the government had already decided to withdraw from Palestine, Moore drew numerous comparisons to Ireland. ‘The size of the territory concerned is not dissimilar, the number of British troops involved is somewhat similar, [and] other 142 [Hansard] Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, 31st July 1946, volume 426, columns 1047-1048. 65 conditions are also alike,’ he noted, concluding that, just as the rebel movement had been able to draw upon popular support in Ireland, British troops in Palestine were fighting not only ‘Jewish terrorists’ but also found themselves ‘opposed by practically the whole Jewish community in Palestine.’143 Comparisons of Palestine to Ireland by 1947 were not just about direct comparisons to the IRA, but also a recognition, yet again, that Britain was fighting an unsuccessful counterterrorism offensive. By the summer of 1947 MPs began to use comparisons between the IRA and the Irgun and Lehi as more than a purely semantic tool to paint the Jewish Underground as terrorists (although it still had this function too), but also out of recognition of the similarities on a tactical level. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was a military man turned politician, Brigadier Christopher Peto, who drew the attention of Parliament to this similarity in August 1947. Again, Peto was familiar with Ireland, having been posted there for three years after the First World War. Rising to address the House he posited that ‘there are points where one might almost believe that the Irgun organisation had deliberately copied the organisation, methods and tactics of the Sinn Feiners of those days,[…] the tactics are very similar.’144 This was both another way of labelling the Irgun as terrorists, as well the first recognition in the House of the possibility that the example of the War of Independence may have been an inspiration to the Irgun. Sometimes analogy crossed into genealogy purely in the paranoid imaginings of the intelligence services. Seán William Gannon has recently demonstrated how unfounded fears that the Irgun was working with the IRA – by now a tiny force – led to a Palestine police CID 143 [Hansard] Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, 12th December 1947, volume 445, columns 1342-1344. 144 [Hansard] Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, 12th August 1947, volume 441, columns 2337-2339. 66 officer, John J. O’Sullivan, being posted to Ireland to liaise with Garda intelligence.145 This appears to have done little to quell such rumors, with continued press stories on these phantom links.146 At around the same time that O’Sullivan was in Ireland, it appears that Briscoe was under British surveillance during a visit to Egypt to meet with Irgun contacts.147 Having misidentified the connection between Irish Nationalism and the Irgun in the first case, the intelligence services had clearly belatedly recognized the possible link between Briscoe and the Jewish underground.148 It had taken MPs and the intelligence services long enough to notice the tactical similarities and come to the logical conclusion. But by 1947 it was too late. Despite copious comparisons between events in Palestine and the events in Ireland between 1916 and 1922 as a tool with which to tar the image of the Irgun and Lehi, very few had realized Ireland was a direct source of inspiration for the Irgun and Lehi. Nevertheless, ‘Ireland’ was essentially a byword for terrorism, instability, and British failure throughout the post-war years. Comparisons of the Jewish Underground to the IRA show that the intelligence services and MPs were, perhaps unconsciously at times, engaging in a project of historical genealogy which allowed them to perceive the actions of the Irgun and Lehi as in line with previous iterations of terrorism with which they were familiar. The comparison seemed natural enough to them. Attacks displayed similar tactics, the methods of violence were at times identical, and thus underground violence in Palestine was easily compared to underground activity in Ireland and, rather belatedly, recognized to be linked. 145 Seán William Gannon, The Irish Imperial Service: Policing Palestine and Administering the Empire, 1922-1966 (Cham, Switzerland, 2019), pp. 102. 146 Ibid., pp. 102. 147 Briscoe, For the Life of Me, pp. 296. 148 Ibid., pp. 296. 67 Does it Quack Like a Duck? Writing his autobiographical hagiography of the Irgun’s revolt, Menachem Begin stated that ‘our enemies called us ‘terrorists’. People who were neither friends nor enemies, like the correspondents of the New York Herald-Tribune, also used this Latin name […]. Our friends […] called us by a simpler, though, [sic] also a Latin name: patriots.’149 As if to stress the foreign nature of such an idea of terror, Begin uses the transliteration ’terroristim’ (טירוריסטים) along with quotation marks rather than using the actual Hebrew term of the period ‘aymtanot’ 150.(אימתנות) It is not surprising that Begin and the members of both the Irgun and Lehi tried to avoid the epithet of ‘terrorist,’ especially after Israeli independence. Although a dwindling number of groups embraced the term until the twentieth century – including members of the Lehi at times, it was increasingly a term of abuse and delegitimization. The labelling of acts of violence by the Irgun and Lehi – convinced as they were that they were fighting a righteous and historical battle for the Jewish people – as terrorism was thus a threat to their attempts to paint the violence they used as just and legitimate. This was all the more so after Israeli independence when former members of the Irgun and Lehi were seeking a role for themselves within the constitutional framework of the new state as ministers and MKs. Instead, they often sought to present themselves as ‘soldiers’ who had been fighting a ‘war.’151 Whilst members of Lehi sometimes referred to themselves openly as engaging in terror at the time, they certainly did so less frequently after 1948. In 1943, Shamir declared that ‘neither Jewish ethics nor Jewish tradition can disqualify terrorism as a means of combat. […] terrorism is for us a part of 149 Menachem Begin, The Revolt: Memoirs of a Commander of the Irgun Tzvai Leumi in the Land of Israel [Hamarad: zikronatav shel mifkad ha-irgun ha-tsvai ha-laoomi ba-’Eretz Yisrael] (Jerusalem: Ahiasaf, 1950) pp.96; Utilizing the translation: Menachem Begin, The Revolt: The Story of the Irgun (Steimatzky’s Agency Ltd.: Tel Aviv, 1972), pp. 59. 150 Israel Efros, Judah Ibn-Samuel Kaufman, Benjamin Silk, English-Hebrew Dictionary, ed. Dr Judah Ibn-Shmuel Kaufman (Dvir, Tel-Aviv: Israel, 1949), pp. 666 (‘terrorist’). 151 See for instance: Shamir, Summing Up, pp. 31, 54. 68 the political battle being conducted under the present circumstances, and it has a great part to play: Speaking in a clear voice to the whole world, as well as to our wretched brethren outside this land, it proclaims our war against the occupier.’152 Later however he was to speak not of the Lehi campaign against Britain as a form of ‘terror’ but as what he termed ‘outlawed war.’153 Occasionally however, the lexical mask slipped, and a member would openly refer to themselves and their fellow ‘soldiers’ as terrorists, or at the very least admit to having carried out acts of terrorism.154 For all of the attempts to dress up terrorism as ‘war,’ and acts of assassination as ‘executions,’ it appears the members of the Jewish underground never fully bought into this.155 Neither did the Israeli electorate. Begin’s Herut party was able to gain just 14 seats in the 120 seat Knesset in the elections of January 1949, whilst the ‘Fighters’ List’ (in Hebrew, הלוחמים רשימת , Reshimat HaLohmim) – a name which speaks to the attempts at lexical disguise the party was engaged in – the political manifestation of Lehi, gained only one seat. This seat went to Yellin-Mor who had just been sentenced to 8 years’ imprisonment on the charge of leading a terrorist organization – though the verdict was subsequently rescinded.156 Yellin-Mor had been prosecuted under the Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance of 1948, brought in expressly to allow the state to act against the Irgun and Lehi, eliminating their existence as separate paramilitaries within the new state.157 One man’s terrorist was resolutely not another man’s freedom fighter to the Israeli public. The Israeli electorate, heeding the left’s warning 152 Yitzhak Shamir, ‘Shamir on Terrorism,’ Hehazit, Summer 1943. 153 Shamir, Summing Up, pp. 31. 154 See: Geula Cohen, Voice of Valor: Geula Cohen’s Fight for Zion (Tel Aviv: Yair publishers, 1990), pp. 6; Emmanuel Katz, Lechi – Fighters for the Freedom of Israel (F.F.I) (Tel Aviv: Yair publishers, 1987), pp. 28. 155 Katz, Lechi – Fighters for the Freedom of Israel, pp. 28, 54. 156 Heller, The Stern Gang pp. 256, 265-267. 157 Yvonne Karimi-Schmidt, “Foundations of Civil and Political Rights in Israel and the Occupied Territories,” (Doctoral Dissertation, University of Vienna, 2001), pp. 254. 69 that Begin and the members of Lehi were dangerous, largely rejected the parties that represented the ideological legacies of the Irgun and Lehi. The Israeli public, just like the British public, the UK intelligence services, and members of Parliament, were able to recognize the actions of the Irgun and Lehi for what they were. From kidnappings to assassinations, from the bombing of buildings to shooting at British personnel, the actions of the Irgun and Lehi looked, smelled, and killed just like terrorism. Hardly surprising then that their actions should be perceived and ultimately labelled thus. Rather than re-ploughing the same barren academic disputes about the nature of terrorism, this chapter has sought to offer a different outlook by moving from a definition focussed analysis to one focussing on the question of the genealogy of the concept of terrorism. In doing so, it has avoided falling into the inevitable quagmire of definitional pedantism – arguing over every aspect of the Irgun and Lehi’s tactics, methods, and actions. Instead, what has emerged is a demonstration that the Jewish Underground drew upon ideas from previous groups who were widely understood to be adherents of terrorism, and that British society thus recognized both the Irgun and Lehi as engaged in terrorism, largely as a result of these similarities. To return to our opening point and to misquote another Israeli Premier, himself an heir to the ideological legacies of Begin and Shamir: ‘if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then what is it? That’s right, it’s a duck – but this duck is a [terrorist] duck.’158 We can now say with some clarity that the actions of the Irgun and Lehi were inspired by those of other groups who used similar terrorist tactics, and that their nature as perpetrators of terrorism was widely recognized by the British. The question that now must be asked is how far these acts of terror impacted the British decision to abandon their role in Palestine. 158 Benyamin Netanyahu’s “AIPAC Address” (recorded 6th March 2012, uploaded 7th March 2012): https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahus-speech-at-aipac-full-text/ (15th January 2023). 70 However, before this it is useful to reappraise the exact role Palestine played within the British Empire and its global reach. After all, the British decision to retreat from Palestine is all the more surprising when one considers the crucial role the territory was perceived to have by successive British Governments and the military. Chapter 2 - The Role of Palestine in British Imperial Thought From the 1850s onwards, Palestine came to figure increasingly prominently in discussions about British Imperial strategy. Over the years, many scholars have sought to explain this interest in Palestine from the 19th century onwards, and later ‘support’ for Zionism, through the prisms of messianic thought and philo-Semitism, whilst downplaying the question of imperial strategy.1 This approach assumes that messianism and imperial strategy were two separate motives. Yet evangelical restorationist zeal blended with, and was in time superimposed onto, and overtaken by, a purely pragmatic imperial politics which saw Palestine’s geographical position as offering crucial strategic advantages for Britain. Whilst many evangelicals argued for restoring the Jews to Palestine, from the mid-19th century this rhetoric was often accompanied by arguments regarding the protection of India and transport routes from foreign aggressors. Palestine was never viewed purely in isolation, but in relation to Britain’s need to protect other parts of the Empire (such as India, Egypt, and Iraq) from encroachment by foreign adversaries. This chapter seeks to recalibrate our understanding of the British relationship to Palestine between the mid-1800s and the termination of the Mandate in 1948, and demonstrate that, up until the final termination of the Mandate, policy makers were earnestly making the argument that control of Palestine was vital for securing British interests abroad. After offering an overview of policy makers views on the strategic significance of Palestine through the period, this chapter will delve particularly into the perceived importance of the country in the eyes of the Attlee ministry. Despite the pressures of terrorism, political unrest, American interference, 1 See, David Gange and Michael Ledger-Lomas, Cities of God: The Bible and Archaeology in Nineteenth-century Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). 72 and financial difficulties, Palestine was still regarded by many as an essential British base, whose retention was deemed necessary by the need to safeguard the Empire (and the West more generally), as late as 1947. Many scholars of the Mandate have asserted that the strategic significance of Palestine was minimal, especially after the decision to grant independence to India. However, as this chapter shall demonstrate, this is patently untrue. After all, if a means of securing British control of Palestine had been sought for so long and seen as so vital, what would push the British to abandon the territory at just the moment where it perhaps felt most under threat from benign foreign interference to its colonial empire? Instead, this chapter will demonstrate the importance attached to Palestine by politicians, civil servants, and the military. 1850 – 1914: Blending Messianism with Strategy The ‘re-establishment of the Jewish Nation in Palestine as a protected state under the guardianship of Great Britain’ would ‘place us in a commanding position from whence to check the progress of encroachment, to over-awe open enemies, and if necessary, to repel their advance, at the same time that it would place the management of our steam communication entirely in our own hands’ wrote Edward L. Mitford, a colonial officer, in 1845.2 He was not alone in his thinking. A plethora of books and pamphlets published in the mid-19th century began to argue that the Jews would make the perfect vanguard for British imperialism and stressed the importance of Palestine to Britain’s empire and to Imperial security. Indeed, this was far from a fringe view, and many proponents of this idea (including Mitford) were civil servants or public figures. 2 Edward L. Mitford, An Appeal on behalf of the Jewish Nation in connection with British policy in the Levant (London: J. Hatchard and Son, 1845), pp. 26. 73 What exactly triggered this wave of literature advocating for a Jewish inhabited imperial Palestine? Certainly, there are overtones of messianism to the idea. After all, if there were not, why stress the settling of Jews in particular in Palestine? Devoted to restorationist ideas, proto-Zionists in England (most famously represented in the figure of Lord Ashley Cooper, the Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury) had been lobbying the British Government to facilitate the ‘return’ of Jews to Palestine since the 1830s.3 However, alongside this messianic impulse was a genuine belief that this policy was vital to the safeguarding of British imperial interests. Even Shaftesbury, often held up as a millennialist Christian par excellence whose interest in Palestine and the Jewish people was purely eschatological, saw Palestine as more than merely a playground for his apocalyptic world view. Linking a Jewish ‘return’ to British trade interests in the region, Shaftesbury hypothesised that whilst Jews would ‘become once more the husbandmen of Judaea and Galilee,’ the use of the land could be moulded to British needs, since ‘the soil and climate of Palestine are singularly adapted to the growth of produce required for the exigencies of Great Britain; the finest cotton may be obtained in almost unlimited abundance; silk and madder are the staple of the country, and olive oil is now, as it ever was, the very fatness of the land.’4 The importance of controlling Palestine was further elevated from the late 1940s onwards by the Crimean War, the Indian Mutiny, and the building of the Suez Canal, all of which showed in very different ways, the benefits that controlling Palestine could grant Britain.5 Starting as a dispute over Russian expansionism and access to Jerusalem, the Crimean War quickly spiralled into a wider conflagration following the rout of the Turkish fleet at 3 Yaakov Ariel, “An Unexpected Alliance: Christian Zionism and Its Historical Significance,” Modern Judaism, 26/1 (Feb.2006), pp. 74 4 Quoted in Nur Masala, The Bible and Zionism: Invented Traditions, Archaeology and Post-colonialism in Palestine-Israel (London: Zed Books, 2007), pp. 95. 5 Gary Martin Levine, The Merchant of Modernism: The Economic Jew in Anglo-American Literature, 1864-1939 (London: Routledge, 2003), pp. 47-8; Lorenzo Kamel, Imperial Perceptions of Palestine: British Influence and Power in Late Ottoman Times (London: I. B. Tauris, 2015), pp. 21-25. 74 Sinope in 1853. Before the 1850s, the thought of Protestant England siding with a Muslim Empire against a Christian power would have been nearly unthinkable. But once the Russian fleet became an unchecked naval power in the Mediterranean, Britain, France, and the Ottoman Empire found themselves in common cause against the Russian Empire. For Britain, sitting on the side-lines was not an option. After all, ‘Britain had an empire stretching round the world. One of its most valued territories was India. If any country threatened the line of communication through the east, that country must be checked,’ as the historian Philip Warner has summed up the matter.6 No sooner was the conflict over, with British politicians attempting to soothe a public at home with whom the ‘notoriously incompetent international butchery’ had proved deeply unpopular, than a new conflict, even more directly tied to British control of India, emerged to disturb the longed-for breath of peace, and demonstrate why British needed to retain a bridgehead in the Levant.7 This time Indian Sepoy troops had rioted, turning on their officers and any other British troops they came across. Although 130 times lower than the eventual Indian death toll, the loss of 6000 British troops and civilians during the Indian Mutiny of 1857-1858 was a huge shock in Britain.8 The rebels had seized the initiative, rapidly capturing virtually the whole of northern India, with the exception of the Punjab. Britain was put on the defensive, and it was not until reinforcements could be sent (from other Asian colonies as well as those embarking from Britain), that the tide was turned.9 British politicians were deeply concerned at the length of time it would take the troops embarking from Britain to reach India. In a commons debate in July 1857, Tory politician Admiral Charles Philip Yorke, the 4th Earl of Hardwicke, urged the Government to enlist the ‘assistance of the Pasha of Egypt’ as part of 6 Philip Warner, The Crimean War: A Reappraisal (New York: Toplinger Publishing Company, 1972), pp. 5. 7 Alexis Troubetzkoy, A Brief History of the Crimean War (London: Robinson, 2006), pp. 208. 8 Douglas M. Peers, India under Colonial Rule: 1700-1885 (London: Routledge, 2013), pp. 64. 9 Sanjay Yadav, “The Indian Mutiny of 1857: Why Britain Succeeded and the Rebels Failed,” Journal of Asian History 28/2 (1994), pp. 141. 75 British efforts ‘to convey them [British troops] across to the Red Sea as rapidly as possible.’10 Access to the Mediterranean ports of the Middle East was vital to the defence of India, but Britain was reliant on the goodwill and cooperation of Mohamed Sa'id Pasha, a situation that many wished to rectify by gaining a foothold in Palestine, as we shall see. It is in the context of these European power struggles and imperial security concerns that tracts such as and Edward L. Mitford’s Appeal on Behalf of the Jewish Nation in Connection with British Policy in the Levant (1845), and Thomas Clarke’s India and Palestine: or, The Restoration of the Jews, Viewed in Relation to the Nearest Route to India (1861) were published. Mitford and Clarke were not alone. A number of prominent statesmen, military leaders, and adventurers, such as Colonel George Gawler, Cecil Rhodes, and Lawrence Oliphant, stressed the need to control Palestine in some manner in order to secure Britain’s Imperial interests in the East. If Britain were to protect its empire and trading routes from foreign and internal threats, (threats Britain had felt all too keenly in the late 1840s and 1850s) then Palestine was an excellent base, it was argued, from which to do so. As Thomas Clarke reasoned, moving beyond pure restorationist thought (‘In these speculations we have no respect to prophecy’) towards a more strategic conception of Palestine, ‘If England, again, is, […] relying upon its commerce as the cornerstone of its greatness, if one of the nearest and best channels of that commerce is across the axis of the three great continents; and if the Jews are essentially a trading […] people, what so natural as that they should be planted along that great highway of ancient traffic?’11 In locating in Palestine ‘the nearest and best channels’ of movement, Clarke was in many ways repeating the arguments of Colonel George Gawler, who had asserted in a 1849 article that Britain ‘most urgently needs the shortest and safest lines of communication to 10 [Hansard] Parliamentary Debates, House of Lords, 29th June 1857, vol. 146, cols. 523-524. 11 Thomas Clarke, The Church of England Magazine, vol.1 (London,1861), pp. 19; Nahum Sokolow, History of Zionism: vol.1 (London: Longmans, 1919), pp. 139. 76 the territories already possessed,’ since foreign hostile powers ‘would soon endanger British trade’.12 Thus the ‘restoration’ of Jews in Palestine became a tool for facilitating the smooth and effective passage of British ships carrying goods and troops along trade routes. Clarke however, unlike Gawler, had further reason to push for British Imperial control of Palestine. In 1858 the Suez Canal Company had been formed by the French diplomat Ferdinand de Lesseps. The canal route offered a quicker and cheaper means for British ships to reach the country’s imperial possessions in Asia, rather than the costly and lengthy circumnavigation of Africa. This was made even more of an imperative by the rapid development of steam ships in the 1840s powered by coal – a bulky fuel which needed to be frequently replenished at a large number of ports and docks along the way.13 The threat, however, was that with French money and influence at a momentary zenith in Egypt (thanks to French controlling interests in the Suez Canal Company), the Ottoman territory could become, as one 1869 Foreign Office report fretted, ‘a dependency of France’ from where ‘French troops could easily be thrown into Egyptian forts’.14 Recognizing the importance of protecting the Canal (and thus British imperial routes), the Government took action to secure a British grasp of the Suez Canal Company in 1875 when, through a hastily arranged loan from Baron Lionel de Rothschild, Benjamin Disraeli acquired Egypt’s khedive Isma’il Pasha’s shares in the Suez Canal. It was an astute move given that five-sevenths of the British Empire would lie to the east of the canal half a decade later.15 The importance of the land bordering the canal which separated British Mediterranean routes from those through the Red Sea and onwards to Aden and ultimately India had thus rapidly increased, making 12 George Gawler, The Scottish Christian Journal, vol.1 (Edinburgh, 1853), pp. 217. 13 Or Barak, Powering Empire: How Coal Made the Middle East and Sparked Global Carbonization (Oakland, California, 2020), pp. 4. 14 Edward Hertslet, ‘Report by Edward Hertslet,’ 29th June 1869, TNA, FO 78/2170. 15 Kamel, Imperial Perceptions of Palestine, pp. 23. 77 Palestine of vital strategic significance to Britain in the case of any threat to its empire or to the Canal itself. Having a Jewish colony under British auspices, on the route to Britain’s empire in the east – and from the late 1850s just next door to the Suez Canal – from where goods and troops could be swiftly dispatched to India, or to protect the canal itself, was a compelling idea. Little wonder then that so many pamphlets and books were written on the topic from the mid-19th century onwards. Religious undertones in many of these works remained in their conceptualization of a Jewish ‘return’ to Palestine, but ultimately the strategic relevance of a friendly Palestine overshadowed the messianic element of these plans. This strategic significance would remain in the forefront of many policy makers’ thoughts when thinking about Palestine for the next century. With the American Civil War (during which Palestinian cotton briefly reached the peak of its value to world markets), an increasing British presence in Egypt, and the continuing development of world trade, the logic of British control of Palestine continued to grow.16 The First World War and the Balfour Declaration: Ethnic Propaganda The author, journalist, and Zionist leader Nahum Sokolow was not a popular man in London in the years immediately before the First World War. After he obtained an appointment at the Foreign Office in 1913, an official begrudgingly acknowledged that ‘somebody could see him if he calls, but the less we have to do with the Zionists the better.’17 After all, Britain had no desire to upset its Ottoman Turkish ally, especially at such a delicate time. Sokolow’s continued persistence at obtaining a second meeting greatly annoyed haughty 16 Alexander Scholch “The Economic Development of Palestine, 1856-1882,” Journal of Palestine Studies 10/3 (Spring, 1981), pp. 44. 17 Quoted in, Jonathan Schneer, The Balfour Declaration: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (London: Bloomsbury, 2010), pp. 108. 78 Foreign Office officials who seem to have thought that this provincial, Polish Jew should know his place and cease bothering them. ‘It is not really necessary that anyone’s time should be wasted in this way,’ moaned another Foreign Office mandarin ‘but as M. Sokolow has been received before I suppose we might tell him that we shall be happy to see him again. I strongly object, however, to being myself the victim.’ Luckily the responsible official had the perfect excuse to put off such a visit: ‘we can safely reply that no useful purpose would be served by a verbal statement but that if he will submit a report in writing it will receive careful consideration.’18 Just weeks later Europe was in turmoil with nations tearing each other apart. With Turkey aligning itself with Britain’s enemies, it was no longer necessary to keep Zionism at arm’s length. Zionist figures were quick to capitalize from this reversal of fortune and, with the ascent of David Lloyd-George to the premiership, found that they were knocking at an open door. British policy makers were engaged, as James Renton has convincingly argued, in a ‘bidding war’ for ethnic groups’ support in the war, with the British Government and the policy-making elite understanding ‘nationalism as the means of capturing the perceived power of ethnic groups.’19 At the same time, the Jewish claim to Palestine was ‘manifestly filtered through the cultural code of the Old Testament,’ which reinforced policy makers’ ethnic nationalist thinking and predisposed them to accept the Zionist claim to Palestine.20 Many pots of ink have been spent and even more well written academic punches thrown in arguing about the motives behind the Balfour Declaration’s promise of a ‘Jewish national home’, and it is not my intention to get bogged down in such an imbroglio. The (at times bad-tempered) debate is hardly surprising given the array of vastly differently motivated 18 Quoted in, Schneer, The Balfour Declaration, pp. 110. 19 James Renton, The Zionist Masquerade: The Birth of the Anglo-Zionist Alliance 1914-1918 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 5,43. 20 Renton, The Zionist Masquerade, pp. 21. 79 characters involved in the tale (i.e., Chaim Weizmann, Lloyd-George, Mark Sykes, Arthur Balfour, etc.) and their recollections and justifications, which shifted and changed in the years that followed. However, contemporary sources do seem to give credence to Renton’s thesis that the Balfour Declaration was driven by a strong desire to capture the support of ‘world-Jewry’ for the war – which figures such as Weizmann, Ze’ev Jabotinsky and others assured them was firmly behind Zionism.21 As Balfour concluded on 31st October 1917, ‘everyone was now agreed that, from a purely diplomatic and political point of view, it was desirable that some declaration favourable to the aspirations of the Jewish nationalists should now be made. The vast majority of Jews in Russia and America, as, indeed, all over the world, now appeared to be favourable to Zionism. If we could make a declaration favourable to such an ideal, we should be able to carry on extremely useful propaganda both in Russia and America.’22 However, Renton’s claim that the ‘decision to issue the Balfour Declaration was not therefore driven by British strategic interests in the Ottoman Empire’ does not stand up to scrutiny.23 In the years prior to the First World War, the British General Staff had commissioned the reconnoitring of the Sinai Peninsula with the aim of drawing together a strategy for the defence of the Canal should it become necessary. With this information, the Committee of Imperial Defence (CID) had concluded that the best way to counter any threat to the Canal from the north would be to land four divisions at Haifa.24 As Renton himself admits, securing Palestine as a protective base from which to defend Egypt (an argument now well familiar to us from the Victorian era) was one of the territorial desideratum laid out by the Committee of the Imperial War Cabinet in 1917 and which Lloyd George was fixed upon 21 See, Schneer, The Balfour Declaration, pp. 165-178,192-208. 22 ‘War Cabinet Minutes, 261,’ 31 Oct. 1917, TNA, CAB 23/4 23 Renton, The Zionist Masquerade, pp. 5. 24 Michael J. Cohen, Britain’s Moment in Palestine: Retrospect and Perspectives (London: Routledge, 2014), pp. 43. 80 securing.25 Fearing German post-war ambitions in the Near East, the committee recommended Palestine be secured as a base from which to defend British interests. It is in this context that British ‘support’ for Zionism must be considered. Offering a vague promise of a ‘Jewish national home’ in Palestine after the war was both a part of Britain’s ethnic propaganda and a way to bring Palestine, finally, into the orbit of Britain through a friendly Jewish presence in the country. Zionist and British strategic aims had converged, facilitating, ultimately, the issuing of the Balfour Declaration. This was made clear in the comments of William Ormsby-Gore (at that time parliamentary private secretary to Lord Milner and an assistant secretary in the War Cabinet) who, speaking about propaganda aimed at Jews around the world stated that Jews ‘may play in the future – as they have often played in the past – a big part in guiding the course of human history and we should leave no stone unturned to encourage those elements [i.e., Zionist elements] which wish to guide it aright and in accordance with our ideas and our interests.’26 Zionism was seen as a useful tool for the advancement of the strategic interests of the British Empire. In 1902, talking about Zionist ambitions, Theodor Herzl had written ‘If you will it, it is no dream.’ The phrase was just as apt, perhaps even more so, for Britain in 1918 as it was for the nascent Zionist movement. After over 60 years of longing to get a foothold in the country, Britain had finally achieved this by October 1918 with the Ottoman capitulation to General Allenby’s troops. The dream had become a reality. 25 ‘Minutes of the Third Meeting of the Sub-Committee of the Imperial War Cabinet on Territorial Desiderata in the Terms of Peace', 19th April 1917, TNA, CAB 21/77; ‘Report of Committee on Terms of Peace (Territorial Desiderata)', 28th April 1917, TNA, CAB 21/77. 26 ‘Note from Ormsby-Gore to Nicolson,’ 12th September 1918, TNA, FO 371/3409. 81 The Interwar Years: ‘The Clapham Junction of the Middle East.’ In many ways, though based upon pre-existing ideas and ideals regarding Palestine and Jews, British policy towards Zionism during the First World War was the product of wartime expediency. British policymakers believed they needed the ethnic groups’ support in the war, including the Jews. In a way, it almost seems inevitable that Britain found itself ‘backing’ the Zionist project in the event of an all-out war. Yet, on several occasions after 1917, political and strategic expediency meant that Britain offered to leave Palestine nominally in the hands of the Turks in return for their exit from the war.27 About a week after the issuing of the Balfour Declaration, Lloyd George was discussing a separate peace with Turkey which would see the Turkish flag continue to fly over Palestine with the country run on ‘Egyptian lines’ (i.e., Britain running a thinly veiled protectorate in the country).28 Of course, this plan never materialized, but it is a demonstration of just how far expediency dictated British policy to the Zionists in relation to Palestine during the war. In the aftermath of the war, Britain finally found itself in possession of Palestine. Now expediency had to be replaced by a concrete plan for incorporating the territory into Britain’s wider imperial strategy and for a delicate handling of Arab nationalist and Zionist feelings. Whilst the subsequent three decades would show that Britain was not equipped for the latter, it fared much better in co-opting Palestine as a useful imperial base. During the course of the Mandate, Palestine became increasingly significant for a variety of reasons – some of which had already been foreseen in 1918, and some of which had not. It is important again to see Palestine within the context of wider Imperial and world developments, with Palestine’s significance waxing and waning depending on events elsewhere. But overall, the country was increasingly perceived as a strategic asset in the wake of the First 27 Schneer, The Balfour Declaration, pp.347-360. 28 Note from Zaharoff to Caillard,’ December 7th 1917, NA, FO 1093/52. 82 World War and was cemented into a wider imperial network, stretching across the Mediterranean, Middle East, and out into the Far East. In his 1928 book, The Seventh Dominion, Josiah Wedgwood argued (in a polemic laced with the vocabulary of Protestant support for Zionism) for Palestine’s inclusion into the Commonwealth, describing how those ‘who do settle in Palestine are likely to be of real political and commercial service to the Empire, for Palestine is the Clapham Junction of the Commonwealth.’29 Although the scheme itself never took off, the sentiment of Palestine and Zionism as being ‘of real political and commercial service to the Empire’ was one that transcended Protestant views of the territory – and which, as we have already seen, was evident in Victorian attitudes towards Palestine.30 After 1918, the consensus in British politics was that the age of Imperial expansion had come to an end, and further territorial gains were seen as threatening to weaken Britain. After all, when one third of government expenditure was being spent on servicing the war debt, how could Britain afford to take on more colonies?31 However, Palestine was in the eyes of many British policymakers the exception to this. The deeply antisemitic idea of the Jews as a race of money lenders, financial movers and ‘political wire pullers’ (in the words of Ormsby-Gore) meant that Zionism appeared as a useful way to run Palestine ‘on the cheap’, and without the need to vex the British taxpayer with increased taxation.32 Zionist money would, it was supposed, bankroll British interests in the country whilst also facilitating the running of their own community affairs, and indirectly benefiting the Arab population.33 This was Britain’s preferred method of informal rule, reverting to ‘the inflexible and expensive method of direct colonial rule’ only as a final resort.34 29 Josiah Wedgewood, The Seventh Dominion (London: Labour Publishing Company, 1928), pp. 3. 30 Wedgewood, The Seventh Dominion, pp. 3. 31 Cohen, Britain’s Moment in Palestine, pp. 61. 32 Renton, The Zionist Masquerade, pp. 25; Cohen, Britain’s Moment in Palestine, pp. 42. 33 Cohen, Britain’s Moment in Palestine, pp. 42. 34 John Darwin, Britain and Decolonisation: The Retreat From Empire in the Post-War World (London: Macmillan, 1988), pp. 7. 83 The financial issue seemingly solved, the question was thus not how Britain could achieve greater power, but what to do with the power it had so evidently acquired. In Palestine, Britain quickly put its newfound rule over the country to use, focussing its energy on the protection of its interests from its new base. These were numerous in the interwar years. The long argued for role as a defensive base for Suez was given added potency following the 1936 Anglo-Egyptian treaty. With the British garrison in Egypt limited to 10,000 men, Palestine became an important defensive hinterland from which troops could be deployed in the event of an emergency.35 The construction of oil pipelines in Iraq in the 1930s which were directed towards new refineries at Haifa also increased the value of Palestine. Palestinian docks were the strategic link between the Imperial metropole and oil rich territories such as Mosul. From Palestine, oil could be refined and shipped around the world. The Colonial Office stressed that the production of oil in Iraq would require ‘our retention of Palestine’ or at a minimum, ‘a friendly Palestine’.36 The General Staff was in agreement, particularly the navy, who, with an oil-burning fleet, understood perfectly well the key role of Haifa’s refineries and ports in securing imperial safety.37 As well as the sea route through Suez and the cultivation of Palestinian ports, the development of modern aviation meant that Palestine, at the junction of Europe, Asia, and Africa became a vital station in aerial communications.38 As Josiah Wedgewood neatly summarized it, ‘The air routes, as well as the ocean routes, east and west, and south and north, cross here, where one flank rests on the Suez Canal and the other on the port of Haifa, the 35 Michael J. Cohen, “The Egypt-Palestine Nexus, 1935-1939”, in Bar-Ilan Studies in History, vol.3, ed. Michael J. Cohen (Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1991), pp. 67-79. 36 ‘Strategic importance of Haifa,’ 1926, NA, CO 537/869. 37 ‘Strategic importance of Haifa,’ 1926, NA, CO 537/869. 38 Cohen, Britain’s Moment in Palestine, pp. 45. 84 natural trade based of Mesopotamia. With pipeline and railway debauching at Haifa under Carmel, the British fleet can look after the Near East in comfort and safety.’39 The debate on Palestine’s role as a locus of shipping and air route intersections had started in the early 1920s, but it was left to Sir Samuel Hoare, the Secretary of State for Air, to lay the argument out clearly to all in the 1930s, remarking that ‘it was not merely the defence of the Canal, but the broad air strategy of the Empire which requires the retention of Palestine.’40 Palestine was part of a wider Middle Eastern aerial artery which connected west and east by plane, linking a disparate and sprawling empire. Major A. E. W. Salt summed the issue up succinctly in his 1930 book on imperial air routes. British control of Palestine meant that flight paths could be planned over ‘continuous all-red territory from Egypt, through Palestine, Trans-Jordania and Iraq, to continue over British territory to Victoria Point, in the extreme south of Burma.’41 By detouring around Siam, British craft could reach Singapore and relay on towards Australia.42 A plethora of ground installations, aerodromes, fuel supplies, centres for collecting meteorological data, and wireless communication centres scattered along the route – including in Palestine – aided the process.43 Quoting Wing-Commander Sir Norman Leslie, Salt concludes by noting that ‘it is air power that enables the British Empire of to-day to meet its enhanced commitments, to police its vast and varied possessions, to keep watch over its peoples and ward over its frontiers.’44 Palestine was at the mouth of these flight routes, and an important link in the chain which led to, and allowed for the defence of, the empire in the east. 39 Wedgewood, The Seventh Dominion, pp. 3. 40 ‘35th meeting of the CID,’ 12th July 1923, TNA, CO 537/869. 41 Alexander Edward Wrottesley Salt, Imperial Air Routes (London: J. Murray, 1930), pp. 251. 42 Ibid., pp. 251. 43 Robert S. G. Fletcher, British Imperialism and ‘the Tribal Question’ (Oxford Historical Monographs. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 72. 44 Salt, Imperial Air Routes, pp. 252. 85 Land routes were also of great significance. The Nairn Transport Company convoys which began to operate in October 1923 were a cheaper (and sometimes quicker) alternative to air and sea routes, especially when it came to moving post around the Middle East.45 Although the main route stretched from Damascus to Baghdad, the convoys were seen as so successful that they precipitated significant interest in road building in the Middle East by the Government and by other private firms. 1928 saw the development of an all-weather road to Palestine in the face of Egyptian government opposition.46 Major E.W. Polson Newman, deeply interested in the Mediterranean and Middle East, writing in 1927, linked land routes directly to imperial defence by pointing out that ‘reinforcements can be rapidly dispatched to Mesopotamia by motor transport from Mediterranean ports’.47 Thus Palestine was cemented into a wider network of territories and nations via both air and land routes. When it came to sea, air, or land, Palestine was deeply tied to British control of Imperial routes. Whether it was a site for shipping oil North to Britain, a staging post for troops needed to protect the Suez Canal to the West, or a point of departure for troops or goods heading East by sea or land to Iraq, India, or another part of the empire, Palestine was a pivotal cog in the imperial engine. Despite the narrative around ‘oil imperialism’ in the Middle East, it is worth noting that it was routes of communication that were the main essence of British interests in the interwar years.48 Speaking of these routes as a Mediterranean-Indian corridor, Major Polson Newman stressed the fact that it was ‘incumbent on Great Britain to consolidate this “corridor” by every means in her power’ in order to protect these lines of communication.49 As the nexus of air, sea, and land routes, Palestine and its hinterlands were indispensable to 45 Fletcher, British Imperialism and ‘the Tribal Question,’ pp. 75. 46 Ibid., pp. 75. 47 E. W. Polson Newman, "Palestine, Syria and Transjordan: Their Political and Strategic Significance," Journal of the Royal United Service Institution 72/488 (1927), pp. 858-859. 48 Fletcher, British Imperialism and ‘the Tribal Question,’ pp. 79. 49 Polson Newman, "Palestine, Syria and Transjordan: Their Political and Strategic Significance," pp. 854. 86 securing these British interests. Although Josiah Wedgewood was never able to realise his vision of Palestine as the Seventh Dominion, as he had set out in 1928, he was certainly right to compare the country the ‘Clapham Junction’ as the intersection of so many routes and lines of communication. As, however, with any political matter, not everybody was convinced of the strategic benefits laid out above. Yet even where they weren’t convinced of these points, they normally ceded one important strategic benefit of Britain being in Palestine - namely preventing any other nation from gaining the territory. This was the case in a July 1923 meeting of the Cabinet sub-committee on Palestine, when Hoare’s defence of Palestine’s strategic importance was disputed by some within the General Staff (although not the Naval Staff, who – as mentioned – fully understood the necessity of controlling the flow of oil from Haifa’s refineries). The task of the committee, set up by Stanley Baldwin upon his ascendancy of the premiership, was ‘to examine Palestine policy afresh and to advise the full Cabinet whether Britain should remain in Palestine’.50 After listening to different views, including that of the General Staff and Hoare, the committee concluded that ‘although the strategic value of Palestine is rated by the Imperial General Staff less highly than it has been placed by some authorities, yet none of us can contemplate with equanimity the installation in Palestine of another power.’51 Thus the military, though at this point downplaying Palestine’s strategic importance to Suez or as an aerial communications hub, accepted that it would be a strategic mistake to leave Palestine and see another power fill the vacuum. 50 ‘Minutes of Cabinet meeting on 23rd June 1923,’ 23rd June 1923, TNA, CAB. 23/46, and T160/44. 51 'Extracts from Conclusion of a Meeting held on Tuesday, 31 July 1923 - Palestine', 31st July 1923, TNA, CO 733/58; see also, Sir John Shuckburgh, 'Notes for the Colonial Secretary,’ 25th June 1923', TNA CO 733/54/21. 87 The Arab Revolt, Appeasement, and the Second World War: Palestine ‘Related to the World Picture’. The Arab Revolt of 1936-1939 drastically changed how Britain related to, and interacted with, the Yishuv and the Arab population of Palestine. In particular, the White Paper of 1939 marked a watershed with Britain essentially shedding its commitments to the ‘Jewish national home’ and declaring that it was, to use the words of a more contemporary bungler of Middle East policy, “mission accomplished” in regard to the Balfour Declaration as far as Britain was concerned.52 The period also saw a number of different schemes proposed for Palestine’s future, including partition and a Palestinian federation, aimed at buying Arab support.53 Although Britain’s relationships with the Yishuv and the Arabs of Palestine changed as a result of the Arab Revolt and the impending war in Europe, strategic concerns continued to play a key part in determining British policy towards the two communities’ concerns and demands. In short, although British policy towards Palestinians (both Jewish and Arab) changed, Britain’s policy towards Palestine did not. Britain continued to cultivate the country as a useful base from which to protect its interests. The Arab Revolt, despite resulting in the crushing defeat of the Revolt itself and the fragmenting of the Palestinian leadership (which arguably it never recovered from) did manage to tie down British troop reserves at a pivotal time in Europe and the Far East.54 The British Empire had become over-extended and under-prepared for conflict, with military capabilities curtailed by years of stagnation in military spending. Writing in 1934, Maurice Hankey, long-term Cabinet Secretary of every Prime Minister between Lloyd George and Chamberlain, had 52 Steven B. Wagner, Statecraft by Stealth: Secret Intelligence and British Rule in Palestine (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2019), pp. 220. 53 Wagner, Statecraft by Stealth, pp. 220-221. 54 Wagner, Statecraft by Stealth, pp. 220. 88 warned that the military ‘can stage Naval Weeks, Tattoos […] and Air Displays, but cannot sustain a major war. We have but a façade of Imperial Defence. The whole structure is unsound.’55 Subsequent events were to prove him right, as well as demonstrating the role Palestine would have when such a war arrived. The Arab Revolt in Palestine was just one of a number of crises and events which concerned the Foreign Office in the late 1930s. Others included German expansionism, Italian aggression in the Mediterranean, the Spanish Civil war, Soviet military purges, and Japanese attempts to intimidate British colonies in East Asia.56 Britain needed to pick its fights carefully. Troops tied down in Palestine could mean a lack of regiments to fight a European war, and a few ships lost in a Mediterranean skirmish could be devastating for Britain’s capability to protect its empire in the Far East against a hostile Japan. At the height of the Munich Crisis the Chiefs of Staff had warned the Government that ‘We regard with grave concern the possibility of the spread of disaffection to other Muslim Countries, involving us in a steadily increasing military commitment in the Middle East […] one which would be a most serious embarrassment to us in the event of war with Germany.’57 The report chimed with the comments of Lacy Bagallay, head of the Middle East office at the Foreign Office, who had warned that if Britain pursued a policy in Palestine unfavourable to the Arab Palestinians then ‘the Arab world will wait, if necessary for years, for the day of revenge upon us and the Jews, which any preoccupation on our part or elsewhere will give them.’58 Under these circumstances, the 1939 White Paper was introduced as an attempt to avert a potentially disastrous rift with the Arab world and avoid having British troops bogged down in the Middle East when they might be needed at home or in Europe. At the same time, 55 ‘Defence Requirements,’ 22nd June 1934, TNA, CAB. 63/49. 56 ‘Notes from 1938,’ 1938, TNA, FO 371/216. 57 ‘Report of the COS,’ 14th September 1938, TNA, CAB 24/278/34. 58 ‘Note by Bagallay,’ 21st March 1938, TNA FO 371/2873. 89 the idea of partition, which met with resistance in the Arab world, was quietly dropped by both the Foreign Office and, eventually, the Colonial Office.59 It was in this context that as early as 1936, Sir Robert Vansittart, at that time Permanent Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, had warned that ‘Palestine, like Egypt, must be related to the world picture.’60 This warning was finally being heeded by those across the political establishment in 1939 with Chamberlain summing up the issue thus: ‘We are now compelled to consider the Palestine problem mainly from the point of view on the international situation […] if we must offend one side, let us offend the Jews rather than the Arabs.’61 The Arab world had been appeased so as to protect British interests in Palestine and avoid further tying down British troops. On the eve of the Second World War, Britain had finally achieved what many thinkers, politicians, and civil servants had strived for since at least the Victorian era. Britain had secured a useful base in Palestine with which to defend its other interests, and which it had been able to develop as a useful nexus of air and sea travel for civilian and military purposes. The trick now was to hold on to this in the event of all-out war. This was no mean feat given the advancements by Italy into the Middle East during the Arab Revolt, a situation much to Britain’s detriment. By 1937, Italian aircraft had a six-to-one superiority over Britain and operated on shorter lines of communication than their British counterparts.62 By comparison, the British air force in the Middle East was a scattered and disparate force - a tool for colonial policing rather than strategic defence.63 The Italian fleet (including submarines) was also a threat. Though widely recognized as inferior to the Royal Navy, the Italian Navy was seen as a danger to both 59 Gabriel Sheffer, "Appeasement and the Problem of Palestine," in International Journal of Middle East Studies 11/3 (1980), pp. 390-392. 60 Robert Vansittart, ‘Vansittart's minute June 1936,’ June 1936, TNA, FO 371/20035. 61 Cohen, Britain’s Moment in Palestine, pp. 301. 62 Cohen, Britain’s Moment in Palestine, pp. 263. 63 Lawrence Pratt, “The Strategic Context: British Policy in the Mediterranean and the Middle East, 1936-1939”, in Uriel Dann, ed., The Great Powers in the Middle East, 1919-1939 (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1988), pp. 14. 90 Mediterranean shipping and to key Royal Navy units which were vital for Imperial defence.64 Britain was particularly vulnerable to this threat in 1938/9 as the Chamberlain Government’s rearmament programme meant nearly one-third of the fleet’s capital ships were taken out of service for refitting, leaving the British Navy more vulnerable that it would otherwise have been.65 Britain, once the Mediterranean power par excellence, was facing a direct threat to its supremacy in a region vital for its trade and defence. The Mediterranean-Suez-Red Sea route was the quickest and cheapest passage to Singapore and the Far East – a matter of significant gravity since Britain could not afford a permanent fleet in that arena.66 With its connections to Egypt, the wider Middle East, and to India and the Far-East via the Haifa-Baghdad road (necessary should shipping routes via Suez become closed to Britain), Palestine was a pivotal part of the British imperial jigsaw put to work defending British interests in this moment of crisis. The defence of Egypt was vital to Britain. The Committee of Imperial Defence summed up the matter in 1937: ‘Whoever controls Egypt can control the Suez Canal; Control of Egypt enables us to cut Italy’s direct communications with her East African Colonies and it is necessary for the security of Alexandria which, in war, would be our main base in the Eastern Mediterranean. The provision of reinforcements for the defence of Egypt, therefore, must have first priority.’67 They received support from two figures often maligned as cowardly appeasers: Leslie Hore-Belisha and Lord Halifax (respectively Secretary of State for War and Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs). Hore-Belisha, understanding the need to protect Egypt and the 64 Richard Hammond, “An enduring influence on imperial defence and grand strategy: British perceptions of the Italian Navy, 1935–1943”, The International History Review 39/5 (2017), pp. 821. 65 Pratt, “The Strategic Context”, pp. 23. 66 Larry Pratt and Donald Cameron Watt, East of Malta, West of Suez: Britain's Mediterranean Crisis, 1936-1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 12. 67 ‘CID, Mediterranean Appreciation, 294th meeting,’ 17th June 1937, TNA, WO 33/1507. 91 Mediterranean passage, advocated to the Cabinet that it was ‘desirable to locate part of the Imperial strategic reserve, as well as its source of supply, east of the Mediterranean passage’ – i.e., in Palestine.68 ‘Securing the vital chord of the British Empire, namely, our communications through the Mediterranean,’ was also on the mind of Halifax, who sought to create a defensive complex of Mediterranean states stretching from Greece and Turkey in the North to Egypt in the South.69 Palestine would inevitably be a part of this chain, providing a ‘reserve area and strategic depth’, not just for Suez and Egypt, but for the entire Middle East.70 In 1938, as the Munich Crisis was reaching its peak, Malcolm MacDonald (who had recently replaced Ormsby-Gore, whom Chamberlain disliked, as Secretary of State for the Colonies)71 warned that ‘If war broke out Great Britain would be fighting for her life, and every other consideration would have to be subordinate to that of winning the war. In order to win the war it would be essential to hold our positions in Egypt and Palestine’.72 The Chiefs of Staff conceded that British forces in Egypt would have to hold the line for up to two months in the event of an attack. Palestine’s ‘reserve area’ of ‘strategic depth’ was to help give British forces in Egypt the support it needed to hold out in the face of an attack. If the Mediterranean could be traversed, then the port at Haifa was a potential naval base (in supplement to the main operations base at Alexandria) from where reinforcements could be landed and, if not, the Baghdad-Haifa road would allow troops to be brought from India. Air force bases at sites such as Ramleh and Aqir would also allow air communication with India to continue. Meanwhile, the outbreak of the war saw Palestine used as a staging ground for British and Commonwealth forces, and the country quickly turned into a huge military depot for the 68 Hore-Belisha, ‘The Organization of the Army for its role in War,’ 10th February 1938, TNA CP 26(38), CAB 24/274. 69 ‘Minutes of Meeting,’ 21st November 1938, TNA, CAB 27/624. 70 Cohen, Britain’s Moment in Palestine, pp.308. 71 Oliver Harvey and John Harvey, The Diplomatic Diaries of Oliver Harvey, 1937-1940 (London: Collins, 1970), pp. 140. 72 Malcolm MacDonald, ‘Internal Matters,’ 10th October 1938, TNA, FO 371/21864 92 army as troops passed through the country on their way to different theatres of war.73 Palestine was playing the same role as it had since at least the end of the First World War – the ‘Clapham Junction’ of communications from where troops, goods, and orders could be dispatched to all corners of the British Empire along the fastest routes, and as the defensive hinterland of the Suez Canal. Over 90 years before the start of the Second World War, Edward L. Mitford had argued that Britain needed a base in Palestine as the most important bulwarks against national enemies,’ whilst at the same time ‘securing our overland communications in our own hands’.74 Mitford could not have foreseen the events that led to the war, or the horrors that Fascism would unleash, but his assessment was just as pertinent in 1939 as it was in 1849. His successors in the military, as well as their contemporaries in the Foreign Office, Colonial Office, and in Government all looked at Palestine in nearly the exact same way. Post-1945: Oil Reserves and the Russian Threat. The war took a huge toll on Britain and her Empire. The financial situation was dire. Britain had lost a quarter of her liquid wealth, was £3.5 billion in debt to lenders within its own sterling area alone, and exports had shrunk to one third of their pre-war size. The merchant fleet – vital for transporting goods – had been reduced by 30% as a result of enemy attacks.75 But this was only a part of Britain’s woes. 73 Tom Segev, One Palestine, Complete (London: Abacus, 2014), pp. 449. 74 Mitford, An Appeal on behalf of the Jewish Nation in connection with British policy in the Levant, pp. 37. 75 Peter Weiler, Ernest Bevin (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993), pp. 148; Derek Leebaert, The World After the War: America confronts the British Superpower, 1945-1957 (London: Oneworld, 2020), pp. 29. 93 ‘Britain, who thinks she saved the world, is mute in the bonds of austerity; Russia, who thinks she saved the world, sits back, enormous, suspicious, watching; and America, who thinks she saved the world, makes one think of a nervous hysterical girl holding a hand grenade, not knowing what to do with it or when it will go off.’76 So summed up the Daily Express journalist Nathaniel Gubbins in 1946. It was pithy, but it was also an erudite summary of the position of the Big Three after the war. The uncomfortable cooperation between the three states rapidly deteriorated in the aftermath of the defeat of Germany as each nation looked to secure what it saw as its interests and the Cold War slowly began to crystalize – the initial phase being ‘not so much a tapestry as a hopelessly ravelled and knotted mess of yarn.’77 In particular, Britain was concerned with Russian intentions, not just in Europe, but in the Middle East and Mediterranean. It was hoped that Palestine would play an important role in both revitalising the British economy and protecting British interests against Russian aggression in the new post-war world. One man in particular would attempt to steer Palestine, and the British Empire more widely, towards these goals. Ernest Bevin, Attlee’s choice for Foreign Secretary in the new Labour Government, was a man to be reckoned with. A hulking, broad, tank of a man, Bevin had been a trade union leader before joining the Coalition Government during the war. The Foreign Office had never seen a man like Bevin before: unpolished, blunt, with a penchant for heavy drinking, and at times uncouth. But although many were doubtful of his abilities, he won most of his detractors around. Alexander Cadogen, the Permanent Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, although initially sceptical of Bevin greeted his appointment in 1945 with pleasure, arguing ‘he knows a great deal, is prepared to read any amount, seems to take in what he does read and is capable of making up his own mind and sticking up for his (or our) point of view 76 Leebaert, The World After the War, pp. 11. 77 Michael R. Gordon, Conflict and Consensus in Labour's Foreign Policy, 1914-1965 (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1969), pp. 108. 94 against anyone.’78 Bevin was also staunchly anti-Communist and deeply suspicious of the intentions of Russia in the aftermath of the war, being perhaps more prepared than most of his colleagues to push back against the Soviet regime (on one occasion at the Paris Peace Conference in 1946, he had to be physically prevented from punching Molotov and his deputy Vyshinsky).79 This attitude – if, perhaps, not the more physical side – was welcomed by the equally anti-Soviet Foreign Office.80 The ‘Great Man Theory’ of history has long since died a death, but it is absolutely necessary to understand Bevin in order to understand the conception of Palestine in British strategic thinking. Bevin’s writs in the Foreign Office and in the Cabinet were often dogma, and he was wont to describe Government foreign policy as ‘my policy.’81 Although this attitude certainly made him unpopular with some in the party, he held the complete confidence of Attlee, a partnership that proved over the years to be successful and fruitful for both men. Bevin stood firmly by Attlee in 1945 and 1947 when forces in the party sought to replace Attlee, and in return Attlee gave Bevin a wide scope in dealing with foreign affairs.82 Together they made a ‘composite figure’ of ‘powerful authority.’83 Bevin, backed by his department and the Chiefs of Staff, would continue to make the strategic argument for retaining Palestine well into 1947. Even when it became clear that Britain’s position in the country was no longer tenable, the Government prepared for several eventualities, in each case focusing primarily on how to best protect British interests in the region. 78 Quoted in: Roderick Barclay, Ernest Bevin and the Foreign Office (Frome and London: Butler & Tanner LTD., 1975), pp. 82. 79 Charles E. Bohlen, Witness to History, 1929-1969 (New York: Norton, 1973), pp. 255. 80 Weiler, Ernest Bevin, pp. 146. 81 Barclay, Ernest Bevin and the Foreign Office, pp. 39. 82 Alan Bullock, Ernest Bevin, Foreign Secretary, 1945-1951 (London: Norton, 1983), pp. 56-57. 83 Michael Foot, Aneurin Bevan: A Biography, Vol. 2, 1945-60 (London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1973), pp. 32. 95 One of the imperatives for the Labour Government was to shore up the economy. This was vital if Labour was going to be able to fulfil its promises to improve the standard of life for the working man and woman. Yet the opening up of international economic systems (set out under the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement), as well as the dislocation of the war, meant Britain had lost about 40% of its export markets, mostly to the US.84 To improve its balance of payments, and make money rather than haemorrhage it, Britain needed to export. One of the key assets Britain held in this regard, was the oil fields of Iraq and the Persian Gulf, with their production and profitability expected to rise dramatically in the post-war years.85 The ‘growing importance of the Middle East to the world oil economy,’ meant that Britain would begin to be able to export stocks (as well as keeping its fleet in readiness) and begin to repair the economy at home. Palestine played a vital role in this. The oil pipelines that stretched from Iraq to the coast of the Levant, as well as the oil refinery at Haifa, were crucial parts of the system which saw oil transported from the Middle East to the UK. The cost of replacing the Haifa refinery alone, Bevin informed the Cabinet, was estimated to be £25 million, never mind the cost such a disruption would cause.86 It was of installations such as these that Bevin was likely thinking when he told the House of Commons in February 1946, just before a debate on Palestine, that if the British Empire collapsed ‘it would mean that the standard of life of our constituents would fall considerably.’87 This was a point Bevin was to continue stressing until nearly the end of his tenure as Foreign Minister, despite the numerous setbacks and disappointments Britain faced in the Middle East in the period.88 84 Weiler, Ernest Bevin, pp. 148. 85 ‘Middle East Oil,’ 3rd January 1947, TNA, CAB 129/16/11. 86 Middle East Oil,’ 3rd January 1947, TNA, CAB 129/16/11. 87 [Hansard] Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, 21st February 1946, Volume 149, Column 1365. 88 ‘The Future of Multilateral International Economic Co-operation,’ 12th September 1949, TNA, CAB 129/36/38. 96 It was not just to his Cabinet colleagues that Bevin stressed the importance of Middle Eastern oil flowing through Haifa, but to the Chiefs of Staff as well. He warned the Defence Committee in early 1947, that without controlling the flow of oil from Palestine, ‘he saw no hope of our being able to achieve the standard of life at which we are aiming in Great Britain.’89 The Chiefs of Staff were behind him on this issue, having argued to Attlee in July 1946 that control of the flow of oil from and around the Middle East was vital for Britain, though they were naturally less focussed on what it meant for the domestic situation.90 Instead, for the Chiefs of Staff, oil was a necessity for fuelling any future war efforts, especially against Russia, which was seen as an entirely realistic prospect.91 In order to do this it was important ‘to maintain our position in Palestine.’92 This was a second, and as can be seen, interrelated issue. Palestine was part of the defence against an increasingly belligerent Russia. It has been argued by eminent historians of the Mandate, such as Motti Golani, that ‘the British Government was prepared to leave places like Palestine and India at this stage but was originally determined to maintain its hold on places that had become more economically and strategically significant, such as the Gold Coast and Malay.’93 Yet Palestine was ‘strategically significant,’ especially when it came to countering Russia. The Soviet menace in Eastern Europe was of great concern to Britain and, although it might seem ludicrous to us now, there was also a genuine fear that communism would spread into Central and Western Europe via Italy, Greece, and France. Soviet expansionism also threatened British hegemony in the Mediterranean and the Middle East through hostile actions 89 ‘Defence Committee, First Meeting,’ 1st January 1947, TNA, CAB 131/5. 90 Bullock, Ernest Bevin, pp. 244. 91 ‘Memorandum by Attlee,’ 5th January 1947, TNA, FO 800/476. 92 ‘Memorandum by Attlee,’ 5th January 1947, TNA FO 800/476. 93 Motti Golani, Palestine between Politics and Terror, 1945–1947 (Waltham: Brandeis University Press, 2013), pp. 7-8. 97 towards Turkey and Iran. The Soviet beast seemed to be spreading in all directions, devouring every nation in its track. Although Bevin was ahead of the curve, general distrust of Russian intentions rose steadily in British circles between 1945 and 1947.94 As Bevin’s biographer Alan Bullock puts it, ‘several generations of Britons had been brought up to regard the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf and the adjoining territories as falling as naturally under British control as the English Channel.’95 But Russia was also keen to gain a footing in the Mediterranean Basin, making plays for control of Tripolitania and Greece, moves which led to Bevin directly accusing Molotov of threatening ‘the lifeline of the British Empire,’ in September 1945.96 To guard against this threat, Bevin aimed to use Palestine as a base for troops which would be withdrawn from Suez in 1947 under a new Anglo-Egyptian treaty (although this plan was scuppered by the report of the Anglo-American Committee and fresh violence in Palestine). Any move to abandon or partition Palestine would, it was generally agreed by the Foreign and War Offices, be deeply damaging for Britain’s hold on Egypt.97 200,000 troops stationed in Egypt at the end of the war would need to be housed in bases close to Suez in the case of another round of conflict.98 Libya to the West and Palestine to the East were the obvious candidates.99 Control of Egypt, Palestine, and Tripolitania was, along with naval supremacy in the Mediterranean itself, ‘the area through which we bring influence to bear on Southern Europe, the soft underbelly of France, Italy, Yugoslavia, Greece and Turkey,’ Bevin had warned his Cabinet colleagues in 1946. Without ‘our physical presence in the Mediterranean,’ Bevin warned, ‘we should cut little ice with these states which would fall, like Eastern Europe, under 94 Bullock, Ernest Bevin, pp. 844-845. 95 Bullock, Ernest Bevin, pp. 34. 96 Quoted in Bullock, Ernest Bevin, pp. 135. 97 Golani, Palestine Between Politics and Terror, pp. 68. 98 Arieh Kochavi, "Indirect Pressure: Moscow and the End of the British Mandate in Palestine," Israel Affairs 10/1-2 (2004), pp. 60. 99 Bullock, Ernest Bevin, pp. 619. 98 the totalitarian yoke.’ Ports such as the ones at Alexandria and Haifa were vital for Britain to project its strength to these states and to the Soviets. In an ominous mood, Bevin warned that, without this influence ‘the Mediterranean countries, from the point of view of commerce and trade, economy and democracy, will be finished.’100 Bevin received little push back from the opposition benches. Towards the end of the period of the war time coalition, Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden had come to many of the same conclusions as Bevin. Laying out his thoughts in a memorandum on the 10th April 1945, Eden noted that ‘British interests in the Middle East are vitally important,’ pointing out that ‘Palestine Policy cannot be considered as an isolated problem. It must be part of the whole policy in the Middle East.’ This policy must safeguard British interests which ‘may be grouped under the headings (1) communications, (2) oil and (3) strategic bases.’ Eden also noted that the post-war world was likely to bring with it many changes and challenges including US and Russian interference in a region in which, hitherto, ‘the British position has been almost unchallenged by the other Great Powers.’ This was to be avoided if at all possible.101 Using Palestine as a base to protect Egypt, the Suez Canal, and Europe and project power was not however a purely defensive measure - there were wider implications for Britain’s offensive capabilities. As early as 1946, the Chiefs of Staff were arguing for the necessity of keeping hold of air bases in the Middle East from which to strike Russia, potentially using nuclear weapons as well as more conventional arms.102 Egypt had been the largest military base in the world at the end of the Second World War, housing the equivalent of 41 divisions and 65 air squadrons.103 In the event of a conflict with the Soviets, Egyptian air bases would again become indispensable staging posts and launch pads for aerial offensives, including by heavy 100 Ernest Bevin, ‘Memorandum by Bevin’ 13th March 1946, TNA, CAB 131/2/DO (46) 40. 101 Anthony Eden, ‘Foreign Secretary Eden’s memo on Palestine,’ 10th April 1945, TNA, CAB 66/64. 102 Philip Murphy, “Britain as a Global Power in the Twentieth Century,” in Britain’s experience of Empire in the Twentieth Century, ed. Andrew Thompson (Oxford: Oxford University press, 2016), pp. 53-54. 103 Cohen, Britain’s Moment in Palestine, pp. 445. 99 bombers which could carry atomic payloads.104 Britain would be crucial in any Allied fight against the Soviet Bloc, with military research and development producing far superior air planes to American ones, and with bases closer at hand in the Middle East from where to launch these aircraft.105 These sorties would fly over clearer skies, opening up a second aerial front from the South whilst Allied planes attacking from the west would likely take the bulk of opposition from Soviet aircraft and anti-aircraft fire.106 Troops would be flooded into Egypt from Palestine to help the offensive, whilst Allied armies would transit through Palestine to the North-West, countering the anticipated Soviet offensive against Egypt. If this failed, Palestine’s coastal plains would serve as a last-ditch defensive position.107 Withdrawal of troops from Egypt under the terms of the Anglo-Egyptian Agreement thus necessitated holding Palestine as a base in the case of war, in which case troops would be allowed to return to Egypt. Palestine was still Egypt’s strategic hinterland (its ‘Siamese twin’ as Cohen puts it) in the post-war period, providing a neighbouring base and a defensive screen.108 After being forced to evacuate Palestine (the cause of which the rest of this thesis shall address), Britain still kept an eye on the manner in which independent Arab or Jewish states in the area that had made up the Mandate could best serve British strategic goals. In August 1947, as Britain was preparing to see which solution the UN would vote for when it came to giving Palestine its independence, the Foreign Office issued guidance to the UK Delegation at the UN laying out the strategic interests that would need to be secured in the case of the immediate independence of Palestine as a unitary state, partition, international trusteeship, or British trusteeship.109 The idea of an international trusteeship was particularly worrying to Britain as it 104 Cohen, Britain’s Moment in Palestine, pp. 445. 105 Leebaert, The World After the War, pp. 114-115. 106 Cohen, Britain’s Moment in Palestine, pp. 445. 107 Michael Joseph Cohen, Fighting World War Three from the Middle East: Allied Contingency Plans, 1945-1954 (London: Cass, 1997), pp. 31, 95-123. 108 Cohen, Britain’s Moment in Palestine, pp. 445. 109 ‘Brief for UK Delegates & General Assembly: Palestine, The Autumn Session of the General Assembly,’ 19th August 1947, TNA, FO 371/61948. 100 would provide ‘a cover in Palestine for the exercise of Russian influence in that area.’110 Several options were suggested for preventing this outcome, including, if necessary, a British veto. The last thing Britain wanted was for their evacuation to lead to a power vacuum filled by the Russians. This would have undermined the efforts of Bevin, the Chiefs of Staff, and the Government since 1945. Even if not likely to be a great success, all other options were viewed as acceptable as long as Britain could secure its strategic interests as set out by the Chiefs of Staff to the delegates. Much like in Egypt these included, ‘retention of full military rights,’ ‘the use of an airfield system’ with a right to station troops at air bases, and ‘sustainable conditions for ensuring the free flow of oil to the Mediterranean terminals.’111 Even when adjusting to the potential loss of Palestine, the British delegation was urged to consider first and foremost the strategic concessions that would need to be gained in each case. Although Palestine was to be lost, the strategic concerns remained the same. It was hoped that friendly co-operation with the new state(s), and perhaps a coercive treaty or two, would secure these interests. Without this security, Britain could not be sure in its ability to defend its position in the Middle East since ‘withdrawal from Palestine would put us in an extremely difficult position unless we have one or more alternative bases in the Middle East to which to move.’112 The report underlined the high importance Britain placed in gaining a trusteeship in Cyrenaica as quickly as possible, this being now the only suitable base into which to fling troops into Egypt should hostilities break out. But a useful base had been lost, without a new one being secured first, making the area ‘unstable and vulnerable to Soviet tactics of penetration.’113 The ability to take offensive aerial action from the Middle East was vital to the 110 ‘Brief for UK Delegates & General Assembly: Palestine, The Autumn Session of the General Assembly,’ 19th August 1947, TNA, FO 371/61948. 111 ‘Brief for UK Delegates & General Assembly: Palestine, The Autumn Session of the General Assembly,’ 19th August 1947, TNA, FO 371/61948. 112 ‘Advance Consideration of the reaction to UNSCOP Report: Palestine,’ 21st August 1947, TNA, FO 371/61948. 113 Bullock, Ernest Bevin, pp. 750. 101 defence of Western Europe, a fact increasingly recognized by officials on both sides of the Atlantic in the post-war years.114 But Egypt’s hinterland to its west was now divorced from it, and shortly to be under the control of the new Israeli Government. Ironically, the claims of Edward L. Mitford in 1845 that the ‘re-establishment of the Jewish Nation in Palestine as a protected state under the guardianship of Great Britain’ would ‘place us in a commanding position from whence to check the progress of encroachment, to over-awe open enemies, and if necessary, to repel their advance,’ had proved by 1948 to be a double-edged sword.115 Although control of Palestine had benefitted Britain strategically between 1917 and 1948, the Yishuv had used that time to grow and develop, ultimately managing to throw off British rule and deprive Britain of a vital Middle Eastern territory. Yet old habits die hard. On a visit to Israel in the Autumn of 1953, the former Secretary of State for War and Minister of Defence under Attlee, Emanuel Shinwell, noted that the new nation ‘straddled the crossroads of the ancient overland trading routes,’ and was now ‘standing between East and West as well as [being] a junction for air, sea, and land trading lines.’116 Hitting upon a not too original thought, Shinwell ‘began to realize the immense value of an alternate base to Suez which could be built upon Israeli territory.’117 A familiar sounding plan indeed. But this time it would serve not just Great Britain’s strategic interests, but those of her allies too. A naval base at Haifa, of ‘infinitely more importance’ since the 1954 agreement to evacuate the Canal Zone, could be ‘closely associated with N.A.T.O. as an insurance against the severance of lifeline between occident and orient.’ Its value, asserted Shinwell, ‘would be incalculable.’118 114. Hector McNeil, ‘Conversation Reported by Hector McNeil with George F. Kennan,’ 11th August 1949, FO 800/477. 115 Mitford, An Appeal on behalf of the Jewish Nation in connection with British policy in the Levant, pp. 26. 116 Emanuel Shinwell, Conflict without Malice (London: Odhams Press, 1955), pp. 226. 117 Shinwell, Conflict without Malice, pp. 230. 118 Shinwell, Conflict without Malice, pp. 230. 102 In advocating for an international confederation Shinwell was following in the footsteps of the Chiefs of Staff, who in 1950 had defined ‘the ideal arrangement in the Middle East,’ as being a ‘regional pact’ which would consist of ‘the UK, the Arab League States, Israel, Turkey Persia and possibly Greece, in which Egypt as a willing partner would provide the base facilities required.’119 It was a complete fantasy, but it reflected a longstanding conceptualization – stretching back to the Victorian era – of the Mediterranean region, including what had formally been the British Mandate for Palestine, as a vital region for the protection of British strategic interests. Conclusion Between the middle of the 19th century and the post-Second World War period, Palestine was seen as a strategically vital piece of the Imperial territorial jigsaw. Control of the territory would help provide safety for British interests in Egypt, the wider Middle East, and the empire in the Far East. The movement of goods and troops through the Mediterranean and Suez Canal would be secured by the control of the Egyptian hinterland (i.e.: Palestine) whilst the discovery of oil in Iraq and Iran in the early years of the 20th century and the development of aerial technology further tied Palestine into a wider network of transportation and communication. Although it was initially the messianic aspect of controlling Palestine that was appealing to some, it was through the strategic arguments that control of Palestine became a widely agreed upon necessity among the British ruling elites. The need to control Palestine, although at times questioned by certain government departments, remained central to British attempt to understand the country and in how it sought to rule – maximising the strategic benefits whilst 119 Quoted in Bullock, Ernest Bevin, pp. 831. 103 attempting to avoid widespread unrest which might imperil these benefits (a task which it failed most extraordinarily in between the years 1936-1939 and 1944-1948). The strategic benefits sometimes changed over time. In the Victorian era, a quicker route to India via the Red Sea or the Suez Canal was a necessity. By 1947 Britain no longer required this, but it still needed to retain a base in the Middle East to protect its interests in the region. But the idea that Palestine could be utilized ‘to over-awe open enemies, and if necessary, to repel their advance,’ was one that remained pertinent throughout the century.120 Whether it was against the Russians, French, Italians, Germans, or finally the Russians again in the post-1945 world, Palestine was seen as a key part of Britain’s defensive line in the Mediterranean and Middle East. This idea was firmly planted in over a century of polemic, debate, and military planning. What then would force the British to leave a territory it had yearned to control for so long? What could force Britain to act against its own perceived best interests, withdrawing from Palestine, whilst scrambling for another appropriate strategic base that could take the territory’s place? As the murder of two sergeants by the Irgun in July 1947 led to a wave of antisemitic violence in Britain and Palestine, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Hugh Dalton, wrote a letter to Attlee on the situation. Lamenting the cost of terrorism in terms of finance and manpower, Dalton concluded that this situation meant that Palestine was ‘of no real value from the strategic point of view – you cannot in any case have a secure base on top of a wasps’ nest.’121 As the rest of this thesis shall explore, it was the acts of the Irgun, Lehi, and at times the Haganah, that helped to speed up the British decision to withdraw from Palestine. This was a huge reversal of British policy which, as shown, had long stressed the importance of Palestine to Britain’s 120 Mitford, An Appeal on behalf of the Jewish Nation in connection with British policy in the Levant, pp. 26. 121 Hugh Dalton, ‘Note from Dalton to Attlee,’ 11th August 1947, TNA, PREM 8/623. 104 defence and security. Yet constant acts of violence against British personnel and property, and Britain’s inability to clamp down on this activity, undermined the justification for Palestine as a strategic base, just as Dalton had argued. Where the Arab Revolt had failed, the Jewish Revolt succeeded. Chapter 3 - ‘An Endless Vista of Unrelieved Bloodshed’: British Personnel React to Terrorism If Palestine was considered to be of such vital geopolitical import for the British, why by 1947 was Britain prepared to give up its Mandate there? The following chapters aim to answer this question by examining the impact of terror upon different actors and processes. In this chapter, the impact of acts of terror upon British personnel - used here to refer to the Palestine Police Force (PPF), military, and British civil administration staff stationed in Palestine – will be considered. The psychological impact upon these personnel was so great that by late 1947 the day-to-day functioning of the Mandate administration was in question. British personnel faced high levels of attrition, and in the febrile atmosphere of late 1940s Palestine, many were psychologically exhausted, if not broken, by the violence they experienced. To make matters worse, the need to protect its personnel led the Palestine Government to withdraw its forces into fortified camps from which it was difficult to properly administer the country. As the cumulative impact of these processes reached a peak, the administration lost control of its soldiers and police force who, feeling increasingly impotent, rioted – their morale having reached a nadir in the face of constant violence which they found difficult to counter. In order to argue that by 1947 the continued adequate functioning of the Mandate administration was a practical impossibility where British personnel were concerned, this chapter adopts a range of methodological approaches from various fields which allow for a better understanding of the impact terrorism had. After a brief discussion of the sources used and laying out the general character and state of British personnel in Palestine by the time of the Revolt, this chapter will turn to the task of describing the sort of violence these personnel witnessed and how it looked, smelt, and sounded. Here, alongside more traditional historical 106 approaches, fields such as ethnomusicology can be surprisingly useful tools in trying to recreate a sense of the past. From the perspective of the social sciences, questions of risk and of fear go hand in hand in understanding how personnel under often daily attack understood their situation and how their fear of potential attacks affected them. Even when not under attack, the threat of violence hung over all British personnel. As will be explored, part of the Irgun and Lehi’s success came from the sense of insecurity their actions fostered. However, whilst concepts such as fear are often discussed by scholars when dealing with the impacts of terrorism, on its own, fear offers a somewhat superficial and abstract understanding of the impact of terrorism. Therefore, after dealing with risk and fear as concepts this chapter will apply the lessons of modern clinical psychology to the archival record to provide more concrete evidence of the sort of impact terror had. As well as the psychological toll, terrorism also affected the ability of the Palestine Government to carry out its obligations. Experienced and highly valued British personnel were lost through both assassination and evacuation as the Governments in Palestine and Britain sought to protect personnel targeted by the Irgun and Lehi. Additionally, greater security precautions enacted to protect British personnel hampered Britain’s efforts to quell the campaign of terror or fulfil basic functions of a Mandatory power. All of these factors fed an increasing anger and frustration at the situation in Palestine among British personnel whose morale was increasingly suffering. By 1947 the administration had lost the faith of its soldiers and police who were increasingly going AWOL in the aftermath of terror attacks or simply deserted. In such a situation the Mandate could no longer properly function. Indeed, in many ways the Mandate ceased to function long before its formal termination in May 1948. 107 Material This chapter relies heavily on two main types of sources: oral histories and memoirs. Neither are without issue. Perhaps the biggest concern for historians in the case of both types of sources is the way in which memory is affected by the passing of time. Most of the oral interviews upon which this paper relies were recorded between 1988 and 2007, many decades after the Mandate had come to an end. At times, those interviewed forget places and names, or worse, seem to misremember things. Although written accounts by British personnel have the luxury of being able to go back and look at archival sources and other material, they can also present distorted images of the past – perhaps even because of their reliance on such supplementary material. Our understanding of memory is still evolving and will likely continue to do so for many more years to come, but psychologists sometimes talk of two processes that affect memory: encoding and retrieval.1 Put simply encoding is the process by which we acquire memories of events we have experienced, whilst retrieval is the process of being able to recall this information after the event. Our ability to encode memories may be impacted by environmental and physical conditions such as visibility or intoxication during encoding.2 Meanwhile the retrieval of information may be affected by the distortion of memory. Sometimes personal memory may be distorted by misinformation acquired through reading or hearing news reports, reading about the event after the fact, or hearing other accounts, so that certain memories may not be reliable.3 There has been some debate on whether memories of 1 For a more detailed description of how these processes work, and how they affect oral histories, see: Daniel Bernstein, Veronika Nourkova, & Elizabeth F. Loftus, “From individual memories to oral history,” In A. M. Columbus (Ed.), Advances in psychology research (New York: Nova Science Publishers, 2008), pp. 157-181. 2 Ibid. pp. 159. 3 Ibid. pp. 171. 108 traumatic or stressful events are encoded in our brains differently, or whether such strains aid or hinder our ability to encode or retrieve such memories, although the debate remains hotly contested with little empirical proof on either side.4 However, contemporary research suggests that memories of traumatic responses are often more vivid and largely accurate as a result of the arousal of our body and the triggering of the release of adrenaline which helps to encode memories. Deeply traumatic memories may equally be partly supressed, though elements of the event (distinct images, sounds, smells, etc.) are often remembered though without the accompanying story of how the event happened.5 Certainly, from a purely anecdotal viewpoint, it would seem that trauma, fear, or stress do not hinder memory recall over half a decade after the memory was originally encoded. Although some information may be forgotten or be impacted by the way other information or memories have bled into one another, personal encounters and specific vignettes on encounters with terror which remain memorable to the speaker have a clarity and depth of detail which suggests authenticity. Indeed, many of these accounts can be corroborated with other interviews and/or archival material. An example of this mismatch of (mis)remembering between the more general and the personal comes in the account given by James Hainge. Giving his recollection of service in the PPF to Eugene Rogan in 2006 he ‘remembers’ Folke Bernadotte, UN negotiator assassinated at gunpoint by the Lehi in 1948, dying in a plane crash.6 It seems quite possible here that Hainge confuses Bernadotte with another Swedish diplomat, the UN Secretary General Dag 4 See: Chris R. Brewin, “Autobiographical memory for trauma: Update on four controversies,” in Memory, 15/3 (2007); Angelica Stanisloiu & Hans J. Markowitz, “Dissociation, Memory and Trauma Narrative,” in Journal of Literary Theory/Zeitschrift für Literaturtheorie 6/1 (2012), Angelica Staniloiu, Andreas Kordon, & Hans J.Markowitsch, “Stress - And Trauma - Related Blockade of Episodic-Autobiographical Memory Processing,” Neuropsychologia 139/1 (2020); Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score, pp. 177-189. 5 Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score, pp. 181-182. 6 Interview with James Hainge conducted by Eugene Rogan, MECA, St Antony’s College, 5 June 2006. James Hainge collection GB165-0402. Transcript, pp. 14. 109 Hammarskjöld, who died in a plane crash on his way to the Congo almost exactly thirteen years later (Bernadotte died on 17th September 1948, Hammarskjöld on the 18th September 1961). Despite this, Hainge’s recollection of an encounter in an orange grove with men he suspected to be terrorists (which is recounted later in this chapter) is delivered with a depth of detail which speaks both to the event’s likely authenticity and its impact upon him. Issues of memory are always going to dog the use or oral histories, but by corroborating accounts against other sources where possible (including using multiple oral histories to corroborate a single event) and eliminating those accounts that are repeatedly unreliable or misleading, oral histories remain a useful source of data. This qualitative, interpretivist approach to oral history allows us to be aware of the issues of validity and reliability that may come with our sources, whilst still recognizing their usefulness in helping us to connect with the experiences of those who were there as felt and remembered by them. As the psychoanalytical scholar Jody M. Davies has written, memory is ‘not an onion, which must be carefully peeled, or an archaeological site to be meticulously unearthed and reconstructed in its original form, but a child’s kaleidoscope in which each glance through the pinhole of a moment in time provides a unique view.’7 These ‘unique views’ form the core of this chapter. The secondary literature is also of great importance here as well. A number of books on the Mandate have focussed on the opinions and experiences of those on the ground to varying degrees. Notably, Tom Segev and A.J. Sherman have approached the Mandate from a bottom-up, social history perspective.8 My approach here is thus indebted to their work as well as that of Shay Hazkani, who has examined the trends and patterns in the letters written by 7 Jody M. Davies, “Dissociation, Repression, and Reality Testing in the Countertransference: False Memory in the Psychoanalytic Treatment of Adult Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse,” Psychoanalytic Dialogues 6/2 (1996), pp. 197. 8 Tom Segev, One Palestine, Complete; A.J. Sherman, Mandate Lives. 110 Israeli troops in the war of 1948.9 Such inverting of the usual top-down, political history approach to Israel and Palestine can, as demonstrated by these authors, uncover surprising and unexpected facets of the history of the Mandate. ‘Tis But A Scratch’: The Complexities of British-English It is also necessary to address the problem of language here. The issue is twofold. On the one hand, there are clearly elements of understatement in many written and oral accounts, whilst on the other hand, some descriptions of violence and its aftermath are extremely graphic. Understatement is a reoccurring, and at times frustrating, feature of many accounts of the period. This is often done through the use of imprecise or hedging language as well as euphemisms which understate the situations. At times these can seem almost blackly comical. For example, one former policeman whose account details multiple terrorist attacks, the death of friends, and reveals grisly details about the state of the Postmaster General’s body after the King David Hotel bombing, describes the situation in Palestine at that time thus: ‘things really were getting pretty hot under the collar, no doubt about that’ and describes how this atmosphere meant that most men in the PPF left Palestine with ‘a certain amount of relief.’10 Another refers to the situation in Jerusalem, regularly in paroxysms of violence during the Revolt, as ‘a bit iffy.’11 This manner of speech is a peculiar aspect of British English which has been studied by both anthropologists and linguistic specialists and is assumed to be embedded within cultural 9 Shay Hazkani, Dear Palestine: A Social History of the 1948 War (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2021). 10 Interview with Joseph Albert Stanislaus Adolph conducted by Conrad Wood, IWM, 26th August 1991, Reel 3, 16:20. 11 Interview with Gerald Green conducted by Eugene Rogan, MECA, St Antony’s College, 9th October 2006 Gerald Green collection GB165-0404, Transcript, pp. 13. 111 values and beliefs.12 As the anthropologist Kate Fox has described, the use of understatement ‘means that a debilitating and painful chronic illness must be described as “a bit of a nuisance”; a truly horrific experience is “well, not exactly what I would have chosen”; a sight of breath-taking beauty is “quite pretty” […] and any exceptionally delightful object, person or event, which in other cultures would warrant streams of superlatives, is pretty much covered by “nice”, or, if we wish to express more ardent approval, “very nice”.’13 The use of understatement is a unique part of the ‘cultural script’ of British English which demonstrates shared ‘tacit rules of linguistic practices.’14 Should the cultural specificity of understatement be in doubt, it is worth noting that many languages do not have an exact equivalent of the word.15 This practice creates ‘conversational implicature,’ where a speaker means more than he says but the reader must understand the cultural script to be able to decipher this.16 Although there are different explanations about why understatement is used in British English – from a cultural prohibition on emotional and gushing language17 to a way of securing further conversational engagement18 - there can be no doubt that it forms a crucial part of the language’s cultural script. The phenomenon may well have started out amongst a certain class in England, but the oral testimonies relied upon here demonstrate the permeating nature of understatement across classes and present amongst the speech of soldiers, PPF men, and administration officials from many different areas of the UK.19 In the case of soldiers and PPF 12 A.J. Meier, “Culture and its effect on speech act performance,” In Speech act performance: Theoretical, empirical and methodological issues, ed. A. Martìnez-Flor, & E. Usò-Juan (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2010), pp. 76. 13 Kate Fox, Watching the English: The hidden rules of English behaviour, (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2004), pp. 66-67. 14 Gian Marco Farese, “The Ethnopragmatics of English Understatement and Italian Exaggeration: Clashing Cultural Scripts for the Expression of Personal Opinions,” in Studies in Ethnopragmatics, Cultural Semantics, and Intercultural Communication, ed. K. Mullan, B. Peeters, L. Sadow (Singapore: Springer Publishing, 2019), pp. 61. 15 Ibid. pp. 62. 16 Ibid. pp. 62. 17 Fox, Watching The English, pp. 66. 18 Gian Marco Farese, “The Ethnopragmatics of English Understatement and Italian Exaggeration,” pp. 62. 19 Fox, Watching The English, pp. 66-67. 112 members, it seems reasonable to assume that understatement might be a response to what they saw – a means of concealing or coping with the worst of their experiences. It may also reflect a certain guilt about their own survival. One PPF member, when asked about his own injuries during an oral interview, replied, ‘I never like to mention my wounds. I lost four great friends […]. I was the only survivor, four of them were killed.’20 Thus, part of the problem of untangling oral interviews by former British personnel in Palestine is working out what they really mean and feel when they proffer their opinions and make statements about the situations they found themselves in. Perhaps it is no wonder then that the impact of terrorism in the Mandate has been underacknowledged for so long. Although it cannot be proved here, perhaps it may be that the culturally contingent use of understatement explains why such testimonies have historically largely been ignored by Israeli scholars examining the Mandate’s end. The cultural script embodied through Modern Hebrew as spoken in Israel is one of talking ‘dugri’ (i.e., of straight talking), which places an emphasis on being to the point and does not engage in verbal hedging.21 Even those Israeli scholars well versed in English are likely to be more familiar with American English (for political, cultural, and educational reasons) which has a completely different cultural script with an emphasis on exaggeration and forced cheeriness, or the so-called ‘smile code.’22 Without an understanding of, or ‘insider perspective’ on the specific cultural script of British English, non-British researchers are at a cultural disadvantage.23 20 Interview with Gerald Green conducted by Eugene Rogan, MECA, St Antony’s College, 9th October 2006. Gerald Green collection GB165-0404, Transcript, pp. 24. 21 Roni Danziger & Zohar Kampf, “Interpretive Constructs in Contrast: The Case of Flattery in Hebrew and in Palestinian Arabic,” in Contrastive Pragmatics 2/2 (2020), pp. 141. 22 Cliff Goddard, “Ethnopragmatics: A New Paradigm,” in Ethnopragmatics: Understanding Discourse in Cultural Context, ed. C. Goddard (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2006), pp. 7. 23 Cliff Goddard & Zhengdou Ye, “Ethnopragmatics,” In The Routledge Handbook of Language and Culture, ed. F. Sharifian (London: Routledge, 2014), pp. 66. 113 As well as understatement, interviewees are often asked to describe in some detail specific attacks or events for their interviewer. The picture that appears from this material is not a pretty one. British personnel, especially the military and PPF, saw horrific sights which stayed with them for many years and which they recall vividly years later, sometimes with much emotion. There are difficult ethical issues to be grappled with here when writing about and reproducing accounts of such violence. In describing Jewish terrorism and its aftermath I have sought to include only what detail is necessary in order to help demonstrate the central argument of this chapter: that the sort of violence these men experienced left them deeply traumatized. No detail is gratuitous, and I have grappled constantly with how best to describe this violence even if it meant omitting or paraphrasing certain descriptions of terror. This follows much best-practice by anthropologists, ethnographers, and social-scientists who constantly deal with such issues in their work and is informed by conversations with fellow researchers and academics in these fields. The State of British Personnel, 1945-1948 Arriving in Jerusalem in the autumn of 1933 on the first leg of his journey to Afghanistan, the writer Robert Byron paused to examine the beauty of the city and dwell a while upon its spiritual connections and ancient history. ‘And the centurions are here again,’ he mused. ‘They wear shorts and topees, and answer, when addressed, with a Yorkshire Accent.’24 British soldiers like these, as well as policemen in the Palestine Police Force (PPF), were the backbone of British rule in Palestine, responsible for duties such as patrols, responding to crime, and carrying out intelligence work, etc. During the period of the Revolt, as well as the ordinary pressures of duty which they faced, these men found themselves face to face with 24 Robert Byron, The Road to Oxiana (London: Penguin, 2007 [1937]), pp. 17. 114 terrorism and could expect to come under attack, especially in Jewish areas, on a regular basis. Although there was often a sense of opportunism, attacks against the PPF, military, and civilian administration by the Irgun and Lehi were often targeted at such regular servicemen and low-ranking officials. As Yellin-Mor described years later, ‘experience proved that the rank and file do not care if senior officers are killed, and are prepared to continue serving in the occupying army as long as they themselves are not hurt. So we also hit at them.’25 Thus, the widespread targeting of British personnel was a deliberate and calculated method by the Jewish terrorist groups. The PPF in particular also recruited from amongst the Jewish and Arab Palestinian population, though the impact upon their communities is not discussed here. What sort of men were the British soldiers and policemen in Palestine? Certainly by 1945 they were not hardened ‘centurions’ as Byron had described. Until 1930 the PPF had recruited solely from among ex-servicemen - a method it was to fall back upon during the Arab Revolt - which had led to the organization gaining a reputation for brutality as 700 former Black and Tans and Auxiliaries who had served in Ireland swelled the PPF’s numbers.26 As Matthew Hughes has shown, these former soldiers considered their service in the PPF to be akin to serving in the French Foreign Legion.27 Still, despite their brutality, there seems to have been little concern among the upper echelons of the police, with the Inspector General of the Palestine Police, John Rymer-Jones, describing the few that remained by the 1940s as a ‘splendid lot.’28 Perhaps though he was not the best judge of their character, himself having 25 Nathan Yallin-Mor, “The British Called Us The Stern Gang,” Israel Magazine, February 1973, pp. 82 in Jabotinsky Archives, KV5 1/1/2. 26 Matthew Hughes, “Demobilised Soldiers and Colonial Control: The British Police in Mandate Palestine and After,” Journal of Modern European History / Zeitschrift Für Moderne Europäische Geschichte / Revue d’histoire Européenne Contemporaine 13/2 (2015), pp. 268; Cohen, Britain’s Moment in Palestine, pp. 213. 27 Matthew Hughes, “A History of Violence: The Shooting in Jerusalem of British Assistant Police Superintendent Alan Sigrist, 12 June 1936,” Journal of Contemporary History 45/4 (2010), pp. 739. 28 Interview with John Rymer-Jones conducted by Peter Hart, IWM, 1989, Reel 20, 01:32 115 served in the King’s Own Liverpool Regiment during the War of Irish Independence alongside the Black and Tans there.29 By the end of the Second World War, the composition of the PPF was quite different to a decade earlier. ‘The Defence Act’ of 1940 and its inclusion in an Amendment Order relating to Palestine meant that policemen serving at that time in the country found their service, much to the resentment of many, extended beyond their three-year contract.30 These experienced men were keen to return home by the end of the war, and even those who wished to remain in service were owed not inconsiderable amounts of leave.31 Many of these would not return to Palestine, being recruited to other over-seas forces, much to Rymer-Jones’s consternation.32 Instead of battle-hardened former servicemen, the force was therefore increasingly made up of young conscripts who came to the PPF to complete their national service with little knowledge of the sort of duties they would be expected to perform in Palestine. The only knowledge many of them had of Palestine came from Sunday School and the ‘oldest guide-book in the world’ as one former member of the PPF cheerfully put it – the King James Bible.33 Recruits often had a rude awakening, sometimes before they even arrived in Palestine. Inspired in part by his Anglican faith, Roy Leadbeater signed up for the PPF after seeing a call for men stuck up on a wall in the street. The advert, he recalled, had promised a salary of £20 a month. A wry vandal had scrawled ‘and a bullet in the back’ underneath this enticement.34 He chose to ignore this free-hand addition and, as shall be seen, though he left the country alive, 29 See: Interview with John Rymer-Jones conducted by Peter Hart, IWM, 1989, Reels 12, 13, & 14. 30 Edward Horne, A Job Well Done: (Being a History of the Palestine Police Force 1920-1948) (Lewes: Book Guild, 2003), pp. 245. 31 Horne, A Job Well Done, pp. 558-559. 32 Interview with John Rymer-Jones conducted by Peter Hart, IWM, 1989, Reel 20, 10:40 33 Interview with Edward Wells conducted by Josie Delap, MECA, St Antony’s College, 27th April 2006, Edward Wells collection GB165-0393, Transcript, pp. 2. 34 Interview with Roy Leadbeater conducted by Eugene Rogan, MECA, St Antony’s College, 22nd May 2007, Roy Leadbeater collection GB165-0412. Transcript, pp. 5. 116 he paid dearly for this decision. Others got their first taste of what was to come upon arrival in the Middle East. After disembarking at El-Qantara in Egypt, one trainee policeman found his onwards journey delayed – the Irgun had blown up the railway line.35 These naïve, conscripted young men were spread thin on the ground with the PPF struggling to fill its quotas. Despite a full complement of 8,816, the PPF could only muster 6,772 men of all ranks. This shortfall was largely due to a shortage of British recruits who numbered 2,816 as against a full quota of 4,629.36 Despite efforts to boost recruitment to the PPF from Britain with a large advertising campaign, progress was slow.37 Although there were 13,500 enquiries about serving in the PPF to the Crown Agents for the Colonies in the Summer of 1946, there were only 1,470 actual applications, and of these no more than 450 candidates were considered suitable.38 Meanwhile, the rest of the force was made up of Palestinian Arabs and Jews – the loyalty of the latter group to the PPF was, not without reason, often questioned by British policemen. However, with both the PPF and military so under strength there was little choice but to use Jewish labour for even some sensitive tasks.39 Little wonder perhaps that Rymer-Jones was pleased with his aging former Black and Tans ‘centurions’ in the face of such difficulty recruiting. Although the PPF was to bear the brunt of the Irgun and Lehi attacks, the military had similar issues to contend with when it came to personnel. Young soldiers were not ready for what they found in Palestine and many who had only been called up towards the end of the war had little combat experience, never mind of the sort of combat they would be forced to engage 35 Interview with Robert Hamilton conducted by Sharif Ismail, MECA, St Antony’s College, 20th April 2006, Robert Hamilton collection GB165-0392. Transcript, pp.2. 36 Eldad Harouvi, Palestine Investigated: The Criminal Investigation Department of the Palestine Police Force, 1920-1948 (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2016), pp. 153. 37 George Hall, ‘telegram from Secretary of State to High Commissioner,’ 27th June 1946, MEC, St Antony’s College, Oxford, Cunningham Papers, I/2. 38 George Hall, ‘telegram from Secretary of State to High Commissioner,’ 27th July 1946, MEC, St Antony’s College, Oxford, Cunningham Papers, I/2. 39 Richard Nelson Gale, Call to Arms: An Autobiography (London: Hutchinson, 1968), pp. 169. 117 in whilst stationed in Palestine. Some had never even seen the sea, and even fewer had been out of the country and so Palestine seemed like an opportunity for adventure.40 Even at rest in camps these young conscripts displayed signs of their inexperience. Eric Lowe, a young conscript serving in a military depot at the time of the revolt, recalled how he ‘hoped the ‘enemy’ would not attack because I felt there wasn’t a real soldier among us.’41 A demonstration of the sort of discipline characteristic of these young men can be found in Lowe’s tale of two soldiers on guard duty at camp one night. The sentry remained in his box for much of his shift whilst a gunner in the pillbox, trying to fight off boredom, practiced replacing the magazine of his Bren gun and drawing a bead on various targets around the camp. Just as he drew a bead on the sentry box, the sentry walked out, startling the gunner who fired a single shot which passed through the sentry box. The sentry, assuming terrorists were attacking, promptly fainted. The gunner, assuming he had fatally shot his colleague, also fainted.42 Although the tale may have been embellished for added comic effect in its retelling (although similar stories of soldiers fainting when confronted with violence or its aftermath in Palestine suggest that this may perhaps not be the case)43, the fact that such a story was considered to be representative of the under-preparedness of British soldiers for Lowe to include in his account speaks volumes. Those who had more experience of military service had often come from the European campaign straight to Palestine where the nature of the fighting deeply angered them. Here, they were mostly called upon to aid the civilian powers in their duties and to fight a very different kind of enemy. As one veteran of the war in France recalled, ‘we were very new to this game, we’d been trained of course to fight Germans, and we’d fought Germans with a degree of 40 Eric Lowe, Forgotten Conscripts: Prelude to Palestine's Struggle for Survival (2nd ed. Victoria, B.C.: Trafford, 2007), pp. v/vi, 74. 41 Ibid. pp. 77. 42 Ibid. pp. 89. 43 Phillip Brutton, A Captain’s Mandate Palestine 1946-48 (London: Leo Cooper, 1996), pp. 53. Brutton mentions how a guard in his camp once fainted when he discovered that the storeroom was temporarily being used to store two dead bodies. 118 success and had won, and then we came into this quite new game of aid to the civil power and imperial policing.’44 In Palestine the enemy was of a very different sort, able to come out from a crowd, execute a quick attack, and then melt away – a fact that both the PPF and army resented.45 ‘They fought dirty’ as the same soldier put it.46 British soldiers were up against an adversary who used, as Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery put it upon becoming Chief of the Imperial General Staff in June 1946, ‘unEnglish methods,’ which British soldiers found both difficult to counter, and offensive to their ‘orthodox’ military sensibilities and English sense of fair-play.47 Instead of engaging in open warfare and pitched battles, soldiers found themselves engaged in counterterrorism. Having returned from Italy as ‘a subaltern newly blooded in battle,’ one soldier commented that ‘this sort of campaign was the last sort of thing I had expected.’48 It was also the last sort of thing they were suited to. Counterterror operations during the Revolt were often unsuccessful in their aims, as demonstrated by the nearly constant spate of attacks through these years which rarely abated for long in the face of such measures.49 Patrols, checkpoints, and searches failed to produce many results or quell violence – indeed, a search during Operation Shark in late July and early August 1946 of the apartment in which Begin was staying at managed to completely miss his hiding place.50 Despite the enforcement of cordons, searches, and curfews across Tel Aviv and Jaffa during the operation which were designed to root out many of the militants, in October and November there were attacks by the 44 Interview with John David Carew Graham conducted by Peter Salmond, IWM, 2010, Reel 4, 15:10. 45 Interview with John David Carew Graham conducted by Peter Salmond, IWM, 2010, Reel 4, 15:10; Interview with John Tyrrell conducted by Seth Anziska, MECA, St Antony’s College, 8th June 2007, John Tyrrell collection GB165-0413. Transcript, pp. 5. 46 John David Carew Graham conducted by Peter Salmond, IWM, 2010, Reel 4, 15:50. 47 Bernard Montgomery, ‘Montgomery directive to CICMELF,’ 27th June 1946, Imperial War Museum Department of Documents, BLM211/3. 48 Colin Mitchell, Having Been a Soldier (London: Mayflower, 1970), pp. 57. 49 Peter Bergamin’s kindly shared unpublished ‘Calendar of Jewish Outrages.’ 50 Menachem Begin, The Revolt: The Story of the Irgun (Steimatzky’s Agency Ltd.: Tel Aviv, 1972), pp. 227-229 119 Irgun or Lehi most days, including in the very areas the British had spent four days searching.51 Between the 20th and 25th October 1946 alone there were four bomb or mine attacks against British troops and vehicles in Palestine.52 Clearly Operation Shark had done little to dent the Irgun or Lehi’s operational abilities. Operations like Shark rarely achieved anything of real value. As one senior British military figure described of such searches ‘sometimes you got a terrorist, sometimes you got something you weren’t looking for; more often you got nothing.’53 So called ‘soft shoe’ missions – silent night patrols and searches – could very quickly descend into farce. Lieutenant Colonel Colin Mitchell, who would later earn notoriety for his role in the British counterinsurgency in Aden in 1967, described such a ‘soft-shoe’ search operation in an Armenian Church in Jerusalem one night where his soldiers groped through the gloom in search of hidden arms caches. Partway through this search, the monks, engaged in prayer and chanting when the soldiers arrived, became aware of the military presence, warily observing these stumbling searchers from the corner of their eyes. The search discovered nothing, and Mitchell’s men withdrew awkwardly.54 It is also important to note that of the around 100,000 military personnel in Palestine at the peak of the violence, a large proportion were not combat soldiers.55 A military requires the filling of all sorts of roles – from cooks to drivers, from mechanics to storekeepers.56 A total of 75% of soldiers were involved in these more administrative tasks, whilst merely 25,000 were combat troops. Of these, only the rifle companies of the infantry and airborne divisions were appropriate for counterinsurgency tasks.57 This fact certainly challenges the usefulness of the 51 Peter Bergamin’s kindly shared unpublished ‘Calendar of Jewish Outrages.’ 52 Ibid. 53 David Charters, The British Army and Jewish Insurgency in Palestine, 1945-1947 (Macmillan: London, 1989), pp. 84. 54 Mitchell, Having Been a Soldier, pp. 66. 55 Hoffman, Anonymous Soldiers, pp. 329. 56 Lowe, Forgotten Transcripts, pp. 83. 57 Charters, The British Army and Jewish Insurgency in Palestine, 1945-1947, pp. 88-89, 145-148. 120 comment, oft repeated through the years, that there was one soldier for every eighteen to twenty one Jews in Palestine (different writers use slightly different figures).58 Many of these soldiers were there to serve food at NAAFIs, keep inventories of army material, and drive military material from store to store – not to fight the Jewish terrorist threat. Regardless of the nature or length of their service, many ‘soldiers’ had anyway not been subjected to the bloody realities of conflict, some never having been near the front line during the Second World War. Yet in Palestine there was no front line, and every soldier and every barrack was a target to a roving and often unidentifiable enemy. Turnover, much as was the case for the PPF, remained a stumbling block for the effective running of the army. Between 1945 and 1947, the Airborne Division saw the divisional commander change twice, the GI (Ops) position be filled by a succession of three different officers, whilst brigade officers changed even more frequently. This was not an unusual rate of change amongst the military in Palestine.59 This turnover precluded the retention of experienced officers who could train incoming officers and other military personnel on how to approach the problems facing the army.60 In such circumstances it is little surprise that counterterrorism operations remained so ineffective. A lack of experience of warfare of this nature was also a fact for many of the civil servants and civilian administrators who also found themselves subject to attacks. These were civilians used to sitting behind a desk, not being on the front line of a terrorist campaign. Some such as John Hatfield, a government administrator, carried a loaded pistol with him at all times.61 Others were warned off such measures. John Fletcher-Cooke was an Under Secretary 58 See for example: Hoffman, Anonymous Soldiers, pp.329; Wm. Roger Louis, The British Empire in the Middle East, 1945-1951: Arab Nationalism, the United States, and Postwar Imperialism (Clarendon: Oxford, 1984), pp. 467; Nathan Yallin-Mor, “The British Called Us The Stern Gang,” Israel Magazine, February 1973, pp. 84 in Jabotinsky Archives, KV5 1/1/2. 59 Charters, The British Army and Jewish Insurgency in Palestine, 1945-1947, pp. 145-147. 60 Ibid. pp. 148. 61 Interview with John Prosper Hatfield conducted by Peter Hart, IWM, 1989, Reel 12, 17:38. 121 in Palestine during the Revolt and thus often feared he may be the target of an attack. However, he was urged not to carry a revolver by the Deputy Commissioner of Police who informed him that it was likely he wouldn’t even have time to draw it, and - speaking to the difficult nature of identifying the enemy - that doing so could be dangerous since ‘my police boys are very trigger happy – they have to be. If there was a shooting affray going on and they turned up to the scene, they’d certainly shoot on sight any civilian with a revolver.’62 Instead Fletcher-Cooke was advised to carry a stout walking stick, a piece of advice which he took.63 That civil administrators should even be having such conversations speaks to their fear in the country. And they had much to be fearful of. Much of the literature around the actions of the Irgun and Lehi focusses on the quantifiable aspect of such terrorist activities – how many were killed, how many injured, what was the financial cost to Britain. This is useful data, but it leaves out the human factor and reduces violence to a quantifiable data point. Terrorist violence could take many forms – whether shootings, bombings, the mining or roads, or less fatal cases such as the occasional flogging of captured British personnel. But what does terror look, smell, and sound like, and how does constant subjection to this affect a person, both in the short and long term? ‘Bits Of Humanity Laying About’: The Sensory Experience of Terrorism At the official opening of the YMCA Jerusalem in 1933, Lord Edmund Allenby, the man who had conquered the city from the Ottomans in 1917, expressed his belief that ‘here is a place whose atmosphere is peace, where political and religious jealousies can be forgotten, 62 From The compulsive ‘Cuppa’ [unpublished], MECA, St Antony’s College, in the Fletcher-Cooke Collection GB165-0107, pp.10. 63 Ibid. pp.10. 122 and international unity fostered and developed.’64 Today that quote – in Arabic, the original English, and Hebrew – is found painted across beautifully decorated tiles set into a stone bench at the centre of the peaceful front gardens of the building. Such lofty aspirations couldn’t have seemed further from attainment on the 22nd July 1946 when, just after midday, milk churns packed with explosives detonated in the basement of the building opposite the YMCA – the King David Hotel – levelling the six floors of the South wing of the building. The body of the Postmaster General was propelled by the sheer force of the blast out of a window and deposited, spread-eagled, onto the opposite wall of the Jerusalem YMCA. The 53-year-old’s body hung there for several hours before it could be taken down.65 Such was the grim sight that greeted teams of army personnel, PPF men, and administration officials as they rushed to the scene to dig the wounded, dying, and dead out from among the piles of masonry, brick, and broken glass in the aftermath of the attack. Understanding the sensory experiences of terror through the lens of sight, smell, and sound is an interesting and novel way to analyse the way in which British personnel encountered and understood their surroundings. Such sensory-dominated analysis has a clear history in other fields of study. Of particular relevance is the concept of ‘soundscapes,’ pioneered by ethnomusicologists from the 1960s onwards in order to explore the sonic landscape of a particular area.66 In other words, what would a British soldier or policeman have heard whilst traversing the space of the average Palestinian city and how would he have experiences terror when it occurred? From this concept, the geographer J.D. Porteous developed the concept of the ‘smellscape’ in 1985 to refer to ‘olfactory environment as perceived and understood by a person influenced by memories and past experiences, specific 64 The Palestine Post, 19th April 1933, The National Library of Israel, pp. 5. 65 Interview with Joseph Albert Stanislaus Adolph conducted by Conrad Wood, IWM, 26th August 1991, Reel 1, 24:20; Forgotten Conscripts, Lowe, pp. 68. 66 David W. Samuels, Louise Meintjes, Ana Maria Ochoa, & Thomas Porcello, “Soundscapes: Toward a Sounded Anthropology,” Annual Review of Anthropology 39/1 (2010), pp. 330-332. 123 to its context.’67 This concept has since been adapted by a range of fields including psychology, history, and anthropology. Elsewhere research on trauma has focussed on the sensory triggers (specific smells, sounds, or viewing certain items or objects for example) which remain with those who have suffered past trauma and remain vivid reminders of what they suffered.68 Thus exploring the sensory world of British personnel gives us a clearer idea of how they experienced terrorism in a more personal and intimate manner. The clean-up operation at the King David Hotel took weeks, with rescue teams subjected to the sight of dead comrades, or even more horrifically, parts of their dead comrades. Efforts to identify the bodies took three weeks alone. One British Sergeant involved in the effort described how, while piecing together the human remains, one body remained unclaimed for weeks, with only the discovery of a set of keys which, having been embedded in the body at the time of the explosion, finally dropped from the body as decomposition set in, allowing an identification. Some were never identified properly. As the sergeant noted ‘one body disappeared altogether. All we could find was a clavicle and a human knuckle made up of flesh over some metacarpal bones. Nothing else was ever found […]. No one knows what happened to the rest of the body.’69 It seems more than probable that the missing parts were those discovered by Fletcher-Cooke when he arrived in Palestine some four months after the bombing. Taking cover by the King David after a firefight broke out, he glanced upwards from his hiding place in a culvert by a large tree where something caught his eye. ‘This turned out to be half a human corpse which had remained impaled on the tree since the explosion had 67 PerMagnus Lindborg & Kongmeng Liew, “Real and Imagined Smellscapes,” Frontiers in Psychology 12/1 (2001): pp. 1. 68 Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score, pp.45. 69 Horne, A Job Well Done, pp. 304. 124 occurred.’70 As he morbidly noted, ‘my report about this gruesome relic was my first official act in Palestine.’71 Since the recovery and clean-up operation took so long, it was not just the sight of the injured and dead that rescuers were subject to, but also the smell as bodies began to decompose in the heat of July and August 1946 which was marked by temperatures of nearly 26 degrees Celsius even in the shade.72 As one female Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) member recorded of the rescuers, ‘it was a dreadful time for them, especially during the days following when it was necessary for them to wear masks.’73 Speaking of his own efforts to save colleagues, Chief Secretary John Shaw wrote of how ‘I helped to dig out their stinking putrefying bodies.’74 To make matters worse, the smell of the bodies also attracted carrion crows from the dessert during the night which only added to the horror of the clean-up operation.75 Although the bombing of the King David was a particularly sensational form of violence, service in any part of Palestine could bring British personnel face to face with terrorism. Some attacks in particular seem to stick in the memory of those who served in Palestine. The attack on Haifa police station comes up time and time again in the recollections of those who were there, as well as in those of others who, though stationed elsewhere, heard about the attack afterwards. Taking place on the 29th November 1947 (the same day the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 181 (II) recommending the partition of Palestine) the 70 From The compulsive ‘Cuppa’ [unpublished], MECA, St Antony’s College, in the Fletcher-Cooke Collection GB165-0107, pp. 3. 71 Ibid. pp. 3. 72 Quoted in A. J. Sherman, Mandate Days: British Lives in Palestine, 1918-1948 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1997), pp. 182. 73 Lowe, Forgotten Conscripts, pp.68. 74 John Shaw, ‘letter from John Shaw to Richard Crossman,’ MECA, St Antony’s, 2nd August 1946, Richard Howard Stafford Crossman Collection GB165-0068. 75 Interview with Joseph Albert Stanislaus Adolph conducted by Conrad Wood, IWM, 26th August 1991, Reel 1, 25:42. 125 Irgun attacked Haifa police headquarters using a barrel bomb filled with explosives. Many personnel who were in the vicinity recall the carnage and the sight of ‘mangled’ bodies in the wake of the attack.76 Even when soldiers and policemen were not present at the scene of bombings, the task of identifying or recovering the bodies of close friends could be deeply disturbing. One PPF recruit recalled going to see the body of a friend in the morgue who had been killed when the bomb he was attempting to defuse detonated. In the explosion, the keystone of a stone arch above him had given way and ‘just wiped his face away.’77 Of the dead man’s two colleagues, also there at the time of the explosion, ‘they only found bits.’78 After such bombings it was not unusual to see, as one soldier put it, ‘bits of humanity laying about.’79 No teenager or recruit in his early twenties, fighting a conflict in a land he does not understand, can be expected to deal with such sights easily. As well as targeted and planned bombings, indiscriminate and opportune shootings by the Irgun and Lehi were also the occasion of many horrific sights. Such attacks were a nearly everyday occurrence during many periods of the Mandate, especially after the spring of 1946, with only short respites often in response to political developments.80 Shootings in cafes or when policemen and army soldiers were leaving them, on patrol, and even when behind the supposed safety of camp fences and walls were all a part of daily life in Palestine, according to the testimonies of former personnel.81 Such attacks were ‘part and parcel of the daily life,’ as 76 Interview of Frederick Gilbert Edwards conducted by Conrad Woods, IWM, August 1988, Reel 4, 00:16; Interview of Michael Burke conducted by Conrad Wood, IWM, 20th February 1988, Reel 1, 17:00; Interview with Roy Rodrick conducted by Katja Žvan, MECA, St Antony’s College, 10th May 2006, Roy Rodrick collection GB165-0395. Transcript, pp. 4. 77 Interview with James Hainge conducted by Eugene Rogan, MECA, St Antony’s College, 5 June 2006, James Hainge collection GB165-0402. Transcript, pp. 23. 78 Ibid. pp. 23. 79 Interview with Kenneth Lee conducted by Conrad Wood, IWM, 13th November 1986, Reel 2, 03:00. 80 Information gleaned from Peter Bergamin’s unpublished ‘Calendar of Jewish Outrages.’ 81 Interview with Bernard Martin Smith conducted by Conrad Wood, IWM, 22nd December 1988, Reel 2, 06:35; Interview with John Sankey conducted by Conrad Wood, IWM, 1989, Reel 1, 26:13; Interview with Frederick Gilbert Edwards conducted by Conrad Wood, IWM, August 1988, Reel 4, 16:30; Interview with 126 one former policeman put it.82 By 1947 the army alone was facing a casualty rate of two a day as the Irgun and Lehi’s war of attrition ground slowly on.83 These attacks could leave behind grim reminders of just what British personnel were facing.84 A Scottish private described the aftermath of such shootings and the way the body would be disfigured, especially when soldiers were shot in the head or face.85 Much of the detail he gives is too grim to reasonably include here. He speaks of a dead friend who was caught in an ambush and of the ‘holes in him’ after the firefight was over and of another friend whose dead body he had to recover.86 He vividly recalls the state of the body despite the passage of over fifty years – it was ‘not cold right away, he was still warm and flexible.’87 Despite the passage of time, he remains emotional about what he saw in Palestine – by degrees angry and sorrowful. Whilst British personnel regularly saw horrific acts of violence and their aftermath, it was not just these sights but also the everyday sounds that demonstrated to British personnel the types and levels of violence they faced. A brief foray into the realm of ethnomusicology is useful here. Here, we have a good deal of information on major Jewish populated cities, especially Jerusalem, but also Tel-Aviv, and Haifa, which can help us to reconstruct some of the elements of that soundscape during the period of the Revolt. The constant gunfire and attacks were the background noise in the Mandate’s administrative capital, Jerusalem, remarked upon by those living there at the time. Monica Wilson, a journalist working for the Government’s press office, wrote home at the beginning of August 1947 of how ‘Jerusalem these days is an extraodinary [sic] town to live in. Every few hours one hears shots from Michael Burke conducted by Conrad Wood, IWM, 20th February 1988, Reel 1, 16:35; Interview with Ernest Edward De Val conducted by Conrad Wood, IWM, 15th June 1992, Reel 1, 25:53. 82 Interview with Joseph Albert Stanislaus Adolph conducted by Conrad Wood, IWM, 26th August 1991, Reel 2, 00:20. 83 Hoffman, Anonymous Soldiers, pp. 348. 84 Interview with Joseph Albert Stanislaus Adolph conducted by Conrad Wood, IWM, 26th August 1991, Reel 2, 00:20. 85 Interview with James Common conducted by Conrad Wood, IWM, 10th December 2001, Reel 2, 28:22. 86 Interview with James Common conducted by Conrad Wood, IWM, 10th December 2001,Reel 2, 10:15. 87 Interview with James Common conducted by Conrad Wood, IWM, 10th December 2001, Reel 2, 15:42. 127 somewhere in town and the sirens wail and all traffic halts.’88 There was no let up at night either. One soldier in Haifa remembers how the noise rarely abated for long and ‘you would hear it at night-time, different gunfights, and things like that. […] During the night you never really got what you could call a really good night’s sleep because there was always something happening.’89 One Captain put it bluntly in his diary, writing in august 1946: ‘Bloody awful night […] Woken up regularly: Jewish terrorism.’90 Indeed, sound was one way to keep track of, and pinpoint, the whereabouts of terror attacks across cities like Jerusalem – a role which fell to the army with the support of the PPF. Gunners at high vantage points in Jerusalem would be posted in operation postings to try and pinpoint the source of the disturbance or its direction. The information would be radioed in by all of the men (there were 6 posts spread across Jerusalem) and where their relayed directions intersected would be the likely source of the disturbances.91 It was constant work. As the young gunner posted at the Syrian Orphanage noted ‘you didn’t have many quiet spells’ and there would be ‘spasmodic machine gun fire’ or explosions on most shifts (9 times out of 10 the gunner recalls).92 Such gunfire would have been audible across large areas of the city, just as Monica Wilson recalled. From the High Commissioner’s residence, or from the main police depot on Mt Scopus, high above most of the rest of the city and with views of the Old and New Cities, the sounds of gunfire and skirmishes would have travelled clearly. Although automatic and semi-automatic weapons have changed in the intervening 75 years, this fact is confirmed by my 88 Monica Wilson, ‘letter from Monica Wilson to her family,’ 1st August 1947, MECA, St Antony’s, Monica Wilson Collection – GB165-0573. 89 Interview with Francis Leon Collett conducted by Conrad Wood, IWM, 28th July 1998, Reel 2, 01:28. 90 Brutton, A Captain’s Mandate Palestine 1946-48, pp. 56. 91 Interview with Kenneth Herbert Lee conducted by Conrad Wood, IWM, 13th November 1986, Reel 1, 14:45-21:45. 92 Interview with Kenneth Herbert Lee conducted by Conrad Wood, IWM, 13th November 1986, Reel 1, 22:26. 128 own experience of the city and by conversations with staff at the UN mission in Jerusalem, which occupies the former residence of the High Commissioners. Speaking to a UN staff member, they described how they often get their first inclination that Israel is carrying out a ‘counterterrorism operation’ when they hear shots coming from the direction of East Jerusalem. Whilst not always seeing what was happening on the ground then, British administrators standing in the same spot 75 years earlier must have been deeply aware of the level of unrest in Jerusalem, the administrative capitol of Palestine – frequently hearing the Irgun or Lehi rattling off shots and British soldiers and PPF members responding in kind before receiving any dispatches or reports of this same terrorist activity. If anything, they must have been more aware than the current UN staff given the subsequent expansion of the city and growth of noisy vehicles on the roads in Jerusalem. As well as the sounds of the attacks themselves, British soldiers in particular often found themselves subjected to verbal abuse by members of the Yishuv who greeted them with terms such as ‘Gestapo,’ ‘Nazi sadist,’ or perhaps less provocatively, simply as ‘English Bastard.’93 For many, this was infuriating. One British soldier fumed in his memoir, ‘were we British not the same people, in the same uniform, as responsible for releasing thousands from Death Camps. Had they forgotten Bergen-Belsen.’94 This lack of any tact demonstrates well the anger many soldiers felt at being taunted by members of the Yishuv in these terms and of being attacked by a populace many had expected to be grateful to them. In many of their eyes British forces had been the saviour of the Jews, not just because they had defeated the Nazis in Europe, but because they had also prevented Palestine’s conquest by Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s forces in North Africa during the Second World War. After an attack on his troops, 93 George Webb, Epitaph for an Army of Peacekeepers: British Forces in Palestine 1945-1948 (Fleet: Hargate, 2005), pp. 92; Lowe, Forgotten Conscripts: Prelude to Palestine's Struggle for Survival, pp. 70; Robin H. Martin Palestine Betrayed: A British Policeman's Memoirs (1936-1948) (Ringwood: Seglawo Press, 2007), pp. 157. 94 Webb, Epitaph for an Army of Peacekeepers, pp. 16. 129 Lieutenant Colonel Richard Webb fumed to the press that ‘we saved their skins in Alamein and other places and then they do this to us.’95 Some troops even claimed they were jeered at and verbally abused whilst removing rubble from the site of the King David Hotel bombing, adding insult to injury after they had lost so many colleagues during the attack.96 The Sixth Airborne Division meanwhile, with their red berets, were often nicknamed ‘anemones’ (after a poem of the same name by Nathan Alterman) by the Yishuv – supposedly because their heads were red, but their hearts were black.97 There was also a sense of quiet and stillness in the aftermath of any terrorist attack that many British personnel found unsettling. Captain Phillip Brutton was in the Old City of Jerusalem when the King David Hotel bombing occurred. He noted how, immediately, the ‘Old City shop shutters were clanging shut, and the place became as silent and still as death.’98 The only sound he could hear was a solitary voice wailing at the Western Wall – a sound Brutton found apt given the scale of the catastrophe that was unfolding.99 One administration official noted the ‘haunted hush’ that came over the city in the aftermath of the attack, whilst soldiers, according to Brutton, searched through the rubble with ‘no noise,’ perhaps too shocked to respond in any other way.100 It may well be that this sensory experience was perceived but not objectively true, being in reality a reaction to trauma.101 As Erich Maria Remarque’s protagonist, fighting on the front lines of the First World War notes of his memories of that traumatic period in All Quiet on the Western Front, ‘they are always full of quietness, that is the most striking thing about them; and even when things weren’t like that in 95 Interview with Lieutenant Colonel Richard Webb, CZA, 24th October 1946, S 25/6910. 96 Horne, A Job Well Done, pp. 305. 97 R. D. Wilson, Cordon and Search: With 6th Airborne Division in Palestine (Aldershot: Gale & Polden, 1949), pp. 60. 98 Brutton, A Captain’s Mandate Palestine 1946-48, pp. 46. 99 Ibid. pp. 46. 100 Richard Stubbs, Palestine Story: A Personal Account of the Last Three Years of British Rule in Palestine (England: Brettenham 1995), pp. 62; Brutton, A Captain’s Mandate Palestine 1946-48, pp. 48. 101 Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score, pp.177. 130 reality, they still seem to have that quality. They are soundless apparitions, which speak to me by looks and gestures, wordless and silent—and their silence is precisely what disturbs me.’102 When British personnel did not directly see attacks or their aftermath for themselves they would still also have been aware of what was happening elsewhere thanks to a number of sources on top of more obvious conduits of information such as local newspapers in English, for example the Palestine Post. In the case of the PPF, regular situational reports relayed the news of attacks whilst for the military, news of terrorist attacks was often passed on via army drivers passing between depots or camps.103 The PPF also had an official magazine, produced in Palestine by members, which included an obituary section. These pages are noticeably more numerous in editions published in the Mandate’s twilight years. Whereas the April 1941 edition showed for example just two deaths, the June 1947 showed 14 deaths, with 11 of these happening on duty, and just two as the results of accidents. This list of casualties takes up a two-page spread.104 The materialization of a terrorist attack and its aftermath were traumatic enough, but as well as actual attacks there was also the constant threat of attack which hung over every member of British personnel’s head, adding to the tense atmosphere in the country. The risk of an attack was not always easy to ascertain, especially for the PPF and military. Even at the best of times, calculating the level of risk you face from a terrorist attack requires a clear and comprehensive knowledge of the patterns and types of terror as well as a high degree of 102 Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front (London: G.K. Hall & Co., 1997 [1929]), pp. 110. 103 Interview with Martin Duchesne conducted by Nick Kardahji, MECA, St Antony’s College, 23rd March 2006. Martin Duchesne collection GB165-0390. Transcript, pp. 6, 8; Lowe, Forgotten Conscripts, pp. 178; Interview with Kenneth Herbert Lee conducted by Conrad Wood, IWM, 13th November 1986, Reel 3, 01:30. 104 Interview with Victor Henry Douglas Cannings conducted by John Knight, MECA, St Antony’s College, 27th February 2006, Victor Henry Douglas Cannings collection GB165-0386. Copies of Palestine Police Magazine. 131 numerical and statistical literacy.105 Even if these are available, strong emotions involved in responding to terror – i.e., fear and anger – can distort a person’s ability to understand the risk they face. These ‘intuitive feelings’ remain the predominant method by which people evaluate the level of risk, often leading to them expect things to work out worse than they do.106 Furthermore, understanding of the risk of a terror attack is affected by the ‘availability heuristic’ whereby the ability to rationally judge the likelihood of an event is judged by the ease with which similar previous accounts can be recalled.107 Any understanding of risk then is hardly based on rationalism then, but interacts with psychological processes which are open to exploitation by an adversary. This was certainly a soft spot exploited by the Irgun. For instance, using constructed 3” mortars that had a relative degree of accuracy and a range of up to half a mile, the group would select a few police stations on a given night as targets and then phone a large number of stations and inform them they were to be targeted. Of course, only a few would actually be hit, but as one PPF member recalled, ‘the other stations would have sleepless nights waiting for something that never happened.’108 The ‘unnerving’ sound of the mortar’s detonation led to a tense few seconds as policemen waited to see whether they would be unlucky that night. This constant uncertainty of the level of risk of being attacked at any given moment could engender fear and paranoia around the most mundane of encounters between British personnel and Jews, and cloud British personnel’s perceptions. A previously alluded to encounter between the young policeman James Hainge and a group of Jews in an orange grove is a good example of the sort of paranoid fear that wracked many British personnel. 105 Baruch Fischoff, “Assessing and Communicating the Risks of Terrorism,” From Roundtable on Social and Behavioral Sciences and Terrorism, 2004. 106 Paul Slovic, The Feeling of Risk: New Perceptions on Risk Perception, (London: Routeledge, 2010), pp. 21; Cass R. Sunstein, “Terrorism and Probability Neglect,” in Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 26/2-3 (2003), pp. 121. 107 Slovic, The Feeling of Risk, pp. xx. 108 Horne, A Job Well Done, pp. 291. 132 In August 1947, Hainge was returning with a friend to headquarters at Kfar Vitkin after an evening off work. Seeking a shortcut, they left the streets to cut through an orange grove. Walking through the darkening plantation, Hainge remarked to his friend ‘It’s a bit stupid coming back through here.’109 His apprehension over what on the surface seemed a trivial decision to shave a couple of minutes off their route back was well founded. It was only in July of that year that two British Sergeants had been kidnapped and killed by the Irgun in retaliation for the British execution of three Irgun men. The two men had been snatched in mid-July from a café in Netanya. They were off duty and unarmed. Their bodies had been found on the 30th July, hanging in a eucalyptus grove in Netanya, less than 4 miles from where Hainge and his friend now stood. In the twilight, Hainge noticed two figures seemingly following them through the grove. Each had something hanging by their side he noted. Hainge feared the worst. Could these be Irgun operatives looking for more captives? Or perhaps they were Lehi members out for blood (Hainge remembered the group as ‘out and out villains’)? To make matters worse, Hainge was not carrying the Smith & Wesson he usually kept on him. The two men had every reason to fear their shortcut could end up costing them dearly. Only upon the gun toting underground duo getting closer, did Hainge and his colleague realise the things swinging at the hip of these men were pruning shears.110 These ‘terrorists’ were likely just agricultural workers from the Moshav heading home after a long day in the fields. This sort of tension and suspicion is characteristic of many of the recollections of British personnel when it came to dealing with Jewish civilians. 109 Interview with James Hainge conducted by Eugene Rogan, MECA, St Antony’s College, 5 June 2006, James Hainge collection GB165-0402. Transcript, pp. 20. 110 Interview with James Hainge conducted by Eugene Rogan, MECA, St Antony’s College, 5 June 2006, James Hainge collection GB165-0402. Transcript, pp. 20, 26. 133 Trauma, PTSD, and Psychological Damage Among British Personnel This then, was the sort of violence that British soldiers, policemen, and administrative personnel were subjected to and experienced – as victims, but equally important, as witnesses and potential victims. But a focus on risk and fear does not fully demonstrate the depth of the psychological impact on British personnel – instead, for a fuller picture, we must examine the impact of terror using the tools of clinical psychology. In the 21st century we have the vocabulary and medical tools to deal with the aftereffects of such events, but in the late 1940s the medical community were still thirty years away from including the term Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III). Thus, in order to understand the effect of terrorist violence on those who were attacked or witnesses to such attacks, we must carefully apply today’s literature to yesterday’s terror attack victims.111 Post 9-11, a burgeoning literature began to appear in the disciplines of sociology and psychology which sought to understand the effects of terrorism on the human psyche, and in particular how trauma can affect survivors, witnesses, security personnel and rescue workers. Although the impetus to publish on this (both to academics and publishers) were the attacks on New York and Washington DC, the available literature displays an eclectic and fairly extensive list of case studies – from the US to Kenya, from European nations to the Indian subcontinent and many states in between. Many of these are particularly focussed on the occurrence of PTSD and/or post-traumatic stress symptoms whilst a number of longitudinal studies have sought to demonstrate the long-lasting effects of the condition after being subjected to a terror attack and/or its aftermath.112 A subset of this literature focusses exclusively on the impact of 111 The DSM-5’s description of PTSD and concomitant symptoms is included in the appendix. 112 For longitudinal studies see: Claudia Rigutto, Adegboyega O. Sapara, & Vincent I. O. Agyapong, ‘Anxiety, Depression and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder after Terrorist Attacks: A General Review of the Literature,’ Behavioural Science 11/10 (2021), pp. 3-24; Carol North & Katy McDonald, “A Prospective Post-disaster Longitudinal Follow-up Study of Emotional and Psychosocial Outcomes of the Oklahoma 134 terrorism upon security personnel and demonstrates that the effects of terrorism upon serving personnel are no less severe than amongst the civilian population.113 Although it is impossible to go into depth about the findings of this literature a few salient points are worth presenting here. Firstly, in the short term, exposure to terror attacks increases the rates of PTSD among direct victims (33%-39%), rescue workers (5%-6%), and friends and families of the victims (17%-29%).114 Even among those who do not experience PTSD (either self-reported or confirmed by a professional diagnosis) after a terror attack, many experience some symptoms of the disorder or meet the criteria for less severe, though still possibly debilitating, conditions such as generalized anxiety disorder.115 Secondly, though often decreasing over time, the effects of trauma can be long-lasting, with PTSD continuing to affect some of those subjected to terrorist attacks over 15 years later.116 Finally, being well prepared and trained to deal with terrorism and a sense of purpose or mission are related to lower levels of PTSD and psychological trauma (things that, as has been seen, patently do not apply to British personnel in Palestine!).117 City Bombing Rescue and Recovery Workers During the First Quarter Century Afterward,” Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness 17/1 (2023); Kristen A. Glad, Gertrud S. Hafsted, Tine K. Jensen, Grete Dyb, “A Longitudinal Study of Psychological Distress and Exposure to Trauma Reminders After Terrorism,” Psychological Trauma 9/1 (2017); Bessel A van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score, pp. 6-22, 190-194. 113 For recent examples see: Boubacar Bague, Konsam Cédric Christel Sawadogo, Zeinabou Cisse, Délidji Fabius Aouanou, Mahamane Mobarak Salifou Abdou, Wakilou Dao, “Psychotraumatic disorders among defense and security forces personnel in the context of terrorism in Burkina Faso,” European Journal of Trauma & Dissociation 8/1 (2024); Shobit Garg & Jyoti Mishra, “Military-Related Mental Health Morbidities: A Neurobiological Approach,” in The Routledge International Handbook of Military Psychology and Mental Health ed. Updesh Kumar (London: Routledge, 2020), pp. 349-359. 114 Marıa Paz Garcıa-Vera, Jesus Sanz, & Sara Gutierrez, ‘A Systematic Review of the Literature on Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in Victims of Terrorist Attacks,’ Psychological Reports 119/1 (2016), pp. 328. 115 Harald De Cauwer & Francis J. M. P. Somville, ‘Neurological disease in the aftermath of terrorism: a review,’ Acta Neurologica Belgica 118/1 (2018), pp. 195. 116 Rigutto, Sapara, & Agyapong, ‘Anxiety, Depression and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder after Terrorist Attacks,’ pp. 25. 117 Rigutto, Sapara, & Agyapong, ‘Anxiety, Depression and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder after Terrorist Attacks,’ pp. 26; Garcıa-Vera, Sanz, & Gutierrez, ‘A Systematic Review of the Literature on Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in Victims of Terrorist Attacks,’ pp. 347. 135 Although there are temporal and cultural differences between today’s terror victims and those British personnel in Palestine who were terrorised by the Irgun and Lehi, similar patterns emerge from the material we have available to us. Here, as well as oral testimony and memoirs, we have one other extremely useful - and previously unstudied – document, an unpublished study commissioned by Britain’s Military Operational Research Unit during the course of the Revolt entitled: ‘Fear: A Field Survey in Palestine.’118 The study, an early and somewhat dubious effort at scientifically measuring fear (in this case through measuring the hand tremors among members of the military, PPF, and junior administration before and after an attack by the Irgun or Lehi), catalogues a number of incidences which show all the hallmarks of PTSD symptoms – though of course the author could hardly have recognized them as such. Despite the paper’s claim that it would ‘attach little importance to purely qualitative observations since any investigator with a firmly held theory can always find qualitative observations to support it,’ much of the supposedly ‘empirical’ and ‘quantitative’ data is now of little use, based on outdated science and psychology.119 Instead, it is exactly these dismissed ‘qualitative observations’ which remain useful to the historian. In one instance, the study recounts, a young soldier stood resting one night when a stray bullet entered the compound and passed nearby him. Not actually on guard or patrol duty, he had only been outside as he was experiencing trouble sleeping. He had lost a close friend four days earlier to sniper fire in the same area and his reaction was instant. Having become ‘obviously upset,’ he was submitted to a psychiatric ward the next morning. Despite being cleared for service again sometime later, it appears he was moved to a non-combatant role.120 118 K.W. Yarnold, ‘Fear: A Field Survey in Palestine,’ Laurier Centre for the Study of Canada, 9089. 119 For instance, Yarnold suggests that adequate means of scientifically quantifying the level of fear British personnel were experiencing might include measuring the dilation of their pupils, the sugar in their urine, or simply any tremor in their hands. It is this last method Yarnold adopts to gather ‘empirical’ data. 120 Yarnold, ‘Fear: A Field Survey in Palestine,’ point 25. 136 This reaction displays all the hallmarks of PTSD or anxiety symptoms – from trouble sleeping to the actual breakdown itself.121 It is unfortunate that the report’s author gives us such little detail into this man’s condition (‘obviously upset’ being rather vague and again displaying the signs of British-English understatement). However, oral testimonies and memoirs point to a widespread issue of long-term psychological impacts among British personnel after being subjected to terror or its possibility. Fletcher Clarke, whose first day in Palestine had brought him face-to-face with the impacts of terror, was clearly shaken by his grim discovery. Nearly a year later, he was still affected, stating ‘I had glanced at the tree everyday [sic] since my arrival. It seemed to have a hypnotic effect on me.’122 Easily startled and always on guard for danger, small things could set off British personnel’s anxiety. As Lt-Col. Colin Mitchell noted of dining in Jewish restaurants, there would always be a ‘loaded pistol in the seat beside us. If a waiter dropped a tray, the gun would be in our hands, fingers on triggers.’123 Mitchell was not alone. As Fear: A Field Survey in Palestine notes ‘Of those men who have been blown up, or much shot at, the large proportion, who admit that any bang, even in the safest surroundings, makes them jumpy.’124 Although some degree of jumpiness is to be expected given the situation in Palestine, these anxieties were often not alleviated after returning to Britain. Francis Russell, a young recruit to both the Criminal Investigation Division (CID) and the roving Palestine Mobile Force (PMF) that briefly formed part of the PPF, had extensive dealings with security and terrorism in Palestine. On his return to Britain after the Mandate’s end he remembers how ‘I was in a terrible mess really, I was terribly jumpy apparently and very twitchy about things.’ It took him some time to get used to civilian life, and especially the fact that one no longer had to 121 See the DSM-5 Diagnostic Criteria for PTSD. In particular B.4. & 5. as well as E.6. 122 From The compulsive ‘Cuppa’ [unpublished], MECA, St Antony’s College, in the Fletcher-Cooke Collection GB165-0107, pp. 11. 123 Colin Mitchell, Having Been a Soldier, pp. 66-67. 124 Yarnold, ‘Fear: A Field Survey in Palestine,’ point 35(ii). 137 avoid sitting with one’s back to the door to avoid being shot.125 There were longer term effects too for some men. One sapper who had been caught up in an Irgun attack on a railway line vividly recalled the aftermath of the attack, noting that ‘after over 50 years I still have bad dreams about this atrocity.’126 As Bassel van der Kolk has noted, ‘after trauma the world is experienced with a different nervous system,’ which explains the long-lasting impact of events in Palestine upon these men.127 Perhaps the most senior victim of psychological trauma was Sir John Shaw, the Chief Secretary, who often took on the role of acting High Commissioner when Alan Cunningham was out of the country. He had also occupied the latter role on multiple occasions during handover periods between High Commissioners. Shaw was a skilled colonial administrator, having served in Palestine since 1935, and before that he had been part of the administration in the Gold Coast since his mid-20s. He would later play an important part in the running of Britain’s intelligence services, joining MI5 in 1950 to head their overseas branch. In this role he was flown into trouble spots to advise on imperial and commonwealth security issues – these constant trips combined with his 6-foot, 5-inch frame earning him the affectionate nickname ‘the flying pencil.’128 Yet Shaw’s service in Palestine ended rather abruptly after the King David Hotel bombing, the event deeply affecting him. Shaw himself was lucky to survive the blast. At the time of the explosion, he was in his office when suddenly ‘the chandelier fell down on my desk and the room filled with dust and smoke.’ Making his way out of the room and groping down a corridor that was ‘black as soot’ he was suddenly forced to stop. He could go no further as the rest of the corridor and the 125 Interview with Francis Mark Russell conducted by Eugene Rogan, MECA, St Antony’s College, 16th May 2006, Francis Mark Russell collection GB165-0396. Transcript, pp. 23. 126 Webb, Epitaph for an Army of Peacekeepers, pp. 29-30. 127 Bassel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (New York: Viking, 2015), pp. 52. 128 Calder Walton, Empire of Secrets: British Intelligence, The Cold War and The Twilight of Empire (London: William Collins, 2014), pp. 125-126. 138 offices attached had collapsed in the blast. Instead of rooms full of typists and administrative staff there was ‘a yawning chasm under my feet.’129 In the immediate aftermath of the attack, Shaw helped in the rescue and recovery operation, quickly shaking off the initial shock and taking control of the rescue efforts. Using an axe, he managed to breach a wall behind which Leslie Gibson, the Attorney General, was trapped.130 Many of Shaw’s friends and colleagues were among the injured and dead, including ‘my own police escort who had been my inseparable companion and friend for 20 months, my own Armenian chauffer, and many other humble persons of this type.’ His experience must have been – in a most literal sense – traumatising, helping to dig through rubble and recover decaying bodies and attending ‘about 14 funerals in 3 days.’131 In newsreel footage of the recovery mission, Shaw can be seen supervising the rescue work, his visage stony and brooding.132 The Chief Secretary also remained in touch with London, briefing them on casualties and continued rescue efforts – a truly morbid task. Three days after the bombing he informed the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Arthur Creech-Jones, that although 63 people were confirmed dead in the blast, ‘hope of rescue must now be abandoned and most of the missing are presumably dead.’133 It is hard to even comprehend the sorrow, anger, and pain Shaw must have felt in writing this note to London, effectively having to admit that scores of his friends and colleagues were lying dead under the rubble of their offices. To add to the mental strain, Shaw also took it upon himself to write to the families of those who had died, a task perhaps made a little easier by the fact that each letter was printed with only the name of the family and Shaw’s signature being added in pen. As the letter noted, the use of a more generic 129 Quoted in Hoffman, Anonymous Soldiers, pp. 298. 130 Stubbs, Palestine Story, pp. 61. 131 Quoted in Sherman, Mandate Days, pp. 182. 132 ‘World Pictorial News,’ Ministry of Information (filmed 12th August 1946): https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/1060007244 (11th November 2023) 133 John Shaw, ‘telegram from Shaw to Secretary of State,’ 27th July 1946, MEC, St Antony’s, Cunningham Papers, I/2. 139 printed letter was a sad necessity since ‘the numbers to be written are, alas, so great that in present circumstances, as you will understand, it is out of the question for me to write to all individually.’134 In his oral testimony to the Imperial War Museum in 1989, seven years after Shaw’s death, Rymer-Jones described his intense dislike of the Chief Secretary with a depth of feeling which comes across strongly in his recollections. The Inspector General of the PPF held Shaw responsible for the death of a number of his men who were killed when they came under fire from the Irgun from a building across from their police station.135 Rymer-Jones’s request to requisition the building had been turned down by Shaw on the grounds that it would go against attempts to restore ‘normality’ in Palestine.136 Rymer-Jones even went so far as to say that his men were ‘killed by the Chief Secretary.’137 On top of this, the former Inspector General also lays the blame for the King David Hotel bombing partly at Shaw’s feet, stating that his own attempts to improve security at the site in the months leading up to the attack were stifled by Shaw.138 Indeed, despite multiple warnings about security at the hotel, the site had remained under-guarded and vulnerable, despite Shaw’s insistence that the relevant precautions were in place.139 Despite this visceral dislike, Rymer-Jones notes that he ended up writing friendly letters to Shaw after the attack, recognizing he had been badly affected by the event. The Chief Secretary, he asserts, was a ‘tormented’ man, the trauma of what had happened driving him ‘almost crackers.’140 The account of General Evelyn Barker, the General Officer Commanding (GOC) of British forces in Palestine, concurs with the Inspector General’s recollections. In a 134Papers of Sir John Valentine W. Shaw, Bodleian Library, Oxford, GB 161 MSS. Brit. Emp. s. 456 (5). 135 Interview with John Rymer-Jones conducted by Peter Hart, IWM, 1989, Reel 20, 22:40. 136 Interview with John Rymer-Jones conducted by Peter Hart, IWM, 1989, Reel 20, 21:14. 137 Interview with John Rymer-Jones conducted by Peter Hart, IWM, 1989, Reel 20, 27:44. 138 Interview with John Rymer-Jones conducted by Peter Hart, IWM, 1989, Reel 21, 07:52. 139 Interview with John Rymer-Jones conducted by Peter Hart, IWM, 1989, Reel 21, 07:52; A.J. Kellar ‘copy of telegram from Kellar to Isham,’ 17th January 1946 MEC, St Antony’s, Cunningham Papers, I/2; A.J. Kellar, ‘report of Visit by Mr A. J. Kellar To The Middle East,’ TNA, KV 4/384, pp. 18. 140 Interview with John Rymer-Jones conducted by Peter Hart, IWM, 1989, Reel 21, 11:10-11:42. 140 private letter to an army friend, Barker noted that Shaw was ‘on the verge of a breakdown as the result of this latest outrage and losing so many of his old friends.’141 These concerns were noted by Cunningham, Shaw’s immediate superior, who, despite Shaw’s reluctance to go, found a way to have the Chief Secretary sent home. Sending him to London at the end of July to explain the situation in Palestine to the Government, Cunningham advised Shaw not to return, telling him ‘it was my intention to send him home as he had had enough of Palestine and hinted that it would be best if he did not come back this time.’ Shaw, however, insisted on returning so as not to be seen to run away and abandon his colleagues, towards whom it is clear he felt a great duty – a duty he felt was even greater after the King David attack. Although he admitted to Cunningham that the rescue operations had been ‘heart breaking and arduous’ it is clear that he planned to carry on with his duties.142 Writing to the Colonial Office in early August 1946, Cunningham asked Creech Jones to intercede and try and prevent Shaw from returning to Palestine. Shaw was, Cunningham wrote, ‘naturally very shaken by the King David event and when he left I felt he was living on his nerves.’143 Matters were made more complicated by the presence of Shaw’s wife and two sons who had flown out to Palestine to visit him that Summer. Nevertheless, Cunningham felt that Shaw had to be sent home for both his mental and physical wellbeing. For, as well as his deteriorating mental condition, Cunningham was also acutely aware that Lehi intended to assassinate Shaw.144 In the end it was this threat that was used to ensure Shaw’s departure from Palestine. Shaw was thus flown out from Cairo on 13th September 1946, with news of his departure only being 141 Quoted in: Sherman, Mandate Days, pp. 184. 142 John Shaw, ‘letter from John Shaw to High Commissioner,’ 15th August 1946, Bodleian Library, papers of Sir John Valentine W. Shaw, GB 161 MSS. Brit. Emp. s. 456 (5). 143 Alan Cunningham, ‘telegraph from High Commissioner to Secretary of State, 03rd August 1946, MEC, St Antony’s, Cunningham Papers, I/2. 144 Alan Cunningham, ‘telegraph from High Commissioner to Secretary of State,’ 3rd August 1946, MEC, St Antony’s, Cunningham Papers, I/2; Alan Cunningham, ‘telegraph from High Commissioner to Secretary of State,’ 12th September 1946, MEC, St Antony’s, Cunningham Papers, I/2. 141 released afterwards in order to protect him from any farewell gift the Lehi might seek to impart. As an extra precaution, he was to travel under the name of Mr. J. V. Robertson rather than his own.145 He and his family had spent their last few weeks in the country as the High Commissioner’s ‘guest’ at the highly guarded Government House, moving out of the detached villa Sir John usually occupied.146 The official reason given for the Chief Secretary’s departure was ‘urgent private affairs.’147 Yet it was Shaw’s fragile mental state and the physical risk posed to him by Jewish terrorism which ended the experienced colonial administrator’s long stint in Palestine. Britain Loses Control This attrition of such skilled and highly knowledgeable British personnel was a constant problem for the British in Palestine. Already understaffed, the British administration was vulnerable to attacks on long term personnel whose expertise were irreplaceable. Some of these, such as Shaw, Raymond Cafferata – the police District Commander in Haifa, and Geoffrey Morton – the PPF member who had shot Stern dead in February 1942, had to be sent home as threats on their lives by the Irgun and Lehi meant they were unable to work freely or effectively.148 Others, such as Sir John Gutch and Robert Newton – senior members of the secretariat who had been caught up in the King David attack – chose to leave rather than stay on any longer once their time in Palestine was up.149 They had little reason to extend their contracts after what they had seen and experienced. 145 Papers of Sir John Valentine W. Shaw, Bodleian Library, GB 161 MSS. Brit. Emp. s. 456 (5). 146 Papers of Sir John Valentine W. Shaw, Bodleian Library, GB 161 MSS. Brit. Emp. s. 456 (5). 147 Alan Cunningham, ‘telegraph from High Commissioner to Secretary of State,’ 12th September 1946, MEC, St Antony’s, Cunningham Papers, I/2. 148 Hoffman, Anonymous Soldiers, pp. 251. 149 Stubbs, Palestine Story, pp. 69. 142 Others were less fortunate altogether. Assistant Superintendent Thomas James Wilkin who worked for the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) was assassinated by the Lehi in September 1944 in revenge for the killing of Avraham Stern, an event at which – although the details and exact circumstances of Stern’s death remain disputed – Wilkin was present alongside Morton. Whereas Morton had left the country, Wilkins had stayed and thus paid the price. This was huge blow for the CID, PPF, and the administration more widely. Wilkin was a ‘walking archive,’ as Eldad Harouvi, historian of the Palestine CID puts it.150 He had been in Palestine since 1931, had a good understanding of the internal politics of the Yishuv, was on good terms with a number of key Jewish figures in the country, and – importantly for a force which had a significant language problem151 – spoke Hebrew (a skill he had learnt from his partner Shoshana Borochov, daughter of the legendary Zionist figure Dov Ber Borochov).152 This was a blow the CID never really recovered from. The loss of a policeman who had over a decade of experience in Palestine was a significant loss for Richard Catling – the Assistant Inspector General in Jerusalem who headed the CID – who prized experience and ‘steadiness’ above all else in colonial policing.153 Wilkin certainly met these criteria, whilst newer recruits, as we have seen, did not. Experts in counterterrorism were a rare breed in Palestine (compounding Britain’s problems in getting to grips with the Irgun and Lehi), and the assassination of a single one was a huge loss to Britain’s ability to counter Jewish terrorism. The detective Thomas G. Martins was one such expert, gunned down by Lehi on a tennis court in Haifa in the Autumn of 1946.154 He had dealt Lehi a serious blow two months earlier when, during a cordon and search operation 150 Harouvi, Palestine Investigated, pp. 129. 151 Interview with Richard Charles Catling conducted by Conrad Wood, IWM, September 1988, Reel 3, 02:35. 152 Harouvi, Palestine Investigated, pp. 129. 153 Interview with Richard Charles Catling conducted by Conrad Wood, IWM September 1988, Reel 9, 15:00. 154 Sherman, Mandate Days, pp. 186. 143 in Tel Aviv, he had recognized Yitzhak Shamir, despite the Lehi leader’s Rabbinic disguise. Britain had scored an important success, but in identifying Shamir, Martin had ‘signed his own death warrant’ as Shamir chillingly put it in an interview over three decades later.155 Between 1945 and 1947 then, attrition was depriving the British administration of members who had experience with dealing with Palestinian matters, and who knew the people, culture, and languages far better than any of the new recruits. The loss of men such as Wilkin, possessing the requisite language skills to engage with the Yishuv, was a loss that was not easy to repair. As Nicol Grey put it, ‘you can’t suddenly recruit a lot of police efficiently into a multi language society.’ And as he noted ‘a British constable who doesn’t speak Hebrew isn’t going to get very far.’156 Most new recruits had perhaps a few words of Arabic, but nearly no Hebrew. One soldier noted that ‘in my three years [in Palestine] I learned many phrases in Arabic but the only Jewish word I really learned was “Shalom.”’157 Judging by the available testimonies, this was fairly common across all ranks of the PPF and army, meaning that the loss of even a single Hebrew speaker had a great impact upon the administrations grasp of what was going on in the Yishuv. And although many British personnel did not possess the linguistic skillset of someone like Wilkin, their loss – through injury, death, or departure from Palestine – was still a significant blow, leaving the administration short of skilled staff, who had experience of governing Palestine, and who were used to responding to terror as calmly and competently as they could. After the departure of Shaw, Newton, Sir John Gutch, and others, Richard Stubbs - the Government’s Press Information Officer, found his two years’ service in Palestine made him amongst the longest serving members of the secretariat.158 The CID meanwhile lost several 155 Nicholas Bethell, The Palestine Triangle: The Struggle Between the British, The Jews, and the Arabs, 1935-48 (London: Andrew Deutch, 1979), pp. 277. 156 Charters, The British Army and Jewish Insurgency in Palestine, 1945-1947, pp. 159. 157 Webb, Epitaph for an Army of Peacekeepers, pp. 13. 158 Stubbs, Palestine Story, pp. 69. 144 senior men with Wilkin, John Scott – the head of the Arab section (shot by the Irgun on 23rd March 1944 during an attack on the CID headquarters), Albert Edward Conquest – head of the Haifa branch (assassinated by Lehi on 26th April 1947), and Albert Musgrave who had been a senior member of the department before his death in the King David Hotel bombing, all being killed within three years.159 Richard Catling was lucky not to meet the same fate as Musgrave. He had been in Musgrave’s office minutes before and was returning to it when the blast went off.160 Thus, the Irgun and Lehi were depriving the British of some of their most senior – and most experienced – figures in the administration and police force. Attrition was compounded by severe recruitment problems. As we have already seen, the PPF was well below quota whilst the civil service also suffered problems recruiting staff to serve in Palestine.161 Palestine was an unattractive prospect to any would-be Imperial policeman or administrator. Meanwhile, those that did go to Palestine could hardly be expected to bring with them the wealth of experience or in-depth knowledge that their predecessors had developed over many years. As Motti Golani has noted, ‘every position in Palestine in this difficult period […] demanded a fusion of mental fortitude, managerial ability and an impressive résumé.’162 These attributes were in short supply among willing recruits. Policemen such as Wilkin had been able to do such a good job by being embedded within the Yishuv and interacting with it on a daily basis. As violence rose however, British personnel in Jerusalem - the country’s administrative capital - retreated to well-guarded camps behind the safety of barbed wire, erected in August 1946, the largest of which was based around the Russian Compound (the headquarters of the CID), and which were widely dubbed 159 Harouvi, Palestine Investigated, pp. 177. 160 Interview with Richard Charles Catling conducted by Conrad Wood, IWM September 1988, Reel 4, 09:33 & 13:28. 161 Motti Golani, Palestine Between Politics and Terror, 1945-1947 (Waltham: Brandeis University Press, 2013), pp. 200. 162 Golani, Palestine Between Politics and Terror, pp. 148. 145 ‘Bevingrads’, a portmanteau of the name of Britain’s Foreign Secretary and Russia’s war time fortified cities of Leningrad and Stalingrad.163 The fortifications were thrown up hastily during a sixteen day curfew of Jerusalem after the King David Hotel bombing. Many Jewish residents must have been shocked to find that the British had been so busy during the just over two weeks that members of the Yishuv had spent under curfew in the city.164 ‘Congratulations,’ Teddy Kollek - at that time a Haganah intelligence operative – quipped to a British officer, ‘you have finally succeeded in rounding yourselves up.’165 He had a good point. Senior British staff, including General Barker, moved into adjacent properties within the security cordon with buildings hastily requisitioned from the Yishuv. Many of them would remain here behind two sets of steel fencing, coils of barbed wire, guarded by heavily armed British soldiers who patrolled the compounds, until the Mandate came to an end.166 Elsewhere, the situation was similar. The District Commissioner for Gaza-Beersheba left his house for the police headquarters at Gaza and was living ‘behind simply masses of barbed wire and Bren guns.’167 But that matters should have reached such a point in Jerusalem in particular, the administrative capital, is a stark indication of just how badly the situation had deteriorated by the summer of 1946. Although offering greater security, such arrangements were impractical for running an administration, with policing and intelligence in particular suffering. The confinement of policemen to these heavily fortified zones was ‘the very antithesis of police reasoning and conception,’ as one PPF member later described, stripping the police of any chance of regaining the initiative in the fight against terror.168 163 Hoffman, Anonymous Soldiers, pp. 317-318. 164 Hoffman, Anonymous Soldiers, pp. 317-318. 165 Quoted in Monty Noam Penkower, Palestine to Israel: Mandate to State, 1945-1948 (Volume I: Rebellion Launched, 1945-1948) (New York: Touro University Press, 2019), pp. 302. 166 Hoffman, Anonymous Soldiers, pps.317-8; Gale, Call to Arms, pp. 167. 167 Ivan Lloyd Phillips, ‘letter to his father,’ 17th January 1947, Bodleian Library, Papers of Ivan Lloyd Phillips, MSS. Brit. Emp. s. 499. 168 Horne, A Job Well Done, pp. 568. 146 Both the PPF and the military found themselves cut off from their sources in the community and unable to collect intelligence freely. Human intelligence had ‘helped us immensely’ as one PPF member put it, describing how information would be passed between the PPF and the military.169 Yet, with the creation of the Bevingrads such information became harder and harder to acquire. As a security officer in Haifa described, ‘you can’t operate the sort of operation that I was supposed to do freely under those circumstances.’170 It was hard in these conditions to ascertain the reliability of information, or to offer the requisite protection for Jewish sources in the Yishuv. Another PPF member summed up the whole matter: ‘A policeman who cannot mix with the population he’s working with is useless.’171 Even when policemen and military personnel did go out into the Yishuv, they weren’t able to mix freely. The frequenting of Jewish cafés, restaurants, and other venues – already fraught with risk – was now further circumscribed by orders to only go out in groups, and always in uniform and armed in the wake of the King David Hotel bombing.172 As one policeman summed up, ‘going into a café with a uniform and rifle, or a Webley Scott 45 hanging down from your trouser belts was not conducive to good relations.’173 For most policemen, face-to-face contact with the population was decreased through the use of armoured trucks which were used to patrol, replacing foot patrols.174 This was despite the recommendations of Sir Charles Wickham, a former commander and inspector general of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, who Cunningham had asked to review the force in late 1946. 169 Interview with James Barnard Buckmaster conducted by Conrad Wood, IWM, 26th January 1988, Reel 1, 25:15. 170 Interview with Thomas Newman conducted by Conrad Wood, IWM, 3rd October 1990, Reel 4, 09:45. 171 Interview of Michael Burke conducted by Conrad Wood, IWM, 20th February 1988, Reel 1, 23:40. 172 Interview with Francis Leon Collett conducted by Conrad Wood, IWM, 28th July 1998, Reel 1, 28:20; Interview with James Barnard Buckmaster conducted by Conrad Wood, IWM, 26th January 1988, Reel 1, 27:00; Interview of Michael Burke conducted by Conrad Wood, IWM, 20th February 1988, Reel 1, 07:25 & 12:22; A. J. Sherman, Mandate Days, pp. 188. 173 Interview with Martin Duchesne conducted by Nick Kardahji, MECA, St Antony’s College, 23rd March 2007, Martin Duchesne collection GB165-0390. Transcript, pp. 7. 174 Interview with Roy Leadbeater conducted by Eugene Rogan, MECA, St Antony’s College, 22nd May 2007, Roy Leadbeater collection GB165-0412. Transcript, pp. 19. 147 Wickham had advised that ‘motorised fighting police alienate the public,’ and could be ‘no substitute for a foot patrol.’175 Although the advice was well founded, some such as PPF member Edward Horne noted, perhaps not unfairly, that Wickham’s aversion to armed patrols ‘was to some extent strange in a man whose entire police experience was in Northern Ireland with the armed R.U.C.’176 Yet, as the situation in Palestine deteriorated, the PPF was nevertheless increasingly reliant on its armoured vehicles. However, these trucks did not in and of themselves reduce the risk of casualties. Indeed, they often became targets themselves, the Irgun and Lehi mining roads in order to destroy them and kill their crew.177 As if British personnel needed another reminder of the constant danger they faced in Palestine, the administration issued military and police personnel with a pamphlet entitled ‘Terrorist Methods With Mines and Booby Traps,’ to educate soldiers and PPF members with a comforting illustration of a British Jeep and its two occupants being blown sky high by a land mine.178 Civilian administrators also faced great limits on their movement, always escorted by armed personnel. As Fletcher-Cooke described, ‘my life and work in Jerusalem, like those of every other Government Officer, were severely circumscribed. Armed guards accompanied me to my Jewish dentist for treatment; armed guards patrolled the main shopping area for an hour or two on certain days, which were the only times we could visit the shops and banks; and travelling outside of Jerusalem was only permitted with armed escorts travelling in a Land Rover, except in a few predominantly Arab areas where there was little risk of encountering 175 Charles Wickham, ‘report by Sir Charles Wickham to Chief Secretary Palestine Government,’ 2nd December 1946, TNA, CO 537/2269. 176 Horne, A Job Well Done, pp. 562. 177 Interview with James Common conducted by Conrad Wood, IWM, 10th December 2001, Reel 2, 22:08; Interview with Frederick Gilbert Edwards conducted by Conrad Wood, IWM, August 1988, Reel 4, 25:10. 178 “Palestine Pamphlet: Terrorist Methods with Mines and Booby Traps,” December 1946, MECA St Antony’s College, Frederick Albert Felgate Collection GB165-0546: See figure 1 in the appendix. 148 Jewish terrorists.’179 Despite the efforts of Henry Gurney, Shaw’s successor as Chief Secretary, to provide light entertainment and social occasions for his personnel, Fletcher Cooke notes that he ‘rarely left the [German] Hospice in the evenings,’ instead remaining in his billet there.180 There was not even the prospect of seeking comfort in the embrace of family life, even on the purely domestic front. In a tacit admission of impotence against terror, the British Administration decided to activate Operation Polly, announced in February 1947, which entailed sending the vast majority of the dependents of British personnel back to Britain. Cunningham was deeply aware that such a move would be severely damaging to the morale of British personnel. Such plans had been mooted on several occasions, but never carried out.181 In drawing up fresh plans in 1946 Cunningham urged his seniors to ensure that ‘the fact that such a plan exists is kept on the Top Secret level’ knowing full well the impact there would be had the plan became known.182 Indeed, it was difficult for the administration even to plan the evacuation for this reason. As Cunningham cabled to Creech Jones, ‘for reasons of morale and owing to the necessity for maintaining secrecy I am afraid it will not be possible at this stage to make the enquiries which would be necessary to form even an approximate estimate of those families without homes to receive them in the United Kingdom.’183 When the operation was finally put into action the following year, Cunningham’s concerns over morale proved well founded. The British Director of the Department of Antiquities in Palestine bemoaned ‘the great and lamentable emigration of the families’ that the operation entailed. In a seeming mixture of anger and disappointment he condemned the 179 From The compulsive ‘Cuppa’ [unpublished], MECA, St Antony’s College, in the Fletcher-Cooke Collection GB165-0107, pp. 4. 180 Ibid. pp. 11. 181 Golani, Palestine Between Politics and Terror, pp. 187. 182 Alan Cunningham, ‘telegram from High Commissioner to Ambassador, Cairo and Secretary of State,’ 9th August 1946, MEC, St Antony’s, Cunningham Papers, I/2, 183 Alan Cunningham, ‘telegram from High Commissioner to Secretary of State,’ 17th August 1946, MEC, St Antony’s, Cunningham Papers, I/2, 149 message the evacuation of these families sent out. ‘What a culmination of 25 years of British administration for a British Government to proclaim publicly that it cannot be responsible for protecting its own women and children.’184 Operation Polly particularly affected civil servants and administrators in Palestine, with the majority of the evacuees being their spouses and dependents.185 Gurney’s efforts to improve morale and retain a semblance of business-as-usual could only go so far in these circumstances. Profoundly affected by their service in Palestine, and now stuck behind barbed wire fencing and without their families, the morale of British personnel in Palestine plummeted further and further, with many feeling utterly useless. Finding his intelligence operations in Haifa increasingly impossible, the intelligence officer mentioned earlier was so dispirited that he decided to close his office and apply for demobilization.186 ‘I’d outlived my purpose,’ he noted.187 Elsewhere, this sense of uselessness appeared in physically stark terms to soldiers on the ground after Irgun and Lehi attacks. After the March 1947 attack on the Haifa Oil Refinery by Lehi, military bases in the vicinity were given extra security in the form of additional soldiers and patrols, though this merely drew further attention to British impotence. Gus O’Brien, a British soldier, was stationed by the perimeter fence whilst about 100 yards away stood one of the only oil tanks that had not been blown up. As he recalled, ‘every other tank in the oil depot was either burning furiously or emitting volumes of thick black smoke.’188 Images of the attack show these plumes of black smoke above the city – a strikingly visible sign of Britain’s failure to 184 R.W.Hamilton, ‘letter to his wife,’ 4th Feb. 1947, in Letters From the Middle East of an Occasional Archaeologist (Durham, Pentland Press, 1992). 185 Hoffman, Anonymous Soldiers, pp. 380. 186 Interview with Thomas Newman conducted by Conrad Wood, IWM, 3rd October 1990, Reel 4, 10:30. 187 Interview with Thomas Newman conducted by Conrad Wood, IWM, 3rd October 1990, Reel 4, 11:25. 188 Lowe, Forgotten Conscripts, pp. 88. 150 protect even its most important infrastructure.189 Meanwhile, extra patrols were of little use. As O’Brien notes, ‘I wondered “Why were we there?” I could hardly be a deterrent.’190 Stripped of the initiative and increasingly unsure of their role or purpose in the country, many of the British personnel in Palestine saw their morale slump whilst discipline began to increasingly fray. Lt-Col. Colin Mitchell, so proud of the discipline of his Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders, found it ‘heart breaking’ to be told by one of his soldiers that some of his men were deserting. He tracked them down to a goods train headed for Egypt and ensured they received severe court martials.191 Yet the phenomenon of desertion continued apace as the Mandate drew to its inglorious end, with up to 200 British soldiers alone deserting to various Arab forces including Glubb Pasha’s Arab Legion.192 Perhaps more embarrassing to Britain though, was the number of personnel going AWOL and outbreaks of violence led by military personnel and PPF members, all precipitated by Jewish terrorist attacks. As the cumulative effect of terror began to bite and feeling a sense of impotence at their inability to strike back adequately at Jewish terrorists, soldiers and PPF members increasingly targeted ordinary Jews and the vague geographical areas from which perpetrators were assumed to have come in the aftermath of acts of terror. Although Bruce Hoffman, in his history of the Irgun, states that acts of ‘naked vigilantism were comparatively rare in Palestine,’ it is quite remarkable how many acts of vicarious retribution were actually perpetrated across the Mandate in this period.193 With no political solution in sight, and lacking access to the level of intelligence needed to counter the Revolt (both due to the retreat behind the fences of the Bevingrads, and the loss of experienced men like Wilkin and Martin) British 189 ‘Haifa Oil Refinery Attack,’ Jabotinsky Institute In Israel, PH 10041: see figures 2 & 3 in the appendix. 190 Lowe, Forgotten Conscripts, pp. 88. 191 Mitchell, Having Been A Soldier, pp. 69-70. 192 Christopher Caden & Nir Arielli, “British Army and Palestine Police Deserters and the Arab–Israeli War of 1948,” War In History 28/1 (2021), pp. 200-222. 193 Hoffman, Anonymous Soldiers, pp. 459. 151 soldiers and policemen sought to administer doses of rough justice to the Yishuv whom they held responsible for terrorist attacks. Most outbursts of army and police violence came in the aftermath of particularly brutal attacks such as the shooting of unarmed soldiers from the 6th Airborne Division in a car park in Tel Aviv on 25th April 1946, which led to a group of soldiers from the Division rampaging in Netanya and Beer Tuvya, ransacking homes and beating any Jews they came across. Although the perpetrators were swiftly punished, an intelligence report stated that, worryingly, the soldiers’ actions ‘were generally sympathised with or even applauded’ by their comrades.194 Similarly, the killing of the two sergeants led policemen in Tel Aviv to go AWOL, attacking a café in the city centre and killing five civilians, whilst armoured cars opened fire on two buses.195 A court of enquiry set up by the new Inspector General, Nicol Gray, met a wall of silence from the colleagues of policemen it was investigating and crucial evidence was destroyed or tampered with, preventing it from charging seven policemen with murder, assault, theft, and vandalism.196 This conspiracy of silence lasted until the grave for some. Even in interviews over fifty years later, PPF members demonstrated a remarkable ability to protect their own and a refusal to speak ‘on the record’ about some actions by their fellow British policemen.197 To compound issues, in some cases, official records relating to troop and PPF actions remain sealed. Despite repeated attempts to gain access to a file at the National Archives relating to three PPF men who had deserted and attacked the Jewish settlement of Neve Yaakov (not far from Jerusalem) in March 1948, and whose sentences were later either reduced or commuted, the records 194 ‘HQ South Palestine District, Intelligence Summary 1,’ 11th May 1946, TNA, WO 169/23057. 195 Interview with Francis Mark Russell conducted by Eugene Rogan, MECA, St Antony’s College, 16th May 2006, Francis Mark Russell collection GB165-0396. Transcript, pp. 10-11; JTA, “Four Jews Killed, Many Injured when British Police Riot in Tel Aviv,” 1st August 1947: https://www.jta.org/archive/four-jews-killed-many-injured-when-british-police-riot-in-tel-aviv (19th December 2023) 196 Brutton, A Captain’s Mandate Palestine 1946-48, pp. 102. 197 Interview with Gerald Green conducted by Eugene Rogan, MECA, St Antony’s College, 9th October 2006, Gerald Green collection GB165-0404, Transcript, pp. 27. 152 remain sealed until 2032.198 Nevertheless, stories repeatedly appeared in the press – especially in America as a subsequent chapter will demonstrate – relating to acts of violence by troops, including by those who had gone AWOL. These news reports were often resented by British personnel who felt that, given the circumstances, troops and PPF men were behaving remarkably well, with the Government Information Officer noting that such events were merely manipulated by ‘the adroit manufacturers of atrocity stories’ for their own political ends.199 It did not just take major, or particularly deplorable acts of terror to trigger soldiers and policemen to go AWOL either. As one PPF member remarked of unauthorized British retaliations after terror attacks, ‘the national ones, the ones that hit the press headlines, okay they affect everybody. But the ones that perhaps are most violent are where it relates directly to the people who were connected to those who were killed or wounded.’200 This observation certainly seems true based on the available evidence. After a vehicle struck a mine in Tel Aviv on 17th November 1946, killing three policeman and an RAF sergeant and wounding four other PPF members, the policemen’s colleagues attacked a café on Hayarkon Street in Tel Aviv, smashing the place up and beating its patrons. They also stole and set alight or otherwise damaged six vehicles.201 The violence continued the next day after an army sapper was killed trying to defuse an explosive device. Police personnel again went AWOL, this time committing more widespread acts of vandalism as well as numerous cases of assault which led to the hospitalization of five Jews.202 198 ‘POLICE: Arthur Edward Ahehurst: Colonial Office ask for observations on reducing sentence passed on ex-Palestine policeman; prisoner later informed sentence reduced,’ TNA, HO 45/23911. For information on the attack see “British Deserters Seized with Arabs”, New York Times, 11th March 1948. 199 Stubbs, Palestine Story, pp.30, 43. 200 Interview with Francis Mark Russell conducted by Eugene Rogan, MECA, St Antony’s College, 16th May 2006, Francis Mark Russell collection GB165-0396. Transcript, pp. 11. 201 Hoffman, Anonymous Soldiers, pp. 347. 202 Ibid. pp. 347. 153 Even injuries to individuals that were not life-threatening could cause soldiers to turn out and commit acts of violence at times. The flogging on 29th December 1946 of a popular Brigade Major, who had been abducted at a restaurant in Netanya led to the ‘frustration and pent-up fury’ of soldiers being released – feelings had ‘boiled over.’203 ‘The camp, virtually in its entirety, just turned out and marched down the road,’ described one soldier, where they proceeded to ransack Jewish homes and businesses and overturn cars.204 Although a select few soldiers were court-martialled, the police were powerless to punish all the perpetrators. As the same soldier above summed up ‘you can’t sentence an entire camp of over a thousand men.’205 As well as their recollections and letters, this sense of low morale and bitterness at the situation British personnel faced in Palestine can also be traced through the literature they created – especially poems written by soldiers around this time. Often written as a form of protest to the decisions of leaders or as a commentary on the nature or condition of war, poetry has often been used by those in conflict situations, reaching its literary and critical apotheosis in the works of the poets of the First World War. Yet this literary tradition continued into the Second World War and found expression in Palestine as well. These were often full of bitterness and demonstrated the jaded attitude of British personnel. One popular poem, entitled A Soldier’s Will, circulated amongst British soldiers. In an alternative rhyme scheme, the poem presents the fictionalised last advice of a young soldier killed by a Jewish terrorist to his comrades. The last stanza, where this advice is given, reads: ‘Put a bomb in the Agency building, Wipe the synagogues all off the Earth, 203 Interview with Alfred William George Weatherley conducted by Conrad Wood, IWM 2nd March 1988, Reel 5, 12:53. 204 Interview with Alfred William George Weatherley conducted by Conrad Wood, IWM 2nd March 1988, Reel 5, 12:20. 205 Interview with Alfred William George Weatherley conducted by Conrad Wood, IWM 2nd March 1988, Reel 5, 13:54. 154 Make every damned son of Zion, Regret the day of his birth.’ 206 Whilst the advice may be fictive, the sentiments behind it very clearly were not judging by the vitriol in the poem and its widespread popularity. When they were goaded by Jews during arms searches or in the course of their duties, British soldiers would sometimes resort to antisemitic responses such as ‘what we need is gas chambers,’ or ‘Hitler didn’t finish the job.’207 Antisemitism rose as terrorist incidents increased, both among the rank and file, but also among senior military figures who sometimes expressed their revulsion quite openly in antisemitic terms. The Commander the First Battalion of the Argyll and Sutherlands, lt. col. Richard Webb, had to be removed from his post after ordering a number of reporters to the scene of an Irgun attack on some of his men which had resulted in eleven British soldiers wounded and one British death. Here he railed that the ‘Jews are a despicable race,’ whose women ‘bulged in all the wrong places.’208 Others, such as Barker, were criticized by an embarrassed Government for internal comments which were supposedly ‘restricted.’ Justifying his non-fraternization order in the aftermath of the bombing of the King David hotel, Barker stated the move would be fitting, ‘punishing the Jews in a way their race dislike as much as any, namely by striking at their pockets and showing our contempt of them.’209 The paper was duly leaked to the American press and Barker only narrowly kept his job. Richard Stubbs was shocked when an officer came to speak to him about a routine matter and then proceeded ‘to let off such a spate of anti-semitic demagogy that I had to order 206 Quoted in Hoffman, Anonymous Soldiers, pp. 260. 207 Hoffman, Anonymous Soldiers, pp. 282. 208 ‘Interview with Lieutenant Colonel Richard Webb,’ 24th October 1946, S 25/6910, CZA. 209 Evelyn Barker, ‘Order of the Day,’ 25th July 1946, MEC, St Antony’s, Cunningham Papers, V/4. 155 him out of my office.’210 The officer had never shown a trace of antisemitic feeling before, but after the death of two friends in an explosion he suddenly spewed forth incredibly racist views. As Stubbs noted with some concern, ‘subsequent comments by others left no doubt that this officer […] was not alone in this revulsion against Jews as a result of the acts of their terrorists.’211 Stubbs was not the only one concerned about the rising antisemitism that terror in Palestine was engendering. As subsequent chapters shall explore, the Government in Britain was also deeply disturbed by this phenomenon. As well as expressing antisemitism, another poem summed up the feeling of many soldiers and policemen, that they had little to show for their time in Palestine. Entitled Exodus, it tells of a British soldier returning to the UK: ‘Unburdened of his long captivity Having no golden spoils of usury, Not even one bright orange in his hand.’212 The impression of service in Palestine as ‘captivity’ and the evident relief of the fictionalised serviceman to be back in Britain after his service, and desire never ‘once more to be in Palestine’ are clear indicators of the collapse of morale in these final years of British rule in Palestine.213 Through continuous and unpredictable violence, the Irgun and Lehi had broken the spirit of British personnel, leaving many permanently mentally scarred. In response to these attacks, the British had retreated behind barbed wire, unable to attend to their jobs properly or to respond to terrorism. No wonder that discipline collapsed, and morale sank ever lower. By 210 Stubbs, Palestine Story, pp. 97. 211 Stubbs, Palestine Story, pp. 97. 212 Quoted in Lowe, Forgotten Conscripts, pp. 224. 213 Ibid. pp. 224. 156 late 1947, British personnel could no longer properly administer the country. In the words of one former PPF member, the Mandate had become – to return us to the anatine metaphors of the first chapter – a ‘dead duck.’214 Security precautions, though necessary, were increasingly prescriptive and laborious. Senior staff often had to take a different route into work every day and were surrounded by security personnel who, though there to protect them, hampered their ability to work freely or interact meaningfully with the Yishuv.215 In any case, the evacuation or figures like Barker, Shaw, and Cafferata, as well as the implementation of Operation Polly proved that Britain could still not be sure of protecting its personnel. The Palestine Government and the majority of its administrative branches were no longer able to function as they were meant to, whilst, without a political solution, future prospects for the country looked bleak. ‘I’m very pessimistic about the future,’ noted one civil servant, ‘I can only see an endless vista of unrelieved bloodshed.’216 Even the smallest things could set off major security alerts, sometimes without any cause, in the final years of British rule in Palestine. Waving a lorry load of paratroopers who were coming to enjoy a cinema screening through the gates of his camp, a guard on gate duty panicked when he heard some of them speaking in a foreign language. Fearing he had just let Jewish terrorists into the camp he informed his commander who had the cinema surrounded by off guard soldiers with Bren guns and evacuated. The infiltrating Jewish terrorists, it turned out, were no more than a handful of Danish paratroopers.217 These were men who had actively joined up to the British forces during the Second World War, both to fight the Nazis and as an expression of gratitude for Britain’s liberation of their country in May 1945.218 This (literal) 214 Horne, A Job Well Done, pp. 571. 215 Interview with Charles Richard Warrens Norman conducted by Conrad Wood, IWM, 19th August 1985, Reel 3, 13:10; Horne, A Job Well Done, pp. 476. 216 Quoted in: Sherman, Mandate Days, pp. 186. 217 Lowe, Forgotten Conscripts, pp. 103. 218 Interview with David Alan Talbot Baines conducted by Conrad Wood, IWM, 3rd February 2000, Reel 3, 27:38. 157 theatre of the absurd was simply not sustainable physically, financially, or indeed emotionally. The U.S. Consul General in Jerusalem summed up the matter in a report to Washington on May 22nd 1947: ‘One cannot escape the conclusion that the Government of Palestine is a hunted organization with little hope of ever being able to cope with conditions in this country as they exist today.’219 It was a sentiment Cunningham was to concede to London three months later, writing that, ‘I cannot guarantee that the situation will not deteriorate to such a degree that Civil Government will break down and as you know it is by no means clear how much longer I can keep the Civil Service working under conditions such as exist at present.’220 Conclusion The abrupt end to the Mandate in Palestine nonetheless came as a shock to many British personnel. When he had arrived in Palestine in 1944, PPF officer Joseph Adolph thought the Mandate would provide him with a secure job for ‘at least a reasonable number of years.’221 Even some of those who had been keeping a close eye on deliberations at the UN and in Parliament were surprised by the decision. Richard Catling, the Inspector General of the CID, recalled how ‘I didn’t really assimilate the fact that there could be a thumbs down decision on continuing the Mandate.’222 Afterall, Britain was still used to seeing large parts of the globe covered in red, including Palestine. As one former PPF member put it ‘I thought the 219 Quoted in: Hoffman, Anonymous Soldiers, pp.415. 220 Alan Cunningham, ‘telegram from Cunningham to Secretary of State,’ 7th August 1947, MEC, St Antony’s College, Oxford, Cunningham Papers, II/2. 221 Interview with Joseph Albert Stanislaus Adolph conducted by Conrad Wood, IWM, 26th August 1991, Reel 1, 05:50. 222 Interview with Richard Charles Catling conducted by Conrad Wood, IWM September 1988, Reel 4, 21:24. 158 British Empire would go on forever. I was absolutely sure of this.’223 Still, most were glad to ‘shed the dust of Palestine from their shoes forever.’224 When asked about any sense of having achieved anything in Palestine during oral interviews, few PPF or military personnel gave a positive answer. A few pointed to the maintenance of law and order in the face of the chaos unfolding in the country and the provision of basic services, but other than that, there was little of their service they could feel proud of.225 Frederick Edwards, who had been a PPF officer and later a Non-Commissioned Officer in Palestine, summed up the feeling of many: ‘it was a failure.’226 Many felt they had been ‘let down’ by the politicians.227 As Catling described, ‘that we felt our role, and that of the military, to be to keep the ring [sic] for the politicians whilst they came up with the answers is no cliché. It was our role, and we did our best to play it out effectively.’228 They had held the line in Palestine, often at great personal cost, only to be told they would soon be leaving the country. For some, there was no mission other than completing their national service and emerging unscathed from the ordeal. Asked about any sense of having achieved any sort of mission during his time in Palestine, one former PPF member gave a tongue in cheek answer: ‘I’d done my national service. I hadn’t got a mission in your sense, I hadn’t got a mission. I’d failed to put the Middle East right and I reckoned that a lot of other people were going to have 223 Interview with Roy Leadbeater conducted by Eugene Rogan, MECA, St Antony’s College, 22nd May 2007, Roy Leadbeater collection GB165-0412. Transcript, pp. 32. 224 Horne, A Job Well Done, pp. 305. 225 Lowe, Forgotten Conscripts, pp. 190-191; Interview with Edward Wells conducted by Josie Delap, MECA, St Antony’s College, 27th April 2006, Edward Wells collection GB165-0393. Transcript, pp. 8; Interview with Frederick Gilbert Edwards conducted by Conrad Wood, IWM, August 1988, Reel 4, 00:45; Interview with James Llewelyn Niven conducted by Conrad Wood, IWM 28th September 1988, Reel 1, 25:38. 226 Interview with Frederick Gilbert Edwards conducted by Conrad Wood, IWM, August 1988, Reel 4, 00:45. 227 Interview with Martin Duchesne conducted by Nick Kardahji, MECA, St Antony’s College, 23rd March 200. Martin Duchesne collection GB165-0390. Transcript, pp.15. 228 Interview with Richard Charles Catling conducted by Conrad Wood, IWM September 1988, Reel 5, 00:48. 159 that problem for a few years as well.’229 It was indeed a large ask to require such a group of conscripts and young men to keep law and order in Palestine when faced with dangerous situations on a daily basis and the constant threat of attack. It was a task they simply could not be expected to live up to. Despite many recruits’ relief at being back in Britain, some found their sacrifices and tribulations had gone unnoticed by the general populace, despite the hysteria in Britain over terrorism in Palestine (the subject of the next chapter). Roy Leadbeater was determined to travel home from London first class, wearing his PPF uniform and medal. His appearance caught the eye of a businessman in the coach with him who remarked ‘that’s an odd uniform you’re wearing.’ After being told it was a Palestine Police uniform, the man responded, ‘never heard of them.’230 Leadbeater was left to wonder about the purpose of his service in a force many had never heard of after he’d carried out his duties in some of the most onerous conditions possible for a policeman. Leadbeater’s strong Anglican faith was another casualty of conditions in Palestine. His religious beliefs were ‘shattered’ and ‘I never got over it.’ Speaking in 2007, he described how Jerusalem ‘became not the holy city, but a city of murder and mayhem, just like Baghdad is today.’231 Perhaps he would have been better off if the scrawling he had observed on the PPF recruitment poster had warned him off from joining the force. Many returned home having lost friends and colleagues. For John Tyrrell, one of those losses was tinged with guilt. Having written to a friend about enjoying Palestine after his arrival, he was shocked to find that – unbeknownst to him – the friend had signed up with the PPF. 229 Interview with Francis Mark Russell conducted by Eugene Rogan, MECA, St Antony’s College, 16th May 2006, Francis Mark Russell collection GB165-0396. Transcript, pp. 40. 230 Interview with Roy Leadbeater conducted by Eugene Rogan, MECA, St Antony’s College, 22nd May 2007, Roy Leadbeater collection GB165-0412. Transcript, pp. 36. 231 Interview with Roy Leadbeater conducted by Eugene Rogan, MECA, St Antony’s College, 22nd May 2007, Roy Leadbeater collection GB165-0412. Transcript, pp. 16. 160 Within six months he had been killed – a victim of the Irgun attack on Haifa Police Station in 1947. Tyrrell only learnt of this upon his return home. John Tyrrell struggled to make sense of the losses he had seen and endured. Recalling the shooting of a colleague as he stepped out of his front door one morning, he asked rhetorically, ‘Why should they take him? He was no one special.’232 Oral interviews and memoirs point to a litany of such tragedies, and a long-term impact upon those who served in Palestine. Many went out to Palestine as naïve young men, keen for a sense of adventure, but a good number came back with bitter memories of friends killed in a country which was never safe for them. Many of those returning to Britain had tried to keep the worst from their families in the letters they wrote home. After nearly becoming a victim of an Irgun mine in March 1947 on his way back to camp, Captain Brutton wrote home, ‘please do not worry about me, as everything could not be more peaceful.’233 A young soldier wrote a simple ‘Merry Christmas’ message in his cards home to family, figuring that adding ‘Oh! And by the way I have just heard that three of our lads from the Royal Army Service Corps have been killed this month as they were bringing our mail from everybody at home,’ was ‘hardly the sort of news they would appreciate.’234 Nevertheless, as the terrorist campaign wore on in 1946 and 1947, people in Britain were only too aware of events in Palestine. Hysteria in the press, angry comments in both private and public at the acts of the Irgun and Lehi, and anti-Jewish rioting – the last of its kind in Britain – demonstrate the growing unhappiness among the British population at the situation in the country. The next chapter shall explore these responses and the ways in which acts of terror over two thousand miles away, began to effect society in Britain. 232 Interview with John Tyrrell conducted by Seth Anziska, MECA, St Antony’s College, 8th June 2007, John Tyrrell collection GB165-0413. Transcript, pp. 11. 233 Brutton, A Captain’s Mandate Palestine 1946-48, pp. 86. 234 Webb, Epitaph for an Army of Peacekeepers, pp. 86. Chapter 4 - ‘Gelignite is News’: Social Reactions to Terrorism in Palestine Whilst British personnel might have been anxious not to cause undue anxiety to their family at home, they need not have bothered to be so coy about their real experiences in letters home. Palestine, as the Press Information Officer Richard Stubbs put it, ‘was front page news for the world press,’ including in the UK, with terrorism ‘providing plenty of good copy.’1 Palestine was frequently being reported on in the press given the near daily incidents of violence, if not on the front page, then somewhere amongst the pages of the press. Even if, as we shall see, some readers had very little knowledge about the ins and outs of matters relating to the country, not even the most casual reader could avoid knowing that all was not well in Palestine. Terrorist attacks by the Irgun and Lehi caused much anger and frustration in Britain, and when the bombing campaigns began to target Europe and the British mainland itself, this turned to fear and outright paranoia. Reactions to this terror threat were manifold and unfolded in both the private and public sphere. Many people voiced their feelings in their diaries, to family, and colleagues – often showing strong antisemitic feelings in the process. But this sense of anger and frustration eventually boiled over into much more violent action. The epitome of this was the outbreak of rioting across several British cities over the August Bank Holiday of 1947 in reaction to the hangings of the two sergeants which led to Jewish properties and places of worship being targeted by angry mobs. At the more extreme end of the spectrum of 1 Richard Stubbs, Palestine Story: A Personal Account of the Last Three Years of British Rule in Palestine (England: Brettenham 1995), pp. 74; David Leitch, ‘Explosion at the King David Hotel,’ in Age of Austerity, 1945-1951, ed. Michael Sissons and Phillip French (London: Penguin, 1964), pp. 59. 162 responses to terrorism in Palestine was also the revival of British fascism in the immediate post-war period – a phenomenon that caused the Attlee Government much concern. How can we track public perceptions and feelings about what was happening in Palestine? A number of sources offer some useful insights. Reviewing the coverage by the press (including both national and local coverage) of terrorism in Palestine, can help to give a sense of public perception to some extent, though of course – as shall be explored – the press does not necessarily always reflect the wider publics knowledge or opinions. However, the press can stimulate certain reaction within the public, either consciously or unconsciously, depending on the manner in which they report on events. Using press coverage alongside the Social Amplification of Risk Framework (SARF) – borrowed from the social sciences – can help demonstrate just how press coverage can impact public reactions to news events. More personal reflections upon events in Palestine survive in diary entries from the time and questionnaires carried out to ascertain public knowledge and perceptions of events in Palestine. These sources come to us from the Mass Observation project, which attempted to combine both quantitative and qualitative data to study societal opinions. Mass Observation, the brainchild of Tom Harrison and Charles Madge, was formed in 1937 with the aim of understanding how the masses thought on a wide variety of issues.2 Although Harrison, a radical Liberal, and Madge, a dogmatic Marxist, differed in their reasons and approaches for gathering data on the masses, they nevertheless managed to develop an organization that could explore the everyday social existence of ordinary men and women and create an ‘anthropology of ourselves.’3 The organization hardly got off to the best start with financing for the organization being a source of constant difficulty, thus impacting the ability to employ a fixed 2 James Hinton, The Mass Observers: A History, 1937-1949 (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2013), pp. 1, 13. 3 Charles Madge, Tom Harrisson, and Julian Huxley, Mass-Observation Mass-Observation Series; No. 1. (London: Frederick Muller, 1937), pp. 10. 163 number of staff; including observers, and the relationship between Harrison and Madge - already fractious from their first meeting - soon turning openly tempestuous.4 Madge abandoned the organization in 1940 over Mass Observation’s agreement to put themselves at the disposal of the Ministry of Information and Harrison, along with many of the organizations observers, was called up during the Second World War.5 Yet, despite the quick turnover in staff and volunteers, the organization continued to collect data to various degrees into the 1960s. Data was collected through both ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’ methods as Tom Harrison put it.6 Direct methods included the use of surveys and questionnaires as well as gathering diary entries from volunteers among the general public. Indirect methods often involved listening in on people’s conversation and essentially people-watching. A few questionnaires pertain directly to Palestine or general perceptions of Jews and Judaism and a number of diary respondents bring the issue of Palestine up in their entries. The responses gathered in this way by Mass-Observation often display acute instances of antisemitism tied to events in Palestine and a general dissatisfaction with events in the country, boiling over into anger at times of large or well publicized Irgun and Lehi attacks. Information about the 1947 riots come to us largely from newspapers and court reports which demonstrate a deep concern about the violence and with demonstrate attempts to characterize the attacks as ‘un-British’ acts of ‘hooliganism.’7 Although the violence was largely spontaneous, one historian of the riots points out that years of pre-war fascist invective against Jews made their targeting more likely.8 This was also the period in which Mosely and several Fascist leaders were attempting to revive British fascism, often using events in Palestine to stir 4 Hinton, The Mass Observers: A History, 1937-1949, pp. 1, 101-2, 160. 5 Hinton, The Mass Observers: A History, 1937-1949, pp. 161, 294-5. 6 Tom Harrison, ‘Memo on Posters,’ Topic Collection, Mass-Observation Archive, University of Sussex Special Collections, 42/1A. 7 Tony Kushner, “Anti-Semitism and Austerity: the August 1947 Riots in Britain,” in Racial Violence in Britain, 1840-1950, ed. Panikos Panayi (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1993), pp. 154. 8 Kushner, “Anti-Semitism and Austerity: the August 1947 Riots in Britain,” pp. 155. 164 hatred and drive recruitment. As well as plenty of secondary material on British fascism in the immediate post-war period, there are a number of interesting primary sources which help add to our understanding of how Palestine drove British fascism. These include British fascist materials and speeches, material from the Board of Deputies Jewish Defence Committee which kept a watch on fascist activities, and accounts from anti-fascist groups such as the notorious ’43 Group’ who – eschewing the Jewish Defence Committee’s ‘wait and see’ approach – took the fight to the fascists, often breaking up meetings forcibly and assaulting fascists. Inevitably, many of these sources must be read with some degree of scepticism. Mass-Observation reports in particular present some interesting challenges to the historian. The organization was chaotic, and observers must have sometimes found it challenging to work in such an environment. Mass-Observation sources from the immediate post-war period present a dated approach to social anthropology and social science data collection. Observers working for the organization received no training, which has led to frequent criticisms in contemporary scholarship on Mass-Observation.9 This meant that the information gathered could be rather subjective, with observers in the field recording whatever they deemed worth recording of what they saw or heard. Harrison defended this approach, writing in 1940 that ‘no form of training at present exists which makes people better at the kind of observing, interviewing and recording which is needed.’10 Harrison did however attempt to nurture the correct balance between detail and generalization in detailed feedback to observers as well as reviewing their work for observer bias.11 The composition of the panels, the members of whom were sent directives asking them to declare their opinions on all manner of issues, has also come in for criticism, though the 9 Hinton, The Mass Observers: A History, 1937-1949, pp. 261-263. 10 Tom Harrison to Charles Madge, 18th January 1940, Organization & History, Mass-Observation Archive, University of Sussex Special Collections, 42/1A. 11 Hinton, The Mass Observers: A History, 1937-1949, pp. 262-264. 165 picture is more complex than it at first appears. Figures from 1939 show that Mass Observation had an overrepresentation of younger panellists compared to their actual size in the populace according to the 1939 National Register, with 19–24-year-olds making up 36% of panel respondents but only 10% of the wider population. Older groups meanwhile were massively underrepresented. However, by 1945, although respondents over 65 were still underrepresented, the panels were largely representative of the wider population in terms of age.12 However there were persistent issues with accurate gender representation, with women respondents largely being over 45 whilst male respondents were largely under 45.13 There were also issues in geographical representation with Scotland and Wales being especially poorly represented whilst voices from London received outsized attention.14 Class was also an issue with most respondents belonging to the middle classes at a time when up to three quarters of the British populace belonged to the manual working class.15 As Mass Observation reports themselves occasionally pointed out, respondents often did not represent a true cross section of society, with ‘middle-class progressives’ in the majority.16 Nevertheless, material from the Mass-Observation archives still provides us with a snapshot of public attitudes and an insight into the private as well as public opinion, something that would otherwise be very hard to ascertain. Mass-Observation sources allow the historian to go beyond the usual conventional sources used in social history (e.g., newspapers, petitions, questionnaires and surveys carried out by Government or administrative officials etc.) often generated by the operations of power, and instead, as James Hinton, the historian of Mass-Observation has contended, ‘a democratic people’s history from bellow.’17 12 Hinton, The Mass Observers: A History, 1937-1949, pp. 68-69. 13 Hinton, The Mass Observers: A History, 1937-1949, pp. 270. 14 Hinton, The Mass Observers: A History, 1937-1949, pp. 270. 15 Hinton, The Mass Observers: A History, 1937-1949, pp. 271-272. 16 “Report on Attitude to Palestine and the Jews,” September 1947 (no. 2515), Mass Observation, pp. 31. 17 Hinton, The Mass Observers: A History, 1937-1949, pp. 378. 166 ‘A Sort of Mecca for Jews’ – Societal Perceptions of Jews, Zionism, and Palestine Before considering responses to terrorist activities by the Irgun and Lehi, it is worth examining how much people actually knew about Zionist aims and Palestine itself in the immediate post-war period as well as widespread feelings about Jews. Such information is provided via a number of surveys and questionnaires carried out by Mass-Observation as well as diary entries collected as part of the project. When it came to perceptions of Jews – in Palestine, at home, or elsewhere – British society demonstrated overtly antisemitic feeling. Mass Observation polling in 1946 and 1947 show considerable feelings of antisemitism amongst the wider public, with the organization estimating – based on its data – that nearly half of the population held views that were to some extent antisemitic.18 Respondents gave a number of different reasons for their dislike of Jews, largely ticking off all of the usual tropes, from their appearance to their supposed behinds the scenes control of power. The latter trope was so ubiquitous that the documents’ author noted that ‘from different reports, one would gather that London, Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Brighton, and indeed all large towns, are mainly run by Jews.’19 Antisemitism was aimed not just at foreign born Jews, but also at British Jews as well – though there were plenty who did not even bother to make this distinction. One Mass Observation respondent stated that Jews ‘lack the background of principles and unconscious religious and moral beliefs that are held by most Englishmen,’ whilst another woman asserted that all Jewry, regardless of background, were always ‘in a country but not of it.’20 Jews living in Britain (native born or foreign) were largely held to be disproportionately involved in the black market, both 18 “Mass Observation Panel on the Jews,” July 1946 (no. 2463), Mass Observation; “Report on Attitude to Palestine and the Jews,” September 1947 (no. 2515), Mass Observation, pp. 5. 19 “Mass Observation Panel on the Jews,” July 1946 (no. 2463), Mass Observation, pp. 11. 20 “Mass Observation Panel on the Jews,” July 1946 (no. 2463), Mass Observation, pp. 2-3. 167 during the war and afterwards as rationing continued.21 This inability to differentiate between Jewry and British Jews specifically led to many people being convinced that Jews in Britain felt a kinship with Jews in Palestine. When it came to British Jews specifically, a not insignificant minority of one in five people believed that they supported the Irgun and Lehi.22 However, few proposed any violent action against British Jews. ‘There is,’ George Orwell summed up during the war ‘a certain amount of antisemitism. One is constantly coming on pockets of it, not violent, but pronounced enough to be disquieting.’ ‘But,’ Orwell insisted, ‘no one wants to actually do anything to the Jews.’23 Antisemitism was thus a structural issue which was part of the fabric of British society, but not a mobilized sentiment which might lead to unrest during the period of the war. That sentiment continued throughout the post-war years, though as shall be explored below, events in Palestine allowed British fascists to successfully mobilize it despite the perceived illegitimacy of the fascist cause. Recent history gave few people pause for thought when it came to antisemitism either. Jewish suffering between 1933 and 1945 was largely ignored with people having little appetite for such stories. It is likely that many people were much more caught up with their own suffering during the war and there was a general fatigue for war stories once the war had come to an end.24 Stories of concentration camps were, for most people, ‘an outworn theme’ that few had much interest in during the immediate post-war years.25 And although Mass Observation reported a strong degree of sympathy for displaced peoples in Europe (including Jews), the same feelings were not held for Jewish refugees who had settled in Britain before or during the war.26 As early as 1945, there were calls for Jewish refugees to be forcibly repatriated to their 21 Anthony Julius, Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Antisemitism in England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 325-326. 22 “Report on Attitude to Palestine and the Jews,” September 1947 (no. 2515), Mass Observation, pp. 66. 23 George Orwell, ‘London Letters to Partisan Review,’ The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters (London: Martin Secker and Warburg Ltd., 1968), Vol. 2, pp. 209. 24 “Report on Attitude to Palestine and the Jews,” September 1947 (no. 2515), Mass Observation, pp. 58. 25 “Report on Attitude to Palestine and the Jews,” September 1947 (no. 2515), Mass Observation, pp. 63. 26 “Report on Attitude to Palestine and the Jews,” September 1947 (no. 2515), Mass Observation, pp. 58. 168 countries of origin. An ‘anti-alien’ petition in Hampstead which took specific aim at foreign born Jews living in the area received 3000 signatures in just two months, with the petition’s organizers – Margaret Crabtree and Sylvia Gosse, two women from Belsize Park – stating that the deportation of Jews was necessary to secure housing for returning ex-servicemen.27 Crabtree and Gosse’s petition reflected deeply antisemitic ideas which were dressed up to sound reasonable and even admirable. Few could argue against British ex-servicemen deserving decent accommodation when they arrived back home. The petition stated only that, ‘we the undersigned petition the House of Commons in a request that aliens of Hampstead should be repatriated to assure men and women of the Forces should have accommodation upon their return.’28 Yet Crabtree demonstrated her real concern in an interview with a local newspaper, stating that she was concerned about Jews assimilating and taking on ‘British names,’ and that certain aliens were trying to undercut local businesses and were avaricious and greedy – typically antisemitic statements which tied Jews to commerce, and held that their business tactics were both amoral and inspired by financial greed.29 Crabtree and Gosse welcomed the help of several shopkeepers who were known antisemites, who goaded their customers into signing the petition using antisemitic remarks.30 The petition received the blessings of Hampstead’s Conservative MP, Flight-Lieutenant Charles Challen, as well as the extremely right-wing Conservative MP for the Kent constituency of Orpington, Sir Waldron Smithers.31 A 27 Graham Macklin, “‘A quite natural and moderate defensive feeling’? The 1945 Hampstead ‘anti-alien’ petition,” Patterns of Prejudice 37/3 (2003), pp. 280, 286. 28 Graham Macklin, “‘A quite natural and moderate defensive feeling’? The 1945 Hampstead ‘anti-alien’ petition,” pp. 282. 29 Graham Macklin, “‘A quite natural and moderate defensive feeling’? The 1945 Hampstead ‘anti-alien’ petition,” pp. 282. 30 ‘Letter from K. Alexander to the Reverend Livingstone,’ 4th October 1945, The Weiner Library, Archives of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, C6/3/2/6. 31 Graham Macklin, “‘A quite natural and moderate defensive feeling’? The 1945 Hampstead ‘anti-alien’ petition,” pp. 283. 169 number of local councillors as well as the Hampstead’s mayor, Alderman Dr Sydney A. Boyd, were also signatories of the petition.32 Jewish suffering also did not lead to an increased sympathy for Zionism. Indeed, there was very little understanding of what the term even meant.33 Many of the people questioned by Mass Observation had no idea of what the term ‘Zionism’ meant, with one in three having either never heard of the term of having the wrong idea as to what it was.34 Incorrect guesses show a large number of people incorrectly suggesting it was related to Christian Science, the British Israelites, or even the Jehovah’s Witnesses.35 Even among those who had heard of the term there was only a vague sense of understanding what the movement was, with answers varying from the crass (‘yes – lot of Jew boys’) to the muddled (‘A sort of Mecca for Jews. On a par with Pakistan, something of a pipe dream’).36 Roughly two thirds knew vaguely that the term was in some ways related to Palestine, or Jewry.37 Of those who showed some knowledge of Zionism a few explicitly associated it with Jewish terrorism as in the case of one 38-year-old clerk who stated that Zionism was ‘a murderous organization allied to the Stern Gang for getting the Jews back to Palestine.’38 Few respondents had any understanding of the history of Zionism and Britain’s part in fostering it, with nearly half of the people questioned having never heard of the Balfour Declaration and only thirteen per cent actually demonstrating, more or less, some knowledge of the declaration.39 Nevertheless, when questioned how they would feel about a ‘Jewish National Home,’ sixty per cent of respondents were in favour compared to twenty four per cent in favour of Zionism with a considerable portion objecting to Zionism due 32 Graham Macklin, “‘A quite natural and moderate defensive feeling’? The 1945 Hampstead ‘anti-alien’ petition,” pp. 287. 33 “Report on Attitude to Palestine and the Jews,” September 1947 (no. 2515), Mass Observation, pp. 58. 34 “Report on Attitude to Palestine and the Jews,” September 1947 (no. 2515), Mass Observation, pp. 9. 35 “Report on Attitude to Palestine and the Jews,” September 1947 (no. 2515), Mass Observation, pp. 10. 36 “Report on Attitude to Palestine and the Jews,” September 1947 (no. 2515), Mass Observation, pp. 11. 37 “Report on Attitude to Palestine and the Jews,” September 1947 (no. 2515), Mass Observation, pp. 9. 38 “Report on Attitude to Palestine and the Jews,” September 1947 (no. 2515), Mass Observation, pp. 11. 39 “Report on Attitude to Palestine and the Jews,” September 1947 (no. 2515), Mass Observation, pp. 24. 170 to its perceived links to terrorism in Palestine.40 Of those approving of a Jewish national home, at least three quarters explicitly suggested Palestine as a suitable place for it.41 In another survey that Mass Observation carried out, at least fifty per cent of respondents stated that Palestine should become a Jewish area, either completely or shared with the Arabs.42 In other words, although many people did not really understand what Zionism was, or disapproved of it because, in many cases, they associated it with terrorism, the majority of people still believed the Jews should have a national home of some description in Palestine. The motives of many respondents may not have been entirely humane with some expressing a desire to see the Jews move to Palestine in order to empty Britain of ‘undesirables,’ yet Palestine was clearly associated with Jews and seen as a possible Jewish home of some sort.43 Public knowledge about events in Palestine is difficult to fully ascertain. On the one hand, Mass Observation reports suggest that many people took little interest in the situation in the Mandate, with 32% of the street sample (comprised of 150 people who were representative in terms of age, gender, and class of the general population) ‘so little interested in the whole subject that they had no opinion to offer at all.’44 A significant minority, 25%, were distressed by the situation, with a further 13% holding the Yishuv solely responsible for the violence in Palestine by September 1947.45 As Mass Observation noted, ‘practically no-one spontaneously blames the Arabs.’46 However, despite a seemingly large percentage who took no interest in events in Palestine, specific terrorist attacks did receive a significant emotional response amongst respondents. In particular the bombing of the King David Hotel in July 1946 and the kidnap and hanging of Sergeants Martin and Paice in July 1947 led to emotive responses from 40 “Report on Attitude to Palestine and the Jews,” September 1947 (no. 2515), Mass Observation, pp. 13. 41 “Report on Attitude to Palestine and the Jews,” September 1947 (no. 2515), Mass Observation, pp. 16. 42 “Mass Observation Panel on the Jews,” July 1946 (no. 2463), Mass Observation, pp. 22-23. 43 “Report on Attitude to Palestine and the Jews,” September 1947 (no. 2515), Mass Observation, pp. 15. 44 “Report on Attitude to Palestine and the Jews,” September 1947 (no. 2515), Mass Observation, pp. 5-6. 45 “Report on Attitude to Palestine and the Jews,” September 1947 (no. 2515), Mass Observation, pp. 6. 46 “Note on Popular Attitudes to Palestine and Arab Countries,” November 1946 (no. 2432) Mass Observation, pp. 1. 171 a large number of those questioned.47 In the immediate aftermath of the hanging of the two sergeants Mass Observation found that most people, including those who did not consider themselves antisemitic, were extremely bitter and angry about the sergeants’ deaths.48 Even those who were not normally much interested in Palestine seem to have expressed anger, hardly surprising given the extensive coverage of the kidnapping, military searches, and subsequent discovery of the bodies of the two men. As shall be seen later, this anger was enough to spark antisemitic riots across Britain. Although it is possible to point to the 32% of uninterested respondents to argue that Palestine was not an important issue for most people in Britain, it is worth noting that it still garnered more interest than many other pressing international issues. As Tom Harrison wrote in May 1947, ‘a skilled listener-in might go for days through Britain without hearing a single mention of UNO, USA, USSR, India, Atomic Bomb or Science.’49 Even when events were happening on peoples’ doorsteps, they could still be shockingly uninformed (Harrison referred to these as the ‘moronic fringe’).50 When the UNO Assembly met in London in January 1946, 9% of Londoners said they had never heard of the organization despite the widespread news coverage given to the meeting.51 Yet Palestine, unlike other international issues, was the subject of a considerable amount of public discussion, casual conversation, and private thought. This is best demonstrated by contemporary diaries, also collected by Mass Observation as part of their project which demonstrate the way in which the British public engaged with the news from Palestine. A young typist in Cheshire noted that after a bombing at Jerusalem railway station the previous day, conversation in her office turned to Palestine, recording several particularly angry 47 “Report on Attitude to Palestine and the Jews,” September 1947 (no. 2515), Mass Observation, pp. 65-66; “Mass Observation Panel on the Jews,” July 1946 (no. 2463), Mass Observation, pp. 26. 48 “Report on Attitude to Palestine and the Jews,” September 1947 (no. 2515), Mass Observation, pp. 65-66. 49 “Article for Public Opinion Quarterly,” May 1947 (no. 2493), Mass Observation, pp. 23. 50 “Article for Public Opinion Quarterly,” May 1947 (no. 2493), Mass Observation, pp. 22. 51 “Article for Public Opinion Quarterly,” May 1947 (no. 2493), Mass Observation, pp. 22. 172 remarks. One of her colleagues even went so far as to suggest that for every British subject murdered in Palestine, ten Jews should be shot, concluding her argument with the phrase ‘Hitler knew what he was doing.’52 Another young woman, Maggie Joy Blunt, recorded how the conversation during her lunch break became lively when someone mentioned the problem of Palestine, with much of the conversation degenerating into antisemitic comments.53 In Sheffield, Mrs Underwood, a housewife and keen socialist, recorded the news from Palestine and her opinion of it fairly frequently between 1945 and the end of the Mandate, often expressing antisemitic views. In particularly she repeatedly voiced her anger towards what she clearly viewed as American interference in Palestine at a time when Britain was facing danger from the Irgun and Lehi, and perceived Jewish influence in America. For example, in early July 1946, as the Anglo-American Loan was moving through the Senate, Underwood complained that the loan was being held up over the issue of Palestine (a view that had a basis in reality, as will be explored in the next chapter).54 ‘Makes one think Hitler was right when he said that Jews were bosses in the USA,’ she fumed in her diary.55 Elsewhere she railed against Truman’s request to allow Jews into Palestine and the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry into the Palestine issue, repeatedly stating that the US was putting Britian in a difficult situation without offering any concrete help.56 Meanwhile, Mr B. Charles, an antiques dealer in Edinburgh further demonstrates the paroxysms of anger that could occur when Palestine hit the news. Reacting to the death of the two sergeants, Charles offered his solution to the Palestine issue in his diary: ‘We should drop six atomic bombs on six cities in Palestine and wipe out as many Jews as 52 Diarist 5270, 31st October 1946, Mass Observation. 53 Simon Garfield, Our Hidden Lives: The Remarkable Diaries of Post-War Britain (London: Ebury Press, 2004), pp. 132. 54 Peter Clarke, The Last Thousand Days of the British Empire: Churchill, Roosevelt, and the Birth of the Pax Americana (London: Bloomsbury Press, 2008), pp. 390. 55 Diarist 5447, 4th July 1946, Mass Observation. 56 Diarist 5447, 9th September 1945, 3rd May 1946, Mass Observation. 173 possible.’ Ironically, in the next paragraph he noted that he was reading Emery Reeve’s The Anatomy of Peace.57 Palestine popped up again and again in conversations and in peoples’ diaries, suggesting that – despite Mass Observation’s polling – people did indeed take an interest in Palestine, especially when violence in the country flared up. ‘France seems in as big a mess as she ever was. Greece also troublesome, and more todoments [sic.] in Palestine. La la. The joys of peace,’ recorded Mrs Underwood in early 1946.58 Palestine was certainly one of many international issues facing Britain in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. Yet it was one which flared up time and time again as the Irgun and Lehi hit British targets, making headlines again and again, and appearing to many people as a problem that would never go away. Palestine was an issue which no person in Britain could avoid seeing in the papers or hearing conversations about at home or in the office. If it Bleeds, it Leads - News Coverage and Palestine ‘News is what a chap who doesn't care much about anything wants to read’ – Evelyn Waugh59 Despite the mundane trials and tribulations of everyday life which took up so much of people’s time and attention in the aftermath of the Second World War, one of the reasons people were able to have such strong feeling about events in Palestine was its ubiquitous presence in the press. News was transmitted through a number of means, including newspapers (national and local), radio bulletins, and news reel footage played before cinema showings. Much effort has been spent in various academic fields attempting to show how much influence 57 Garfield, Our Hidden Lives: The Remarkable Diaries of Post-War Britain, pp. 430. 58 Diarist 5447, 21st January 1946, Mass Observation. 59 Evelyn Waugh, Scoop (London: Penguin Classics, 2011) pp. 89 174 the press has on public opinion.60 This is certainly an open question, and in the case of press coverage of Palestine we have very little information to tell us how much attention people took of the press’s coverage of the Mandate, or how they digested and understood such news. However, when it comes to newspapers readership, we do know that this was the norm across gender and class divides. The 1948 Hulton Readership Survey, carried out to aid newspapers with their media research, recorded that the Sunday papers were read by all but 8% of the population, and dailies by all but 13%.61 Although these figures indicate that newspapers were a widely popular medium for consuming current events, they do not tell us how they read the paper, or which parts they tended to read. After all, few people would read a paper cover to cover. However, Mass Observation observers on public transport in London, noted that most people spent their time reading the news sections of the paper, with particular attention paid to the front-page news. Interestingly, very few people who were later surveyed by the organization said they had any interest in reading the editorial, though a great deal of people paid interest to the letters and correspondence pages where readers could write in to express their own views on current affairs.62 In the home, radio news bulletins were equally, if not more, likely to be the source of peoples knowledge of current affairs. The post-war period saw a boom in radio ownership with 11 million people owning radio licenses by 1948.63 A survey in June 1947 found that 77% of people with a radio listened to it whilst eating each meal in the day, including 80% of those eating their evening meal, which for two thirds of people had taken place by 18:30.64 This meant many people would be seated during the 18:00 news bulletin on the Home 60 Pierre Bordieu, On Television and Journalism (New York: The New Press, 1998), pp. 1; J. David Kennamer, Public Opinion, the Press, and Public Policy (London: Praeger, 1992). 61 “The Press and its Readers: A Report Prepared by Mass-Observation for the Advertising Service Guild,” 1949, Mass Observation, pp. 12. 62 “The Press and its Readers: A Report Prepared by Mass-Observation for the Advertising Service Guild,” 1949, Mass Observation, pp. 20-21, 48, & 56. 63 David Kynaston, Austerity Britain, 1945-51, pp. 306. 64 Ibid. pp. 212. 175 Service.65 Hungry families could tuck into their (still rationed) beef and vegetables, whilst taking in the latest atrocity in Palestine. Pathé news reels, shown before films at cinemas were yet another way people consumed news media. Even if a person was one of the few who did not read newspapers and did not listen to a radio – or else only listened only to the light programme, avoiding the news for more leisurely fare – they could not escape the news during their leisure time at the cinema. After the war, Britain’s 4,709 cinemas were regularly packed out with record crowds, with 1946 seeing a peak of 1,635 million ticket sales – an impressive total given the country’s overall population of just under 49 million.66 Weekly news reels between the end of the war to the termination of the Mandate reported events in Palestine over 230 times – a large number of these specifically focussing on terror attacks in the country against British targets.67 How writers, journalists, and presenters covered terrorism in Palestine is vital to our understanding of attitudes amongst the British public given the journalist and broadcaster’s ‘monopoly of the instruments of diffusion’ of information.68 Stories were covered differently depending on the medium in which it was presented in. Newspapers covered events in Palestine in detail, with references to acts of terrorism sometimes being mentioned in the paper concurrently for several days. Many papers, such as the Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, The Times, and the Manchester Guardian, repeatedly painted a bleak picture of Palestine’s future and painted a picture of a country in chaos in which terrorists were operating with near impunity, with British soldiers and policemen unable to act. For instance, the Daily Mail published a surprisingly defeatist article in early December 1946 65 Confirmed using the BBC programme index for 1946 & 1947: https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk (12th April 2023) 66 David Kynaston, Austerity Britain, 1945-51, pp. 95; Office for National Statistics, “UK Population Estimates 1851 to 2014” (6th July 2015): https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/adhocs/004356ukpopulationestimates1851to2014 (23rd April 2023). 67 Based on Pathe archival search: https://www.britishpathe.com/search/?searchQuery=palestine&page=1 (15th April 2023) 68 Pierre Bordieu, On Television and Journalism, pp. 1. 176 with the headline ‘We’re Losing the Battle of Palestine – Why? Because the Police are too Few, Badly Armed, and Under-Trained.’69 The Daily Telegraph called for terror to be eradicated in July 1946 due to the ‘proved failure of the policy of almost quixotic forbearance pursued over a period now beginning to be counted in years rather than months.’70 Meanwhile, The Times, in the aftermath of the King David Hotel bombing, demonstrated the extent of the chaos in Palestine by publishing a six-month calendar of violent acts by the Irgun and Lehi between January and mid-June 1946. It listed 20 days when either a single attack, or a series of coordinated actions, had been carried out.71 To the British public Palestine could appear as nothing other than a lawless land. Newspaper headlines captured the sense of danger in Palestine with headline such as ‘10,000 square miles of dynamite’ or ‘report from the most lawless country in the world.’72 Meanwhile the failure of any political settlement was also much written about in the main newspapers. Using unfortunate language, the Daily Telegraph called for a ‘just and final solution to the Palestine problem’ and bemoaned the lack of far-reaching measures to curb terrorism whilst this took place.73 As Motti Golani has pointed out, it was simply impossible for the British administration or the government to crack down of terror with too much force for fear of the Yishuv refusing to cooperate in the political process.74 Yet readers would have been unaware of the sensibilities involved in attempting to eliminate terrorism in Palestine, and the anger of the newspapers at this lack of a clear policy for dealing with the Irgun and Lehi would easily have taken root amongst readers given the shocking acts of violence they were reading about. Headlines such as The Times’ ‘More Murder in Palestine’ or the local Nottingham Evening Posts’ ‘Another British Soldier Dead’ used such determiners 69 The Daily Mail, 10th December 1946. 70 The Daily Telegraph, 2nd July 1946. 71 The Times, 23rd July 1946. 72 The Daily Mail, 2nd November 1945; The Daily Mail, 28th August 1947. 73 The Daily Telegraph, 24th July 1946. 74 See: Motti Golani, Palestine Between Politics and Terror, 1945-1947 (Lebanon, New England: Brandeis University Press, 2013). 177 to stress the unending violence in the country. Meanwhile, even when terrorism did not materialize, coverage kept the matter in the public eye. Whilst the Irgun’s letter bombing campaign (discussed below) led to days of coverage as Britain braced to hear about more potential attacks on the British mainland, the threat did not materialize, with one surprised local paper publishing the headline ‘Bomb-Free Day.’75 It was not just the reporting itself which got attention, but also the photographs which the press was able to print. In this regard, The Daily Express got the biggest scoop in the aftermath of the hanging of the two sergeants. On the 1st August 1947, under the frontpage headline ‘HANGED BRITONS: Picture that will shock the world,’ the paper published a gruesome photo of the bodies of sergeants Martin and Paice dangling from the trees of the eucalyptus grove in which they had been discovered. Their bodies can be seen hanging limp, with a cloth wrapped around each of their head, and their arms bound behind them.76 The photograph was taken by Jim Pringle, an Irish born photographer from the Associated Press who had made his way to Palestine after covering the Second World War. He had been part of a group of photographers who had been accompanying a search party looking for the bodies of the two sergeants. The police, clearly panicked, commandeered the cameras of the photographers to avoid any horrific photos reaching the press. After angry protests from the photographers the administration agreed to return the cameras and to develop the film they had shot, removing any particularly gruesome images before returning the developed photos to their rightful owners. Luckily, most photographs showed no more than the bodies being removed on stretchers covered by blankets. Pringle’s photographs turned out to be completely unexposed. He had switched his film at the last minute before his camera had been confiscated. The exposed film was already on its way to London. Pringle received an official 75 The Times, 30th June 1947; Nottingham Evening Post, 24th July 1947; Nottingham Evening Post, 7th June 1947. 76 The Daily Express, 1st August 1947. 178 reprimand from the Mandate authorities. His employers on the other hand, gave him a bonus.77 As shall be discussed later, this photograph of the two sergeants’ bodies was a key catalyst in sparking riots across Britain. When it came to news reels, the ability to show footage of events was a huge asset, allowing for different shots of the scene from various vantage points. Footage of the King David Hotel bombing moved between views from the ground amongst the rubble to sweeping panning shots presumably taken from other buildings on the street and demonstrating the extent of the damage the blast had caused.78 Accompanied by voice overs and a musical score, news reels could, perhaps, have had even more of an emotional impact on viewers that newspapers. Accompanying music often underlined the dramatic attacks perpetrated by the Irgun and Lehi, whilst more mournful music recalling the Late-Romantic style of Brahms or Mahler was often used when showing the aftermath of attacks such as that on the King David Hotel.79 Coverage was thus designed to stir deep emotions in viewers. Extensive and dramatic newspaper coverage devoted to attacks in Palestine was both a result of the shocking nature of the attacks themselves and the desire of editors to sell papers. News coverage acted as an amplifier – spreading information (not always accurate as shall be seen below) and shaping public perceptions of how much risk terror posed not just in Palestine, but also to civilians in Britain. This theory is commonly referred to as the social amplification of risk framework (SARF) in risk and social science literature and interplays with 77 Richard Stubbs, Palestine Story, pp. 89-91. 78 ‘Palestine: Bombing of the King David Hotel,’ British Pathe (29th July 1947): https://www.britishpathe.com/asset/135855/ (25th May 2023); ‘World Pictorial News,’ Ministry of Information (12th August 46): https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/1060007244 (25th May 2023). 79 See for example: ‘Palestine: Bombing of the King David Hotel,’ British Pathe (29th July 1947): https://www.britishpathe.com/asset/135855/ (25th May 2023); ‘World Pictorial News,’ Ministry of Information (12th August 46): https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/1060007244 (25th May 2023); ‘Last British Troops Leave Palestine,’ YouTube, (recorded 8th July 1948, uploaded 21st July 2015): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FyLX_mV3UI (22nd March 2024). 179 the ‘availability heuristic’ mentioned in the previous chapter.80 SARF proposes that the press (along with other groups) play a crucial role in how the public understand threats and their likelihood. News media acts as a ‘station’ for relaying ‘signals’ and thus helping construct knowledge and understanding of risks which the public will thus consume and internalize.81 Constant reminders about terrorism and the threat of attacks in Palestine and Britain in the form of press coverage meant the public were fearful of the likelihood of such attacks and suspected a greater risk from the Irgun and Lehi than the groups actually possessed. Thus, even small attacks by Jewish terrorists were amplified, giving such attacks greater significance than they perhaps deserved and creating the impression that Palestine was in complete chaos at all times. Richard Stubbs, the Palestine Government’s press secretary, described at first-hand how the press fed the process of amplification on a trip back to Britain early in 1947. Stubbs visited editors in Fleet Street in an attempt to get the press to report more than just the tragedies taking place in Palestine. In particular, he stressed the importance of Britain’s commitment to improving education, health care, afforestation, and the success of road development and safety projects in Palestine. He had little success. Stubbs recorded that one well-known editor rebuffed his suggestions, stating ‘no paper would sell for long if it printed news of afforestation successes against its competitors’ headlines of explosions. You are the victim of the front-page story with sensation getting the headlines – gelignite is news – we’ve got plenty of trees at home.’82 The press knew that the constant horror coming out of Palestine made for good copy, and thus for higher sales. They had no reason to dampen the fear and hysteria building around events in Palestine – in fact quite the opposite. As Pierre Bourdieu 80 See: Nick F. Pidgeon, Roger E. Kasperson, and Paul Slovic, The Social Amplification of Risk. Cambridge (Cambridge University Press, 2003). 81 Graham Murdock, Judith Petts, and Tom Horlick-Jones, “After amplification: rethinking the role of the media in risk communication,” in The social amplification of risk: assessing fifteen years of research and theory, ed. Nick Pidgeon, Roger E. Kasperson, and Paul Slovic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 156. 82 Richard Stubbs, Palestine Story, pp. 75. 180 has noted, the press relies on reinforcing the ‘commercial’ elements of news production, using big ‘scoops’ as a way of out-competing other competitors.83 If anger towards events in Palestine was one reaction fostered by the press, then fear and paranoia was manifestly another – one which was encouraged by the amplification of stories about potential attacks in the UK. This was especially true as Jewish terrorism started to hit closer to home. A string of (mostly failed) attacks in Europe and mainland Britain led to a number of panics in the British press. MI5 officers in Palestine had warned their London counterparts in February 1945 that the Jewish terrorist groups were looking for ways to get their operatives to Europe.84 But the first demonstration of these operatives skills only became evident on the 31st October 1946 when a massive explosion wrecked the British Embassy in Rome, bringing down the exterior wall, tearing through the ornate entrance, and collapsing the grand staircase inside.85 The Irgun took four days to claim responsibility for the attack, but there could be little doubt of the perpetrators. The British ambassador, who had been on leave in London at the time of the blast, was careful not to rule out local forces – neo-fascists or even communists – as the possible culprits but thought it most likely that the perpetrators were actually Jewish terrorists.86 The fact that a warning sign reading ‘Attenzione – Miny,’ (‘Attention – Mines’) in a mixture of Italian and Polish was left on top of the suitcases in which the explosives were packed, seemed to confirm the culprits were not locals.87 When the Irgun did finally claim responsibility for the attack, their communique threatened more actions yet to come across Europe, stating that the bombing of the Rome embassy was ‘a symbol of the opening of the Jewish military front in the Diaspora.’88 83 Pierre Bordieu, On Television and Journalism, pp. 71-72. 84 ‘Report by A.J. Kellar,’ February 1945, TNA, KV 5/29. 85 David Cesarani, Major Farran’s Hat: Murder, Scandal and Britain’s War Against Jewish Terrorism (London: Vintage Books, 2010), pp. 46. 86 Noel Charles, ‘Sir Noel Charles to the Foreign Office,’ 3rd November 1946, TNA, CO 537/1720. 87 Cesarani, Major Farran’s Hat, pp. 46. 88 Cesarani, Major Farran’s Hat, pp. 43. 181 National Newspapers seemed only too keen to spread speculation. ‘Bombs in Britain next,’ screamed a Daily Mail headline on November 5th 1946, warning that the Irgun were planning to immediately commence ‘operations in the heart of Britain.’89 Matters were not helped by an anonymous threat to General Montgomery. His military assistant took the call and recorded how a voice ‘in a clipped accent’ threatened that ‘if another drop of blood is shed in Palestine, retribution will follow to the War Office and to military officers.’90 The press now began to report in an almost hysterical fashion on the threat from Jewish terrorism to the UK. The Daily Mail, without much evidence, reported the threat against Montgomery and his fellow officers under the headline ‘Stern Gang here,’ and noted that this was ‘the first big Jewish terrorist threat to this country.’91 The Daily Telegraph, normally more restrained in its reporting, told its readers that ‘almost unprecedented precautions’ were being taken by Scotland Yard to keep Ministers and Government buildings in London safe.92 Bevin’s security received special attention, and during his trip to France to meet with his American, Russian, and French counterparts, he travelled with a number of extra detective-body guards. Ironically, although the Irgun had fantasies of eliminating Bevin, the only action Bevin’s security saw was on August 9th when Molotov and his deputy Vyshinsky made one too many snide comments about Britain resulting in Bevin lumbering to his feet and rolling towards the two men, his fists knotted, muttering ‘I’ve ‘ad enough of this I ‘ave.’ The guards quickly intervened to prevent a diplomatic incident.93 The state opening of Parliament posed a greater security challenge. As well as senior members of the Government and most MPs being present, the King and queen would be processing from Buckingham Palace to the Houses of Parliament in the royal coach. As a result, London was flooded with Special Branch officers, plainclothes police, and military 89 The Daily Mail, 5th November 1946. 90 ‘Note of threat to Montgomery,’ 6th November 1947, TNA, CO 537/1723. 91 The Daily Mail, 11th November 1946. 92 The Daily Telegraph, 11th November 1946. 93 Derek Leebaert, The World After the War: America Confronts the British Superpower, 1945-1957 (London: Oneworld Publications, 2018), pp. 77. 182 police. Immigration checks were tightened at ports and airports to stop potential Lehi or Irgun operatives slipping into the country, whilst the coastguard patrolled potential landing spots to prevent them entering illegally from the continent by boat.94 The news media gave plenty of attention to the event, and to the precautions taken. The Daily Mail ran a near full page on the event with the headline ‘MI5 chief will fight London’s ‘terror,’’ whilst a subtitle trumpeted ‘Stern Gang girl sought by Scotland Yard.’ Later in the article, after fanning the flames of fear, the paper admitted that ‘the Yard has no actual evidence that Jewish terrorists have arrived in this country.’95 It also reported that Special Branch officers had been furnished with photographs of several known terrorists to aid recognition. One of these was of Menachem Begin himself. The very idea that Begin would have been in London was laughable, but no doubt even the idea that the elusive Irgun chief might have slipped into Britain to cause carnage made a few readers hearts beat faster. The police, who had no real evidence of Irgun or Lehi operatives operating in Britain further fostered panic by informing journalists that they were on the hunt for at least one Palestinian Jew who was active in the country.96 Further hysteria flared up in 1947 after a string of attacks aimed at targets in London. On the 7th March a Lehi bomb blew out the doors and windows of the British Colonial Club, just off Trafalgar Square.97 Luckily there were no fatalities, but the attack demonstrated the fact that Jewish terrorists could infiltrate Britain and wreak havoc in the heart of the capital. Just over a month later a young and charming French Jew named Betty Knut managed to gain entrance to the Colonial Office building in Whitehall and plant a bomb after being recruited by Lehi. Luckily for the staff inside and for fans of Gilbert Scott’s architecture, the bomb failed to go off when the hands of the watch which acted as the bombs timer got stuck.98 Commander 94 Cesarani, Major Farran’s Hat, pp. 50. 95 The Daily Mail, 12th November 1946. 96 The Daily Telegraph, 13th December 1946. 97 Cesarani, Major Farran’s Hat, pp. 85-86; Bruce Hoffman, Anonymous Soldiers, pp. 406-407. 98 Cesarani, Major Farran’s Hat, pp. 86-87; Hoffman, Anonymous Soldiers, pp. 408. 183 Leonard Burt, the head of Scotland Yard’s Special Branch, noted that if the bomb had gone off it would have ‘blown the sort of hole in the Colonial Office that was blown in the King David Hotel.’99 By June, the mastermind of both of these attacks – a Lehi fighter named Ya’acov Eliav – decided to change tactics, perhaps disappointed by the failure of the bomb planted in the Colonial Office to detonate. Instead, he opted for letter bombs which were dispatched to important political figures such as Attlee, Bevin, Churchill, Eden (who carried the letter bomb addressed to him around in his briefcase all day), and Cripps. Luckily, especially for Eden, the letter bombs also failed to detonate.100 Had they done so, the result would likely have been fatal for the bomb’s recipients as a report by the Home Office’s explosive expert noted.101 The letter bombs led to a flurry of panic in the press as national and local newspapers rushed to cover the story in all its detail, often under shock inducing headlines. The local Aberdeen Journal led their story with the (factually inaccurate) headline ‘Letter-Bomb was Meant for King.’102 Meanwhile the Western Daily Press covered the local aspect of the story, trumpeting ‘Cripps [whose parliamentary seat was Bristol South East] Gets Letter Bomb,’ before following this up with ‘Yard Warning To Public.’103 Despite the fact that all of the letter bombs were addressed to high profile political or military figures, the paper created the sense that the danger was much wider, noting ‘the public are warned to be on their guard. Anyone opening the packages may be seriously injured.’104 Yet again, the newspapers were complicit in amplifying the risks that the letter bombs posed to the public. Other than a small handful of secretaries who received the parcels, the public were not exposed to any risk from the bombs. In many ways, the Lehi letter bombs were the epitome of the anarchist ‘propaganda of the deed’ which the group sought to emulate, targeting the most important 99 Leonard Burt, Commander Burt of Scotland Yard (Heinemann: London, 1959), pp. 126-127. 100 Hoffman, Anonymous Soldiers, pp. 408. 101 ‘Outrages, June 1947, Postal Packets,’ 13th June 1947, TNA, EF 5/12. 102 The Aberdeen Journal, 9th June 1947. 103 Western Daily Press, 5th June 1947. 104 Western Daily Press, 5th June 1947. 184 political and military leaders whilst leaving the public unscathed. One of the only civilians who came into contact with a letter bomb was a laundry owner in Gypsy Hill, South London, who happened to share a name with the Minister without Portfolio, Arthur Greenwood. It was he who raised the alarm to the authorities. 105 In such a febrile atmosphere, it was perhaps inevitable that stories would be spun out of proportion or distorted. In late June of 1947 a substantial amount of gelignite and 500 detonators were stolen from two quarries in Exeter and Devon. What should have been a local story about a criminal theft became a national story when the foreman, Mr Jack Jones, said he had noted ‘mysterious Jewish-looking foreigners’ in the vicinity of the mines. The Daily Express jumped on the story, splashing all over their front page, stated that the police were looking for a car related to the theft and warned its readers to beware of two men ‘of Jewish appearance’ who were ‘suspected associates of Jewish terrorist associations.’106 Even the Manchester Guardian, normally much more careful in its reporting, parroted the claim that police were looking for two suspects ‘of Jewish appearance.’107 The theft had absolutely nothing to do with Jewish terrorists as an MI5 report demonstrated, yet the theft was blown out of all proportion by the press who helped to feed a rather nasty, racially tinged, witch hunt for the supposed culprits.108 Caught up in the loop of paranoia and fear which they themselves had helped to spread, the national press ran a story with very little basis in facts. Besides the theft of the explosive material and the vague and rather racist assertions of the local foreman, there was nothing to indicate that the Irgun and Lehi were behind the affair. 105 Cesarani, Major Farran’s Hat, pp. 115. 106 Daily Express, 27th & 28th June 1947. 107 Manchester Guardian, 27th June 1947. 108 ‘Zionist Subversive Activities,’ 16th March 1947, TNA, KV 3/41. 185 Fascism Redux – Palestine and the British Fascist Revival How it all started, at least two of the four men present that day disagree. In the telling of one of the men, they had heard about a fascist meeting and promptly set off to disrupt it. Another claimed more prosaically that when the four of them met at the Maccabi House in West Hampstead - headquarters of the Maccabi World Union, a Jewish sports organization often frequented by Jewish ex-servicemen after the war - the prospect of the canteen’s regular offering of chips and eggs for lunch drove the four men to seek sustenance elsewhere. Whatever the truth, Gerry Flamberg, Morris Beckman, Len Sherman, and Alec Carson – all ex-servicemen, and all bar Sherman having nearly died in the course of their service – piled into Beckman’s Ford Prefect and headed for Jack Straw’s Castle, a pub in nearby Hampstead.109 Upon arriving at the top of Whitestone Pond next to Jack Straw’s Castle, they noticed a small group of around sixty spectators gathered around a platform. Here, Jeffrey Hamm, a former British Union of Fascists member, and leader of the fascist British League of Ex-Servicemen and Women, was giving a venomous speech whilst four ‘heavies’ (ostensibly there to sell fascist newspapers) guarded the platform. Hamm had also been involved in the latter stages of the 1945 anti-alien petition in Hampstead where he had tried to stir up unrest, perhaps explaining the venue for his speech that day, as well as the proximity to Golders Green with its Jewish population. For the four Jewish ex-servicemen who had fought for their country, the sight of Hamm, who had himself largely sat out the war after being detained for his fascist sympathies under the wartime Defence Regulation 18B, attempting to whip up the crowd with antisemitic vitriol was too much. The four men promptly divided the stewards amongst themselves, with Gerry Flamberg making a B-line for Hamm who was sent flying off his platform and promptly received a bloody beating at the hands of the decorated Jewish former 109 Daniel Sonabend, We Fight Fascists: The 43 Group and the Forgotten Battle for Post-war Britain (London: Version, 2019), pp. 43-47; Morris Beckman, The 43 Group (London: Centerprise, 1992), pp. 21. 186 paratrooper.110 Hamm’s ‘heavies’ fared no better against their attackers and the fascist group made a prompt retreat. They would not be gone for long however. This was May 1946.111 That British Fascism should be reviving was abhorrent to the four Jewish ex-servicemen and to plenty of British citizens as well. Hamm’s oration that day at Whitestone Pond brought in a small crowd, many probably more curious about what was happening rather than being actually sympathetic. Fascists in the post-war period found themselves operating in a hostile environment, where even the mention of ‘fascism’ stirred strong emotions. The war had touched the lives of every British citizen, and for many families ‘fascism was the hated ideology that murdered their sons, their family or their friend, that bombed their home and darkened their lives.’112 The internment of many British fascists, including Mosley as well as the likes of Hamm, during the war further delegitimised British fascism.113 Yet the crowds would grow larger in the next few years. Why? Events in Palestine were a god send for British fascists whose antisemitic tirades now had direction, and whose words now resonated with many of the British public. The Palestine issue enabled a brief resurgence of British fascism in the immediate post-war period. This cannot be measured in a huge swell in membership (though there was some growth), nor in electoral success, but rather it their ability to gather large crowds who were friendly to their invective on Palestine and whip up strong feeling about the issue of Jewish terrorism.114 As Joe Mulhall, a senior researcher at Hope Not Hate, notes in his work on this period, ‘the far-right has always had a gravitational pull that has the ability to shift the centre ground of political discourse further to the right’.115 110 Sonabend, We Fight Fascists, pp. 47-48; Graham Macklin, Very Deeply Dyed in Black (London: IB Tauris, 2007), pp. 40. 111 Sonabend, We Fight Fascists, pp. 336. 112 Joe Mulhall, British Fascism after the Holocaust: From the Birth of Denial to the Notting Hill Riots 1939-1958 (Routledge Studies in Fascism and the Far Right: London, 2020), pp. 45. 113 Macklin, Very Deeply Dyed in Black, pp. 10. 114 Mulhall, British Fascism after the Holocaust, pp. 50; Dave Renton, Fascism, Anti-fascism, and Britain in the 1940s (Macmillan: Basingstoke, 2000), pp. 34. 115 Mulhall, British Fascism after the Holocaust, pp. 4. 187 Hamm, who became one of the leading fascists of the immediate post-war period, attracted significant crowds across London where in the aftermath of the hanging of the two sergeants, a crowd of over one thousand people came to hear him speak on Ridley Road in Dalston. Around 90% of the crowd was supportive of what he said, even though many if not most of those who came to cheer Hamm on were not necessarily fascists themselves.116 If he had not been able to capitalize so successfully on the issue of Palestine, it is likely that Hamm would have emigrated from Britain.117 Terrorism in Palestine kept him active, gave his antisemitism an ‘acceptable’ gloss, and allowed him to whip up hatred. Indeed, the League of Ex-Servicemen often claimed that their outdoor meetings were not strictly fascist gatherings, but ‘were designed as protests against terrorism in Palestine.’118 British fascists were easily able to stoke inter-communal tensions and racial hatred, especially since many people – as has been noted above – were latently antisemitic and understood very little about Zionism and the nature of Jewish terrorism. Zionist terror was thus conflated with Judaism, meaning British Jews came to be further seen as complicit in violence in Palestine. Bertram Duke Pile, a key member of Hamm’s League, informed a cheering crowd that there was ‘only one way to stop the murder of our lads in Palestine and that way is to arrest and charge with treason those people in this country who aiding or abetting these murderers’ – meaning British Jews.119 Denouncing Zionism as a way to fulfil a wider domestic antisemitic stance was common of many speakers, with another at the same meeting stating that ‘the Jews have no right to Palestine and the Jews have no right to the power which they hold in this country of ours.’120 Although antisemitism was widespread in this period, a Mass Observation report demonstrated that there was a general sense that fascists should not be able 116 Sonabend, We Fight Fascists, pp. 154. 117 Renton, Fascism, Anti-fascism, and Britain in the 1940s, pp. 30. 118 The Daily Mail, 2nd June 1947. 119 ‘Metropolitan Police Report,’ 25th May 1947, TNA, HO 45/24469. 120 ‘Metropolitan Police Report,’ 25th May 1947, TNA, HO 45/24469. 188 to openly preach their cause (even amongst respondents who themselves expressed antisemitic views).121 Thus fascist speakers used Palestine to find a common cause with a wider audience who could hardly call for meetings to be shut down when they found themselves in general agreement with Hamm or other fascist speakers. Fascists hid their ideology and ideological antisemitism behind the rhetorical façade of preaching against terrorism in Palestine. One of the League’s speakers called for retribution against ‘the Jews’ for the death of British soldiers in Palestine. This was, he told his audience, hardly an antisemitic expression. ‘Is it anti-Semitism to denounce the murderers of your own flesh and blood in Palestine?’ he asked his audience.122 Many audience members, fascist or not, may well have felt the speaker had a point. In 1946 and 1947, speaking about Palestine was an easy way for fascist groups to gather a crowd and gain applause and cheers rather than the usual jeers they might have expected. The police recorded that it was ‘quite apparent that a large number of persons present sympathised with the speakers when the question of Palestine was raised.’123 The hanging of the two sergeants in particular led to more support for the fascist diatribes against the situation in Palestine. Between July and August 1947, fascist speakers made Palestine the centre of their speeches and reaped the rewards of public anger.124 Speakers also took to attaching the Daily Express front page, with Jim Pringle’s grim photograph, to their platforms.125 Over 500 people attended a meeting of the League on 31st July 1947 in Hackney – the day the death of the sergeants was confirmed, and over 600 turned up to a meeting three days later.126 Attendances to similar meetings were less than half beforehand.127 On at least one meeting a number of British soldiers 121 “Report on Anti-Semitism and Free Speech,” July 1946 (no. 2411), Mass Observation, pps.4, 8, 16. 122 Quoted in: Sonabend, We Fight Fascists, pp. 108. 123 ‘Meeting,’ 18th August 1946, TNA, HO 45/24470. 124 Renton, Fascism, Anti-fascism, and Britain in the 1940s, pp. 134. 125 Renton, Fascism, Anti-fascism, and Britain in the 1940s, pp. 134; Sonabend, We Fight Fascists, pp. 147. 126 Paul Stocker, Lost Imperium: Far Right Visions of the British Empire, C.1920-1980 (Routledge Studies in Fascism and the Far Right. London, 2020), pp. 146. 127 Ibid., pp. 146. 189 from Palestine attended one of Hamm’s speeches and sided with him, giving further legitimacy to his remarks on Palestine.128 And with soldiers and policemen in Palestine showing increasing signs of overt antisemitism, the director of public prosecutions warned that the fascists may receive a steady stream of new recruits.129 MI5, concerned that British fascism had revived so quickly, noted with some alarm that ‘as a general rule, the crowd is now sympathetic and even spontaneously enthusiastic.’130 ‘Opposition,’ they noted, ‘is only met when there is an organized group of Jews or Communists in the audience.’131 The major opposition came from Gerry Flamberg and his friends who would form ‘The 43 Group’ in September 1946 to fight the fascists using the only language they felt fascists understood – violence.132 Initially taking on the fascists with just their fists, as the violence escalated many took to taking a cosh or other blunt instrument along with them when they confronted fascists. A young hairdresser by the names of Vidal Sassoon who promptly joined the group upon hearing of their exploits, often went into battle armed with a pair of hairdressing scissors.133 The group would hold their own meetings or go to fascist meetings to disrupt them with the dual aims of having fascist meetings shut down by the police for disorder, and laying into fascists with the hope of deterring them from turning up again. By the summer of 1947 the group had around 500 active members who took part in such activities.134 The group were keenly aware that the fascists were using Palestine as a tool to whip up hatred and intercommunal violence. As On Guard, the group’s newspaper, noted in August 1947, the fascists were ‘taking every advantage of the propaganda pouring out of Palestine. It is 128 Renton, Fascism, Anti-fascism, and Britain in the 1940s, pp. 134. 129‘Home Office Minute,’ 25th November 1947, TNA, HO 45/2519. 130 ‘Home Office Monthly Bulletin,’ August 1947, TNA, KV 3/52. 131 Ibid. 132 Sonabend, We Fight Fascists, pp. 72. 133 Sonabend, We Fight Fascists, pp.126; Vidal Sassoon, Vidal: The Autobiography (Macmillan: London, 2010), pp. 44-48. 134 Sonabend, We Fight Fascists, pp. 152. 190 the greatest ammunition to our Jew-baiting would-be Gauleiters.’135 Meanwhile, when disrupting fascist meetings with shouts of ‘we don’t want Fascists in the East End,’ fascist speakers would often shout back, ‘who killed the British soldiers in Palestine.’136 The 43 Group and the Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen and Women (AJEX) also found their own meetings – denouncing fascism in Britain – were sometimes disrupted by members of the public shouting ‘why don’t you go back to Palestine?’ and ‘what about the sergeants?’137 One young AJEX speaker, giving his first public speech at an outside meeting in Bethnal Green, found himself heckled in this manner before his platform was smashed by angry audience members.138 British fascists had successfully weaponized the issue of Palestine and galvanised the anger of many members of the public. Even though the public was hardly fond of British fascism, they were susceptible to its message and willing to listen to it when it came to Palestine, allowing British fascists it to shape the public discourse. The final evidence of how Jewish terrorism in Palestine impacted the revival of British fascism comes from the ultimate stagnation of fascist politics in the post-war years. Despite worries by the security services and anti-fascist groups that fascism was spreading its influence in Britain, the threat proved short lived. Sir Oswald Mosley, waiting in the wings for the moment to return to public life and politics, showed his political naivete by returning to politics just as the British fascist revival was petering out. Rumours of Mosely’s return had been floating around since the end of the war, but it was not until November 1947 that Mosely attempted to relaunch his career, holding a secretive gathering of sympathetic listeners at Memorial Hall in Farringdon. The location was not a coincidence. It was in the same building where he had announced the formation of the BUF in 1932. This sense of fascist history as well as the 135 On Guard, ‘Palestine: Hard Facts,’ August 1947, pp. 2. 136 Renton, Fascism, Anti-fascism, and Britain in the 1940s, pp. 134. 137 Sonabend, We Fight Fascists, pp. 146. 138 Ibid. pp. 146. 191 grandiose Gothic Revival style of the building gave the meeting the sense of a momentous occasion.139 Here, Mosely announced that he was considering forming a new fascist movement, the Union Movement, which would eventually come into being on 7th February 1948.140 However, by February 1947 Britain had handed the issue of Palestine over to the UN, and by December 1947 the British Government had agreed to leave Palestine for good. Hamm and other British fascists had benefitted from widespread anti-Jewish feeling brought about by violence in Palestine. Now, this once effective recruiting and baiting tool had lost its bite. The Palestine issue was soon a non-issue. It was at this point that British fascism began to lose its momentum.141 Mosely had hoped the moment was ripe to relaunch British fascism as a political force under the banner of his Union Movement, yet the 1949 municipal elections led to an electoral drubbing for the party. Its eight candidates polled only 1,993 out of a total of 4,097,841.142 By March 1949, British fascists were considered to be so little risk to national security that MI5 ceased its monitoring of them.143 The party quickly descended into infighting, and schisms soon developed. In 1951 Mosely left Britain for Ireland where he focussed (unsuccessfully) on spreading his new pan-European fascist ideology. Hamm followed him, eventually becoming Mosley’s secretary – a role in which he served for 25 years.144 The end of British rule in Palestine had spelled the end of the British fascist revival – never again would Mosely or his adherents be able to gain such influence on British society or receive such support for their speeches. Yet, whilst they had held the public’s attention they had nurtured and fed British anger at events in Palestine and fuelled antisemitism. These feelings would soon be turned into actions. 139 Sonabend, We Fight Fascists, pp.192. 140 Graham Macklin, Failed Fuhrers: A History of Britain’s Extreme Right (London: Routledge, 2020), pp. 105. 141 Sonabend, We Fight Fascists, pp. 201; Macklin, Very Deeply Dyed in Black, pp. 48. 142 Macklin, Failed Fuhrers, pp. 105. 143 Sonabend, We Fight Fascists, pp. 280. 144 Macklin, Failed Fuhrers, pp. 105; Sonabend, We Fight Fascists, pp. 310. 192 Riots in Britain After the hanging of Martin and Paice, there was a widespread sense of revulsion and anger at the way the two men had been killed, and the booby-trapping of their bodies. This was fed by the coverage of the killings and the horrific image on the front of the Daily Express. Anger did not take long to turn into action. On the Friday 1st August, the beginning of the bank holiday weekend, rioting began in Liverpool where the violence lasted for five days. Across the country other towns and cities were also the scenes of antisemitic violence and rioting: London, Manchester, Hull, Brighton, and Glasgow all saw widespread violence.145 Isolated instances were also recorded in Plymouth, Birmingham, Cardiff, Swansea, Newcastle, and Davenport.146 Elsewhere, antisemitic graffiti and threatening phone calls to Jewish places of worship stood in for physical violence.147 Jewish owned shops had their windows smashed, Jewish homes were targeted, an attempt was made to burn down Liverpool Crown Street Synagogue whilst a wooden Synagogue in Glasgow was set alight, and in a handful of cases individuals were personally threatened or assaulted.148 A Jewish man was threatened with a pistol in Northampton whilst an empty mine was placed in a Jewish owned tailors shop in Davenport.149 Overall however, the majority of cases of violence were aimed at causing damage to property.150 145 Tony Kushner, “Anti-Semitism and Austerity: The August 1947 Riots in Britain,” in Racial Violence in Britain, 1840-1950, ed. Panikos Paniyi (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1993), pp.153-154. 146 Kushner, “Anti-Semitism and Austerity: The August 1947 Riots in Britain,” pp. 153. 147 The Jewish Chronicle, 8th August 1947. 148 Kushner, “Anti-Semitism and Austerity: The August 1947 Riots in Britain,” pp. 154; Mulhall, British Fascism after the Holocaust, pp. 47. 149 Kushner, “Anti-Semitism and Austerity: The August 1947 Riots in Britain,” pp. 153; Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 5th August 1947. 150 Kushner, “Anti-Semitism and Austerity: The August 1947 Riots in Britain,” pp. 153. 193 Despite the scale of the unrest, and the fact that these were the first anti-Jewish riots to occur since 1917, the riots of 1947 have received little scholarly attention. Most historical treatments of the post-war period in Britain either ignore the riots or address it in only the most cursory fashion, with just a handful of chapters in edited volumes seeking to contextualize and understand the events of the August bank holiday. For instance, David Kynaston’s mammoth Austerity Britain, 1945-1951, dedicates just two sentences to the riots whilst Anthony Julius’s account of British antisemitism Trials of the Diaspora, devotes just four lines to the riots in a book of over 800 pages.151 Where historians have written about the riots, there has been debate over how far the anti-Jewish nature of the riots should be seen as explicitly connected to events in Palestine, or whether the hanging of the two sergeants was merely a trigger which led to the eruption of wider pent up economic and social frustrations. The historian Tony Kushner has argued that the riots were largely caused by the economic travails of the British people, pointing to the particular involvement of the unemployed in the riots and the fact that unemployment was higher in the cities where violence occurred and to frustration with continued rationing.152 Yet, as even Kushner has to admit, unemployment rates were overall quite low and continuing to fall after the fuel crisis in the spring of 1947 had led to large numbers of workers being temporarily laid off.153 Kushner has argued that since earlier events such as the assassination of Lord Moyne in 1944 and the bombing of the King David Hotel in 1946 did not spark rioting, the underlying cause of the disturbances in 1947 cannot lie exclusively with the hanging of the two sergeants.154 Certainly, economic travails did play a part. On the same day the Daily Express published its picture of the two sergeants’ bodies, one of their other smaller stories on the front page, above the main headline, concerned the possibility of further rationing of bread and 151 David Kynaston, Austerity Britain, 1945-1951, (London: Bloomsbury, 2007), pp. 270; Julius, Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Antisemitism in England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 333. 152 Kushner, “Anti-Semitism and Austerity: The August 1947 Riots in Britain,” pp. 157-159. 153 Kushner, “Anti-Semitism and Austerity: The August 1947 Riots in Britain,” pp. 158. 154 Kushner, “Anti-Semitism and Austerity: The August 1947 Riots in Britain,” pp. 150. 194 butter.155 Since Jews were often accused of cheating the rationing system, being involved in the black market and of being sympathetic to Jewish terrorists in Palestine it is possible that many people may have felt that there was now twice the justification to attack British Jews. As one Mass Observation diarist wrote, ‘I am not surprised and quite glad people are taking their revenge on the Jews in this country. […] I don’t accept as sincere the comments of Jews these last few days. In their hearts I believe all Jews are glad to hit us British.’156 However, the idea that events in Palestine were merely a convenient catalyst for the riots, with economic factors being the main issue, is simply not true. As has been shown, people were well aware of events in Palestine and were angry and distressed at the continuing violence by the Irgun and Lehi. It is worth noting that the riots occurred less than two months after the arrival of Lehi letter bombs in the UK, and with continual reports of casualties in Palestine being reported in the press. In addressing Kushner’s argument that other attacks in Palestine did not generate riots, suggesting that there were other larger factors at play, several points must be considered. Firstly, the nature of the death of Martin and Paice was particularly disturbing. The two men were essentially executed by the Irgun with a note pinned to one of the men stating they had been tried and found guilty of a number of offences, including being part of a ‘British criminal terrorist organisation known as the Army of Occupation’ and ‘illegal entry into the Hebrew homeland’ and that they had ‘been sentenced to hang and their appeal for clemency dismissed.’157 The fact that the bodies were then hung above a booby trap mine, blowing the bodies apart when they were cut down added insult to injury. Whilst other attacks by the Irgun and Lehi were violent and often led to higher numbers of fatalities, the hanging of the two sergeants was a particularly grisly episode, even when compared to other attacks – often shootings or explosions of some sort. The manner of their death, discovery, and subsequent 155 The Daily Express, 1st August 1947. 156 Diarist 5447, 4th August 1947, Mass Observation. 157 The Manchester Guardian, 1st August 1947. 195 desecration of the bodies was particularly barbarous in comparison. The Daily Express front cover helped bring this fact home to people, illustrating the gruesome nature of their fate and labelling the murders as ‘medieval barbarism.’158 Meanwhile both the Daily Express and The Times compared the act to the crimes of the Nazis.159 The Daily Telegraph described the killings as a ‘descent to a new depth of outrage,’ pointing to the fact that the men were, by the Irgun’s own understanding, ‘prisoners of war’ given that the organization understood itself as ‘at war’ with Britain.160 Indeed, the fact that the killing had been carried out and staged in the manner of an execution would have been offensive to many people, even if they did not consciously register why this so enraged them. The power to pass sentence and execute prisoners has typically been the remit of the nation state and its judicial branch.161 The fact that ‘terrorists’ were acting as if they were already a legitimate legal and judicial power in a country whose affairs were managed by Britain was a direct challenge to British rule in Palestine – not just through violence, but also through semiotics. Additionally, whereas other events such as the bombing of the King David Hotel were sudden and shocking, there was quite a buildup when it came to the deaths of Martin and Paice. The two men had been abducted on the 11th July whilst in Netanya, with much speculation in the press and amongst the British populace whether the two men would be discovered or returned. The instigation of rigorous searches by British forces, aided by the Hagannah, seemed to suggest that there was a likelihood the two men would be found.162 The progress of the search operation and the calls to free the two men by MPs and Martin and Paice’s parents were much covered in not just the national papers, but 158 The Daily Express, 1st August 1947. 159 Hoffman, Anonymous Soldiers, pp. 463-464. 160 The Daily Telegraph, 1st August 1947. 161 Max Weber, “The Types of Authority and Imperative Coordination” in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology eds. Gerth & Mills (London: Routledge, 2009), pp. 328-329; Annulla Linders, “The Execution Spectacle and State Legitimacy: The Changing Nature of the American Execution Audience, 1833-1937” Law & Society Review 36/3 (2002), pp. 610. 162 Hoffman, Anonymous Soldiers, pp. 454. 196 local ones too.163 As a result, people were more than familiar with the details about the two men and their abduction by late July, and had a cautious degree of hope for their safe recovery. In such circumstances, risk theory suggests that people have a more emotional response when they can create a mental picture of the victims, and single and identifiable victims often generate more emotions as they are more vivid and concrete in the people’s minds compared to statistical casualties – i.e., where there is a large number of casualties.164 Thus, the killing of Martin and Paice was a blow to hopes for their discovery and had a hard hitting emotional effect after people had invested their time and hopes in the recovery of the two men. As these emotions spilled into the streets, British fascists looked on with glee as rioters across the country targeted Jewish shops, businesses, homes, and places of worship. In some places, British fascists took an active part in the riots, but their involvement was negligible – most of the rioters were not in any way connected to far-right movements. Indeed, at a League speech shortly after the riots, fascist activist Harold Robinson stated that the unrest was ‘very comforting to me because it means we have far more supporters than we thought.’165 However, British fascists soon learnt that antisemitic violence in an area did not mean they had ‘support’ in that locale. When Hamm and Duke Pile – the Leagues self-proclaimed ‘expert on Palestine’ – travelled up to Liverpool to help local fascist leader Joseph Morrisey they had high hopes.166 Liverpool had seen some of the worst rioting and the leadership of the League naturally assumed that the city would be sympathetic to their message. Yet, when Hamm arranged a meeting and began to speak, he was attacked, and the rostrum he had been talking from was smashed by his audience. In the brawl Pile found himself knocked down whilst an old lady 163 Derby Daily Telegraph, 14th July 1947; Western Daily Press, 18th July 1947; Hull Daily Mail, 29th July 1947. 164 Ed. Paul Slovic, The Feeling of Risk: New Perspectives on Risk Perception, pp. 37-38, 53. 165 Stocker, Lost Imperium, pp. 147. 166 Macklin, Very Deeply Dyed in Black, pp. 46; Sonabend, We Fight Fascists, pp. 107. 197 stood over him, beating him with part of the splintered rostrum. Hamm decided the trip was not likely to be successful and departed immediately back to London.167 The reaction of the audience in Liverpool may seem strange given the events which immediately preceded Hamm’s talk in the city. Although many people in London had not been particularly keen on fascism and British fascists, they had supported their points – or at least applauded them – when it came to Palestine. Yet in the case of Liverpool the crowd turned on Hamm quickly, and no one stepped in to defend or support him. Why? Perhaps the crowd were not supporters of what had happened in Liverpool – though the high feeling, widespread nature of the disturbances, and general feeling of anger over the Sergeants Affair suggests at least some of them would have felt a sense of understanding, if not sympathy, for the rioters. But perhaps we can speculate that the crowd felt the violence had gone far enough, or too far, at this point and did not welcome the outside fascist agitation. The riots had already at this point begun to be depicted in the press and by judges and politicians as acts of ‘hooliganism.’168 Sentencing rioters in Lancashire, one of the magistrates sentenced one man telling him his actions were ‘both un-British and unpatriotic,’ whilst he summed up that another rioter had, by breaking a window, ‘precipitated the unruliness and hooliganism’ which then broke out. The first man was imprisoned for six months, the second was fined £5 and ordered to pay £7 10s towards the cost of damages.169 In the House of Lords, the Earl of Perth put it slightly more obliquely by stating that ‘It is not the custom here for innocent victims to be made to pay for crimes abroad,’ before concluding that ‘I feel that these outbreaks are contrary to the whole traditions of the country.’170 He was followed by Viscount Hall, who as George Hall had been deeply involved with events in Palestine as Secretary of State for the Colonies until his 167 Macklin, Very Deeply Dyed in Black, pp. 46. 168 Tony Kushner, “Anti-Semitism and Austerity: The August 1947 Riots in Britain,” pp. 154. 169 Gloucester Echo, 6th August 1947. 170 [Hansard] Parliamentary Debates, House of Lords, 5th August 1947, volume 151, column 936. 198 replacement in 1946. Hall echoed the Earl of Perth by condemning the riots and stating that such events were ‘not the British way of dealing with these problems.’171 These speeches received sympathetic coverage, quickly appearing in papers such as the Daily Telegraph the next morning, with the paper emphasising that it was ‘the greatest disservice to the traditions of this country that any should seek to stir up in our midst the mob-hysteria which we condemned in Nazi Germany.’172 A city, many of whose residents were being labelled as ‘un-British’ hooligans, would hardly welcome the arrival of British fascists whose methods and aesthetics aped inter-war continental groups and whose members had been interned out of concern of their potential treachery and disloyalty to Britain. Yet, despite the minute involvements of fascists in the rioting and the reaction of the crowd in Liverpool to senior British fascists turning up in their city, it is not possible to discount altogether the impact Fascist rhetoric had in helping to ferment the conditions for the riots. As Kushner notes, the existence of over ten years of fascist propaganda against the Jews helped to prepare an atmosphere which made the riots possible.173 In seeking to understand the Notting Hill Riots, Stephen Dorril has posited that British fascism provided a ‘vocabulary and programme of action which shaped the resentment of inarticulate and disgruntled people.’174 The same certainly seems true in the case of the 1947 riots. With a constant stream of bad news from Palestine, and such strong invective by British fascists whipping up hatred at every turn, it is hardly surprising that tensions boiled over in many places and resulted in the sorts of antisemitic violence that delighted the fascists. 171 [Hansard] Parliamentary Debates, House of Lords Debate, 5th August 1947, vol. 151, column 937. 172 The Daily Telegraph, 6th August 1947. 173 Kushner, “Anti-Semitism and Austerity: The August 1947 Riots in Britain,” pp. 155. 174Stephen Dorril, Blackshirt: Sir Oswald Mosley and British Fascism (London: Penguin, 2007), pp. 613-633. 199 Rex V Caunt – Stirring Hatred in Britain: Morecambe in Lancashire, a town without a noteworthy Jewish presence, was perhaps not a natural place for the racial tensions caused by terrorism in Palestine to find voice. Yet, James Caunt, the editor of The Morecambe and Heysham Visitor, used his local paper to publish a diatribe against British Jews and encourage violence against the community in August 1947 which led the paper and Caunt to be at the centre of a much-covered trial for seditious libel at Liverpool Assizes. In the aftermath of the discovery of the bodies of the two sergeants, Caunt wrote in his weekly column that ‘there is very little about which to rejoice greatly except the pleasant fact that only a handful of Jews bespoil the population of our Borough.’ Utilizing typical antisemitic stereotypes, he then condemned British Jews, to whom he attributed black market dealings, and who he accused of not doing enough to prevent terrorism in Palestine. He argued that ‘they should disgorge their ill-gotten wealth in trying to dissuade their brothers in the United States from pouring out dollars to facilitate the entrance into Palestine of European Jewish scum, a proportion of whom will swell the ranks of the terrorist organizations and thus carry on the murderous work which British Jewry professes to abhor.’ The idea that the ‘good ones’ should stop ‘the bad ones’ in a certain ethnic or religious group from carrying out acts of terror is a typically fatuous argument which has sadly survived down the years and been used extensively in the era of the war on terror. Nevertheless, the idea had public credence. One Mass Observation diarist fumed that it was ‘all very well for good Jews to write to the papers saying All Jews aren’t bad – oh yeah? Why don’t the good Jews, then, use their influence with the bad Jews.’175 Caunt summed up by calling the Anglo-Jewish community a ‘plague on the country’ and expressed joy at the anti-Jewish riots, stating that ‘violence may be the only way to 175 Diarist 5447, 3rd December 1946, Mass Observation. 200 bring them [British Jews] to the sense of their responsibility to the country in which they live.’ Caunt followed this editorial up with another which defended his initial statements.176 Although Caunt’s words were objectionable to many, the prosecution had much difficulty in proving the article met the legal criteria for seditious libel, the main issue being that such prosecutions were usually brought where an individual had been libelled rather than an entire religious group. The prosecution was called to prove that Caunt had libelled the entire ‘Jewish people,’ with the ‘intension of stirring up disorder by promoting feelings of hostility and ill-will between different classes of His Majesty’s subjects,’ a near impossible task.177 After a trial in which the prosecution struggled to prove their case, the judge – Mr Justice Birkett – summed up the case for the benefit of the jury in a less than impartial way. Demonstrating a very liberal approach to the task of a presiding judge, Birkett assured the jury that ‘if I make just a short reference to the facts in this case, I am sure you will accept it from me when I say it is merely with the desire to help you to summarise the points of the matter before you and to leave the matter to your decision.’178 He then proceeded in a fashion more suited to a judge in a Rumpole novel than to an actual member of the bench by stressing the importance of the freedom of the press and the importance of free expression. He also reminded the jury of the context of the article, namely the ‘outrages in Palestine, the hanging of the British Sergeants and the booby traps.’179 Unsurprisingly, the jury acquitted Caunt. The verdict was met with applause and cheers from the spectators in the court.180 Although the Director of Public Prosecutions attempted to explain both the verdict and this expression of joy as an outburst in support of liberty and the freedom of the press, this 176 ‘Rejoice Greatly’ (article by James Caunt), 6th August 1947, TNA, ASSI 52/618. 177 ‘Statement of Offence,’ Undated, TNA, ASSI 52/618; ‘Note from Mr Jones to Mr Cornish,’ 17th August 1948, TNA, HO 45/25588. 178 ‘Transcript of Rex V Caunt,’ 17th November 1947, TNA, HO 45/25588. 179 ‘Transcript of Rex V Caunt,’ 17th November 1947, TNA, HO 45/25588. 180 ‘Letter from Theobald Mathew, Director of Public Prosecutions to Sir Frank Newsam,’ 18th November 1947 TNA, HO 45/25588. 201 seems unlikely.181 Although a Mass Observation report noted that the public were generally supportive of free speech in the press, even when it came to the publication of material which may incite violence or be libellous, this was hardly the only reason for Caunt’s acquittal and the pleasure of the spectators. As the Home Office itself admitted, ‘in view of the circumstances in which the article was published, i.e., following the hanging of the two British N.C.Os by Jewish terrorists, it was unlikely from the first that a jury would be persuaded to convict.’182 The law was certainly not blind here, with one eye remaining fixed on Palestine as the case was presented in court. As has been shown, many people felt the same way as Caunt about the situation in Palestine and given the immediate context of the hangings of Martin and Paice, even those who had not turned out to smash Jewish shopfronts could comprehend the sentiment whether or not they supported the violent rhetoric the Visitor was espousing. Caunt was, in many ways, merely voicing the opinions of many people in Britain at that time, the only difference being that he had channelled the immediate anger he felt into an editorial rather than merely exchanging comments with friends or family or committing his thoughts to a private diary. The way Caunt specifically attacked British Jews – citizens of Britain with nothing to do with the Irgun or Lehi – equally would not have raised eyebrows amongst the jury. As has been discussed above, British Jews were often lumped in with Jews from Palestine and elsewhere, making them particularly vulnerable when Jewish terrorists in Palestine aroused anger in Britain. In the public’s mind British Jews were undoubtedly tied up with the nefarious deeds of the Irgun and Lehi and sympathetic to the two groups’ actions. Caunt’s claim that British Jews possessed ‘ill-gotten wealth’ also reflected popular antisemitic ideas about British Jewry. In short, Caunt’s editorial did nothing more than reflect the opinions of a vast swathe of the British public. 181 ‘Letter from Theobald Mathew, Director of Public Prosecutions to Sir Frank Newsam,’ 18th November 1947 TNA, HO 45/25588. 182 ‘Letter to Mr Brass,’ 13th July 1948, TNA, HO 45/25588. 202 Caunt’s acquittal caused some worry to members of parliament and to the Government, who were concerned that such a case showed a weak spot in the law when it came to expressions of antisemitism in the public domain. If Caunt could state such antisemitic views and call for attacks against British Jews, then what was to stop Fascist organizations doing the same based on events in Palestine? Although with hindsight it is obvious that the revival of British fascism was short lived, the Government was worried that this might be just the beginning of a resurgence for the movement, with returning British personnel from Palestine potentially swelling the membership of various British fascist organizations.183 The Government’s Committee on Fascism, staffed by several high ranking ministers including the Home Secretary, noted that although Fascist groups remained disparate and fractious, if a ‘good leader made his way to the fore’ (likely an oblique reference to a possible Mosely return) and antisemitism be made ‘a focal point’ for the cause, a single, powerful movement may appear.184 Given the rise in antisemitism over events in Palestine, this must have appeared as a serious threat. In such a case, a powerful fascist group could libel British Jewry with near legal impunity. Much discussion was had about whether the Porter Commission – an advisory report on the potential for amending libel laws in Britain – would recommend some tightening of the law in relation to seditious libel. Although there seemed little chance that the commission would be able to offer any practical legal amendments to the law surrounding libel, the government considered taking other steps. These included strengthening the Public Order Act of 1936 (itself introduced to curtail the agitation of the BUF), giving police the power to shut down open air meetings should they encourage agitation against specific groups. However, there was doubt over whether parliament would be willing to grant the police such powers.185 A high level meeting between the Lord Chancellor, the Secretary of State for the Home Office, 183 ‘Fascist Organisations,’ 1st December 1947, TNA, HO 45/25588. 184 ‘Extract from the Minutes of a Meeting of the Committee on Fascism,’ 3rd January, 1946, TNA, HO 45/25588. 185 ‘Fascist Organisations,’ 1st December 1947, TNA, HO 45/25588. 203 and Permanent Under-Secretary of State of the Home Office concluded that if antisemitism became an even more serious problem it may be necessary to make an amendment of libel law before the commission reported back, though steering clear of the political aspects of the law. Until then, the Government would make it clear that the matter was under review, and it would act if it considered in necessary.186 Although the Porter Commission had been set up in March 1939, the war interrupted its deliberations, and it was not until October 1948 that it reported back.187 Making clear that antisemitism was the major issue when it came to claims of libel against an entire group, the commission noted that ‘the most widespread and deplorable examples of Group Defamation at the date at which we commenced our sittings were directed against the Jews.’ But the committee noted that any alteration to the law risked the ‘prohibition of perfectly proper criticisms of particular groups or classes of persons,’ and concluded that ‘we do not, therefore, recommend any general change in the existing law to deal with Group Defamation.’188 However, by 1948 the situation had changed dramatically. With the withdrawal of British personnel from Palestine, the fascist threat and swelling antisemitism had both receded. Thus, the Home Secretary was happy to accept the recommendations of the Porter Committee related to group libel in full.189 Yet, the way in which a legal case against a small local newspaper snowballed into a national political matter demonstrates the impact events over three and a half thousand miles away from Britain had. Caunt’s words, in reaction to the hanging of Paice and Martin, set off a chain of events which led to the involvement of Government ministers and a panic over legislation. The case and its aftermath – combined with the riots and growing sympathy for fascist rhetoric – demonstrated the anger than events in Palestine were causing and showed that 186 Unsigned and undated report on potential changes to libel laws, TNA, HO 45/25124. 187 ‘Fascist Organisations,’ 1st December 1947, TNA, HO 45/25588; unsigned and undated report on potential changes to libel laws, TNA, HO 45/25124. 188 ‘Law of Defamation Report (Rt.Hon. the Lord Porter): Recommendations relating to practice and procedure,’ October 1948, TNA, LCO 2/4118. 189 Chuter Ede, ‘Letter from J. Chuter Ede to Viscount Jowitt,’ 6th January 1949, TNA, HO 45/25124. 204 the British public had reached the end of its tether when it came to violence in Palestine. The public were convinced that the situation could not continue – terror was an affront which people could bear no longer. The only question was what policy the government should now take. What to Do? Certainly, the evidence presented above shows the depth of feeling many people had over events in Palestine, and a continual frustration that terror attacks continued throughout 1946 and 1947 to be so ubiquitous. But what, in the mind of the British populace, was the best way to deal with events in Palestine? In the heat of the moment, people often wanted to take destructive and retributive actions against the Yishuv for the actions of the Irgun and Lehi. A worrying minority of people expressed genocidal feeling to the Jewish population in Palestine when asked about the situation in the country by mass observation.190 As the death count in Palestine rose, Mrs Underwood, one of Mass Observation’s diarists, recorder that ‘I begin to wish we had started the war a bit later, so that Hitler would have exterminated a few more Jews.’191 Such knee jerk reactions were immediate and raw reactions to emotive events in Palestine. As seen above, these angry reactions were written in diaries and shared with colleagues and family members, but they hardly reflected any serious thought about a final settlement in Palestine. Afterall, violent coercion was unlikely to produce any real results as many people realised. Only 5% of people thought a tougher response to acts of terror was the answer to the problem of Palestine.192 190 “Mass Observation Panel on the Jews,” July 1946 (no. 2463) Mass Observation, pp. 25. 191 Garfield, Our Hidden Lives: The Remarkable Diaries of Post-War Britain, pp. 321. 192 “Report on Attitude to Palestine and the Jews,” September 1947 (no. 2515), Mass Observation, pp. 7. 205 Equally, very few people (just 3%) believed that a solution could be achieved peacefully through arbitration, and an equal number thought Britain should work with America to reach a solution. America’s attitude towards Palestine deeply angered many in Britain who felt that the emerging superpower was oblivious to the travails Britain faced in the country, making unhelpful demands upon Britain (such as Truman’s call to allow 100,000 Jews to enter Palestine in early 1946) and generally aggravating the situation. In particular, many people objected to the failure of the US Government to control the advertising appeals for funds for Palestine – many of which were funnelled towards aiding acts of violence by the Irgun and Lehi (and which are discussed in depth in the next chapter).193 Despite multiple attempts on the part of the British Government, the Americans made no move to crack down on such fundraising. In an added insult to injury the League was able to claim charitable status which exempted them from tax.194 When it came to Palestine, America and Britain could not see eye to eye. As the Daily Mail commented, ‘most Americans cannot understand what we are doing in Palestine, anyway.’195 This mutual failure to comprehend each other’s positions was brought home to the public in the reports of ‘Don Iddon’s Diary’ which were written for Daily Mail by the eponymous author who was living in New York. Most Americans, he thought, could not understand the perceived belligerence of Britain when it came to Palestine. Dislike of British policy was so strong that on occasion film goers would even take to hissing and booing at newsreels when Attlee appeared on them.196 Thus American support was hardly an option many people in Britain thought likely or helpful. In the absence of a settlement with all sides, with or without international help, many people were unsure what could be done. In July 1947 a large proportion of people, 44%, stated 193 James Barr, A Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the Struggle that Shaped the Middle East (London: Simon & Schuster, 2011), pp. 330. 194 James Barr, A Line in the Sand, pp. 334. 195 The Daily Mail, 1st August 1947. 196 The Daily Mail, 28th November 1945. 206 they didn’t know what ought to be done about the situation in Palestine. However, a large minority of 26% felt that it was time Britain withdrew from Palestine altogether.197 Yet, this data was gathered before the discovery of the bodies of Martin and Paice. In the aftermath of their deaths calls for withdrawal became more pronounced, with the press urging the Government to unilaterally declare their intention to leave Palestine for good. This action was justified, the press argued, by the level of violence. The Manchester Guardian declared that ‘it is time the Government made up its mind to leave Palestine,’ warning that ‘we cannot afford to stay there. Palestine is already a Jewish tragedy; it must not become also a British disaster.’198 The Daily Mail noted that ‘the British are sick and tired of Palestine. Nothing would please them more than to be able to walk out.’199 The paper called for Britain to approach the Palestine issue as it had approached India – ‘give Jews and Arabs an early date at which it will be incumbent upon them to come to terms without British assistance.’ The article was published under the headline ‘cutting our losses,’ reflecting the widespread feeling that Britain could no longer be expected to bear the burden of Palestine whilst coming under constant attack from Jewish terrorism.200 The Economist was more cautious, urging the Government to attempt to broker an agreement between Jews and Arabs before any other move was undertaken. But still, it noted that ‘a total British withdrawal should be held in reserve as a last resort,’ arguing (incorrectly) that ‘no strategic advantage would be lost if the British withdrew immediately from Palestine.’201 Pointing to the duty required by the Mandate towards fostering a Jewish ‘National Home’ in Palestine, the paper stated that this had been met, and that Britain should remember a ‘duty rarely mentioned and apparently forgotten – a duty to the British people and in particular to the unfortunate British conscripts drafted to Palestine.’202 197 “Report on Attitude to Palestine and the Jews,” September 1947 (no. 2515), Mass Observation, pp. 7. 198 The Manchester Guardian, 1st August 1947. 199 The Daily Mail, 1st August 1947. 200 The Daily Mail, 13th August 1947. 201 The Economist, 9th August 1947. 202 The Economist, 9th August 1947. 207 The deaths of Martin and Paice thus marked a watershed moment in which the public could no longer countenance the idea of Britain remaining in Palestine for much longer. Although the administration in Palestine stressed that ‘the two hangings, though more spectacular, are really no worse than the murders that go on every day or will go on,’ neither the public nor the press shared this view.203 As Bruce Hoffman has argued in his history of the Irgun, the murders demonstrated clearly the futility of the British situation in Palestine.204 The public had clearly had enough. Endless tales of murder and carnage filled the press and no solution seemed to be in sight. In such a situation, bringing British personnel back home and ending the Mandate seemed the only sensible solution to prevent further casualties. Lingering Bitterness – PM Begin Comes to Britain A brief step forward in time provides evidence of the long-lasting social impact of the activities of the Irgun and Lehi. Widespread anger and revulsion at Jewish terrorist activities in the final days of the Mandate resurfaced several decades later when Menachem Begin made his first visit to the UK in 1977 as Israel’s Prime minister. Begin had previously been denied entry to the UK in 1955 when he was the leader of the Herut party, in part due to his previous terrorist activities and in 1972 a visit to the UK had to be cut short due to protests.205 His visit to the UK in 1977 caused considerable controversy and caused the Callaghan Government considerable concern about security issues relating to the trip. In the run up to Begin’s visit, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), the House of Commons, and Callaghan himself all received angry letters from British residents 203 Henry Gurney, ‘letter from Gurney to Cunningham,’ 4th August 1947, Middle East Centre Archive, Cunningham Papers IV/1. 204 Hoffman, Anonymous Soldiers, pp. 465. 205 Michael Palliser, ‘letter from Michael Palliser to Sir John Hunt GCB,’ 28th October 1977, TNA, FCO 93/1161. 208 demanding that the visit be stopped. Although a few of these noted Begin’s stance towards the Palestinians and his right-wing rhetoric and actions, the vast majority objected to Begin’s visit on the grounds that he had been a terrorist who had led an organization which had killed Britons. Some of those objecting had served in Palestine or were the family members of those who had died. A letter from a former army member who had served in the Mandate sent to Callaghan described how he ‘gave two of my best years opposing this evil man,’ and urged the Government to cancel Begin’s visit due to his attacks on British subjects in Palestine. ‘Do not dishonour these gallant men’ he concluded his message.206 Doris MacDonald, a widow of a former Soldier who had served in Palestine, carried on a correspondence with the FCO, in which she repeatedly objected to the visit of the Israeli Prime Minister. Rejecting the argument that the passage of time had healed old wounds and led to a change in diplomatic circumstances, Mrs MacDonald instead pointed to the ‘thirty years of grief and desolation for many women who were denied motherhood by Mr Begin.’207 One letter in particular from a former member of the administration in Palestine had to be handled with more attention and did not receive a standard reply from the FCO. On the 21st of October, the Prime Minister received a short, hand-written letter from General Sir Alan Cunningham. In his letter to Callaghan, the last High Commissioner – now aged 90 – noted Begin’s violent acts ‘mainly against the soldiers and sometimes against the civilians as in the case of the blowing up of the King David Hotel.’ He also drew attention to the killing of the two sergeants, noting that ‘no more horrible death could have been imagined,’ and asked for the visit to be cancelled or cut short.208 A polite, but firm reply from 10 Downing Street made clear that, although the Prime Minister noted that ‘none of us can forget the atrocities committed in the last days of the British mandate: even after thirty years they are a chilling memory,’ that Israel and the UK enjoyed 206 G. Loy, ‘letter from G. Loy to the Prime Minister,’ 25th May 1977, TNA, FCO 93/1160. 207 D.C. MacDonald, ‘letter from D.C. MacDonald to B. J. Everette,’ 1st November 1977, TNA, FCO 93/1162. 208 Alan Cunningham, ‘letter from General Sir Alan Cunningham to the PM,’ 20th October 1977, TNA, FCO 93/1161. 209 ‘friendly relations,’ and that Britain had shown the a ‘great capacity for reconciliation.’209 Many of those writing however, had no connection (or at least none that they mentioned) to events in Palestine three decades beforehand. Nevertheless, the sense of anger was palpable. One lecturer at Oldham College of Technology wrote directly to Callaghan suggesting that ‘this bloodstained terrorist on setting foot on these shores should surely be court-martialled and shot.’210 Another angry letter urged the Prime Minister to reconsider Begin’s invite to Britain, ending – in a vaguely threatening manner – that should his visit go ahead, ‘then there must be many of us, still with some sense of national pride, who will feel honour bound to see that he gets the welcome from the people of this country that he earned over thirty years ago.’211 A good number of those writing to protest displayed views that even at the time would have been considered as extreme. A few expressed deeply antisemitic views such as one letter that, after pointing out that ‘Begin is a bloody murderer of British lives,’ stated that any relations between the UK in Israel were ‘solely the result of Jewish back handed influence in Britain,’ and complained that ‘they [Jews] are running my country.’ The writer signed off ‘in the name of England and St. George, balls to traitors and long live England – cordially, R.E. Brooks.’212 Another, apparently anonymous writer, merely sent a cutting from a magazine about Begin labelled ‘Wanted for War Crimes,’ which included the picture of the two sergeants’ bodies. The sender had drawn an arrow to the picture with the caption ‘do they not count to you because they are not black?’213 One writer enclosed with their letter a handbill by the far-right National Front which railed against Begin’s visit and simultaneously decried the Government’s response to immigration in blatantly racist terms.214 Although it is harder to 209 James Callaghan, ‘draft letter from the PM to General Sir Alan Cunningham,’ 27th October 1977, TNA, FCO 93/1161. 210 M. Beaumont, ‘letter from M. Beaumont to the PM,’ 29th September 1977, TNA, FCO 93/1161. 211 R.W. Bloore, ‘letter from R.W. Bloore to the PM,’ 20th October 1977, TNA, FCO 93/1162. 212 R.E. Brooks, ‘letter from R.E. Brooks to K.D. Temple,’ 29th September 1977, TNA, FCO 93/1161. 213 ‘Wanted for War Crimes’ magazine cutting, unlabelled, no date, TNA, FCO 93/1161. 214 J.P.J Entract, ‘letter from J.P.J. Entract to the PM,’ dated 19th December 1977, TNA, FCO 93/1164. 210 assess its actual impact, the far-right – as in 1946-1948 – were again using the actions of the Irgun to stir up trouble. The National Front’s Martin Webster, effectively co-leader of the party, gained publicity by planning an attempt to have Begin arrested by having a former Palestine Police member submit an arrest warrant dating from the Mandate period executed by a British court.215 The FCO also noted that there were a number of ‘ugly handbills [which] are in circulation,’ including the one mentioned above by the National Front.216 With tensions so high, and public anger so palpable and being fuelled to some extent by the far-right, the security situation had to be considered carefully – not due to a possible attack from an Arab actor, either acting alone or on behalf of a Middle Eastern Government – but due to the threat from British citizens taking matters into their own hands. The FCO was also worried that any demonstration against Begin may diminish the hoped for success of Callaghan’s meeting with the Israeli Prime Minister.217 Initially, talks between Callaghan and Begin were intended to take place at 10 Downing Street, but after consulting with the security services on the request of David Owen – the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs – the FCO advised that the venue was no longer suitable.218 They were advised that there would be large demonstrations against Begin and that the ‘threat to his security would be high.’219 As a result of this it was suggested by Callaghan, and excepted by the FCO, that Begin should meet the British Prime Minister at Chequers instead to reduce the security risk.220 To further minimize any risk to the Israeli premier, Begin would be taken straight from Heathrow 215 ‘Cutting from the Daily Express,’ 23rd November 1977, TNA, FCO 93/1163. 216 Michael Palliser, ‘letter from Michael Palliser to Sir John Hunt GCB,’ 28th October 1977, TNA, FCO 93/1161. 217 ‘Visit of the Israeli Prime Minister,’ 4th November 1977, TNA, FCO 93/1162. 218 ‘Visit of the Prime Minister of Israel,’ 7th October 1977 TNA, FCO 93/1161; B.J. Everett, ‘letter from B.J. Everett to Mr Beer,’ 18th October 1977, TNA, FCO 93/1161. 219 B.J. Everett, ‘letter from B.J. Everett to Mr Beer,’ 18th October 1977, TNA, FCO 93/1161. 220 ‘Visit of the Prime Minister of Israel,’ 6th October 1977, TNA, FCO 93/1161; ‘Visit of the Prime Minister of Israel,’ 7th October 1977, TNA, FCO 93/1161; FCO 93/1161, B.J. Everett, ‘letter from B.J. Everett to Mr Beer,’ 18th October 1977, TNA, FCO 93/1161. 211 airport to Chequers by helicopter.221 Despite objections from Begin’s team that they did not want the premier ‘smuggled in like a thief in the night,’ Callaghan noted that it was quite normal for important guests to travel to Chequers by helicopter (German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt had done so in January 1977).222 Yet in this case it was undoubtedly security rather than convenience which dictated the choice of transportation. This British coda to Begin’s days as the leader of the Irgun demonstrated acutely that, despite Callaghan’s insistence to Cunningham that Britain had showed a ‘great capacity for reconciliation,’ many people in Britain had neither forgotten nor forgiven.223 The strength of feeling thirty years after the hanging of Martin and Paice can be sensed in these reams of letters of protests against Begin’s UK visit. The security services, FCO, and the Prime Minister’s Office all saw clearly the risks inherent in the Israeli premier’s visit and took the necessary steps to ensure his security as best they could in response. Indeed, the visit went off without a hitch with the FCO and Prime Minister’s Office ensuring that every possible issue was dealt with, including bringing in outside caterers to ensure Begin’s diet remained kosher so as to avoid any repeat of the embarrassment of October 1977 when the Israeli Economic Delegation was presented with shrimp cocktails by the Department of Trade.224 The public anger that Begin’s 1977 visit to the UK engendered, and the careful measures put in place to avoid any disturbance to talks between Callaghan and Begin, speaks to the long lasting impact of events that occurred during the final days of the Mandate. 221 ‘Visit of the Israeli Prime Minister,’ 4th November 1977, TNA, FCO 93/1162. 222 ‘Visit of the Israeli Prime Minister,’ 4th November 1977, TNA, FCO 93/1162. 223 James Callaghan, ‘draft letter from the PM to General Sir Alan Cunningham,’ 27th October 1977, TNA, FCO 93/1161. 224 ‘Kosher Diet,’ 22nd November 1977, TNA, FCO 93/1163. 212 Conclusion In discussing the end of the British Mandate, the opinions and reactions of the British public to events in Palestine are often given little attention or weight by historians of the period. The Mandate’s end is seen as a political and military story played out in Palestine and the corridors of Whitehall. Yet, as this chapter has shown, attacks by the Irgun and Lehi – or even the fear of such attacks – had a significant impact upon the British public. The British public were fed the worst and most shocking stories about the Irgun and Lehi via news coverage in various forms. It was impossible to go even a few weeks without Palestine cropping up in the news, with terrorist attacks providing spectacular front-page material. Even if people had little interest in Palestine, they could hardly escape at least some knowledge of what was going on there. Growing antisemitism, hysteria, sympathy with fascist rhetoric, and rioting were the result of this knowledge, demonstrating just how much what was happening in Palestine affected society. The end of the Mandate came as a relief to many. The first Arab-Israeli war continued to make headlines but people were now much less invested since British lives were no longer at risk. ‘I don’t care what happens in Palestine any more [sic.], so long as we withdraw. Anyone can do what they like,’ wrote one Mass Observation diarist in March 1948.225 A month after the official termination of the Mandate, the same diarist wrote ‘thank goodness Palestine no longer hits the headlines.’226 Although Britain still had other issues it was embroiled in overseas such as Germany, Greece, and increasingly hostile relations with Russia and her satellite states, a major headache had been dealt with once and for all. Years of constant anxiety about the threat from Jewish terrorism meant that most people were just glad to see British Tommies leave Palestine. 225 Diarist 5447, 20th March 1948, Mass Observation. 226 Diarist 5447, 25th June 1948, Mass Observation. 213 Unsurprisingly, after Britain’s evacuation from Palestine, antisemitism showed a marked drop with only 22% of people professing any antisemitic sentiment in 1951 to Mass Observation, down from 45% in 1946.227 The cessation of what amounted to a state of war between Jewish terrorists and Britain undoubtedly played a role in dramatically lowering this figure. No wonder that British fascism could no longer sustain its rebirth. Antisemitism would continue to be a central plank of British fascism, but fascists would shift their focus to the newly arriving black commonwealth migrants in the 1950s as antisemitism waned and anti-migrant views proliferated. However, they would never again receive the level of tacit support from the public as they had over Palestine. Despite the many other issues Britain faced, both domestically and internationally, this chapter has demonstrated that the British public was deeply affected by events in Palestine. Given the breakdown of morale and discipline amongst British personnel in Palestine and the strong, and at times violent, reactions by the public at home to Irgun and Lehi terrorism, the question now remains how these issues affected Government policy and decision making. This is the topic of the final chapter of this thesis. 227 “Report on Anti-Semitism and Free Speech,” July 1946 (no. 2411), Mass Observation, pp. 1, 22. Chapter 5 – ‘This International Liability’: Terror and its Political Entanglements Many of the War Cabinet had high hopes in 1917 for the political, economic, and military benefits that would accrue to Britain through their patronage of the Zionist movement in Palestine. Perhaps mercifully, only one of these figures was alive to see the final years of chaos unfold there. Jan Smuts, the South African leader, who was in his own words, ‘the one surviving member of the War Cabinet of the last war and one who in 1917 took an active part in the planning of the Balfour Declaration,’ offered a critical analysis of the situation in Palestine which he viewed as increasingly deviating from the terms of the Mandate.1 Unhappy with the way in which the situation in Palestine was progressing, he even went so far as to take the matter up with the British Foreign Secretary in 1946, only to be rebuffed by Ernest Bevin.2 Examining the end of the Mandate a year after Israel’s foundation Smuts pointed to the Irgun and Lehi as catalysts for its final disintegration, commenting that it was ‘no wonder [that] extremist elements got out of hand and forced the pace towards solutions such as no Commission or endless palavers could have brought about.’ Though not excusing the violence of Zionist terrorism, Smuts noted that ‘where reason fails force takes charge, and speeds up conditions.’3 Smut’s analysis was astute. As will be seen below, Irgun and Lehi violence helped to push the Attlee Government to the conclusion that the continuation of the Mandate was no longer viable – although sometimes in surprising or unexpected ways. Surging to power after nearly fourteen years of being either in the political wilderness or as junior partners to the Conservatives, the Labour Government’s position on Palestine was complicated, with a variety of voices clamouring to be heard. In order better to understand the 1 South African Jewish Chronicle (SAJC), 19th April 1946. 2 Oliver Harvey Diaries, 29th April 1946, British Library, London. 3 South African Zionist Record, 25th November 1949. 215 synergy between terrorism and politics, this chapter will examine the Government’s stance on Palestine through the main political players when it came to Palestine. These include Attlee himself, Ernest Bevin as Foreign Secretary (the most important political actor in this tale), Hugh Dalton at the Treasury, and George Hall and Arthur Creech Jones who served as Colonial Secretaries in the final years of the Mandate. From this start point it will be possible to see just how far terrorism disrupted the political sphere and caused havoc for ministers. Zionist terrorism had a number of key impacts on British policy vis-à-vis Palestine and the political sphere more widely. Economically, terrorism was a constant pressure on British finances which were already spread thin. Although not an existential threat to Britain when compared to the magnitude of the wider economic situation Britain faced post-’45, the actions of the Irgun and Lehi were nevertheless an unwelcome financial stressor, repeatedly pointed to by officials bemoaning the impact of Zionist terrorism. Given the size of the territory, and the relatively small number of active individuals within the Irgun and Lehi, Zionist terrorism had an outsized impact upon British coffers. While Britain’s financially weakened position is often advanced as a reason for the abrogation of parts of its imperial rule, this chapter shall demonstrate that Zionist terrorism was able not only to exploit this economic weakness, but to itself further damage Britain by putting unwelcome pressure on the financial resources of the Mandate administration and the British Government in London. In short, British financial precarity and Jewish terrorism were interrelated, rather than two separate issues. Internationally, American support for Zionism was exploited by the Irgun and those working with them in the US and turned into explicitly anti-British sentiment which poisoned UK-US relations. The so-called ‘Bergson group’ and its fronts were particularly effective on this score. Not only were they able to tap a deep facet of pro-Zionist support and weaponize it against the British, but in doing so they were able to carry out a successful fundraising campaign which aided the Irgun in Palestine. Their public relations campaign was a threat to the UK-US 216 relationship and led to a number of serious issues for the British Government. As in the case of Britain’s financial position, UK-US relations and US pressure on the UK have often been treated as a separate issue from terrorism in the historiography of the Mandate’s end, but this chapter shall show that the actions of the Irgun (in particular) and pressures from the US were interrelated. Security measures were, as seen in the previous chapter, a constant feature of life after the war, with the threat of Zionist terrorism on the British mainland the subject of much speculation. Measures taken were many and varied, with some more logical than others. Increasingly however, such measures only managed to draw attention to the inability of Britain to quell Zionist terrorism, an embarrassing state of affairs for a country that was still very much a superpower and conceived of itself as such. All in all, Zionist terrorism made the continuation of British rule in Palestine an increasingly difficult prospect. The hopes of the War Cabinet in 1917 had come tumbling down with Palestine now increasingly a burden to an overstretched post-1945 Britain. Its use increasingly undermined as a military base, an economic sink hole, and a cause of friction between the US and the UK – all thanks to the actions of the Irgun and Lehi – Palestine was increasingly a liability for Britain. Zionist terrorism was an unwelcome additional stress which thus helped to push Britain towards its final abrogation of its duties in Palestine and the handing of the entire issue over to the UN. This chapter does not take a purely chronological approach to the political discussions around terrorism in the last years of the Mandate. Copious volumes have already been written in such a manner. For instance, Monty Noam Penkower’s two volume work on the last years of the Mandate traces the political processes – in Britain, Palestine, and the international arena – that led to the British departure and establishment of Israel, including the role of terror in 217 some of these decisions.4 Motti Golani’s book on the Last High Commissioner of Palestine, Alan Cunningham, examines the political process in the last years of the Mandate through the eyes of a single important figure in the discussions that were being had. This includes the reactions to acts of terror in Jerusalem and London by key political figures.5 Similarly, biographies of the key political actors approach the issue of terror and the political process over time. Alan Bullock’s biography of Ernest Bevin thus examines the mounting political, economic, and military pressure caused by events in Palestine.6 Instead, this chapter seeks to provide a discussion of the interrelation between the issue of terrorism and the wider political situation. These interrelations are pivotal lacunae in the discussion of the Mandate’s final days which, when explored fully, demonstrate the impact of terrorism was much more severe than has previously been argued. For instance, Golani’s comment that, in the aftermath of the King David Hotel bombing, ‘British policy was more beholden to relations with the United States than to the unfolding events in Palestine,’ does not stand up to scrutiny when we consider the ways in which US actions and policy were, in part, driven by the same actors causing chaos in Palestine.7 Although the activities of the ‘Bergson group’ have been considered by some scholars before, they have often been seen as a curious aside or at best a fascinating, but slightly ridiculous group whose impact was inconsequential.8 Their full connection to the Irgun and the pivotal role they played has not yet been fully explored, nor has their impact on public opinion or political feeling in the US. In addressing this oversight in examining the actions of the Irgun and Lehi, we are also able to examine the 4 Monty Noam Penkower, Palestine to Israel: Mandate to State, 1945-1948, Vol.1: Rebellion Launched (New York: Touro University Press, 2019); Monty Noam Penkower, Palestine to Israel: Mandate to State, 1945-1948, Vol.2: Into the International Arena (New York: Touro University Press, 2019). 5 Motti Golani, Palestine Between Politics and Terror, 1945-1947 (Waltham: Brandeis University Press, 2013). 6 Alan Bullock, Ernest Bevin, Foreign Secretary, 1945-1951 (London: Norton, 1983). 7 Golani, Palestine Between Politics and Terror, 1945-1947, pp. 110. 8 Judith Tydor Baumel-Schwartz, The “Bergson Boys” and the Origins of Contemporary Zionist Militancy (Syracuse, N.Y: Syracuse University Press, 2005). 218 non-violent methods used by Zionist groups otherwise committed to violence in order to achieve their goals, especially important since ‘terrorists don’t just do terrorism’ in order to fulfil their ambitions.9 Ultimately ‘events in Palestine’ were deeply linked with ‘relations with the United States.’ Likewise, Bruce Hoffman has pointed to deteriorating UK-US relations and financial pressures faced by Britain as major reasons for the termination of the Mandate.10 He identifies these as separate from Jewish terrorism which he paints as playing a ‘salient’ role in Britain’s retreat from Palestine.11 When these issues are considered as interrelated, what was once ‘salient’ thus becomes a major cause of the termination of the Palestine Mandate. It is the interrelation of these issue that thus form the basis of this chapter. There is no ‘smoking gun’ to be found in the archives or contemporary record to show definitively that the terrorism emanating from Palestine pushed the British towards abnegating their command of the country. However, when the ways in which terrorism in Palestine spilled over into other political, military, and economic domains it becomes impossible to deny the ‘salience’ of terror in pushing the British Government towards a complete evacuation of Palestine. The Men of the Hour A physically imposing 240 pounds, with a rolling gait, and a thickly accented, ebullient Somerset voice that could reach across grand rooms of state without electronic amplification, Ernest Bevin was in many ways the polar opposite of the lanky, softly spoken, firmly middle-class Clement Attlee. Despite the seemingly mismatched nature of this political Laurel and Hardy-esque duo, as Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister the two men would be in charge of 9 Richard English, Does Terrorism Work? A History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), pp. 16. 10 Bruce Hoffman, Anonymous Soldiers, pp. 473. 11 Bruce Hoffman, Anonymous Soldiers, pp. 473. 219 deciding the fate of the vast Imperial colossus over which Britain ruled. Ultimately there was to be nothing comical about the decisions they would have to make which would have serious ramifications for millions of people around the globe. Yet ironically, both men had attained their political positions almost as a result of necessity and expediency. One of the few survivors of Labour’s disastrous 1931 election, Attlee was thrust to the political fore as deputy leader, and in 1935 became the acting and then permanent leader of the Labour party after George Lansbury’s sudden departure. In many ways his election to the party leadership owed as much to his opponent’s foibles (Herbert Morrison was distrusted by many on the left of the party and Arthur Greenwood was well known to have a drinking problem) than his own abilities. He would lead the party for the next twenty years, with the outbreak of the Second World War and Labour’s entry into a coalition Government – which entailed Attlee becoming Deputy Prime Minister – necessitating the cessation of normal politics and thus saving Attlee from any threat to his authority before Labour’s landslide election in 1945. Nevertheless, Attlee, though quiet and modest, was an adept political operator and was often underestimated by his opponents, a fact Attlee himself recognized in a playful limerick he penned later in life: There were few who thought him a starter, Many who thought themselves smarter. But he ended PM, CH and OM, An Earl and a Knight of the Garter.12 12 Clement Attlee, ‘letter from Attlee to his brother Tom,’ 8th April 1956, Bodleian Library, papers of Clement Richard Attlee, 1st Lord Attlee, MSS. Eng. C. 4794 220 Likewise, Ernest Bevin had found political office by virtue of necessity. Plucked from the top of the Transport and General Workers’ Union (TGWU) and appointed Minister of Labour and National Service by Churchill, Bevin was parachuted into the safe seat of Wandsworth Central. His predecessor in the seat, Harry Nathan, was made a hereditary peer to sweeten his exit from the Commons. Ironically, Bevin’s predecessor was a friend of Chaim Weizmann and had served as a legal advisor for the Zionist Organization.13 A Conservative-led government, presided over by a man who had sent troops and an armoured cruiser to deal with striking Liverpool dockers, railway workers, seamen, and other transport workers in 1911, could hardly hope to gain or keep the trust of the workers during the hardships of war. Churchill’s orders as Home Secretary had led to the deaths of two men, including a docker. Now it was down to another former dock worker in the figure of Ernest Bevin to keep British workers producing goods vital for the war effort, a task he achieved with near universal praise by his colleagues. Thus, just five years after becoming an MP, Bevin found himself appointed Foreign Secretary by Attlee when Labour swept to power. Over the next six years it is no exaggeration to say that these two men would decide the fate of much of the world, forging a new Europe, building alliances, attempting to hold the Soviet threat in Europe and elsewhere at bay, and shaping the beginnings of a post-imperial age for Britain. But it would be Bevin who was at the forefront of most foreign policy discussions and decisions. In his previous role under the coalition Government, Bevin had once quipped, ‘they say Gladstone was at the treasury from 1860 to 1930. I’m going to be Minister of Labour from 1940 to 1990.’14 Though the ravages of Thatcherism turned his visionary plans to a mere eidolon, arguably Bevin would have been correct had he applied the comparison to his later 13 John Cooper, Pride Versus Prejudice: Jewish Doctors and Lawyers in England, 1890-1990 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2003), pp. 164. 14 Francis Williams, Ernest Bevin: Portrait of a Great Englishman (London: Hutchinson, 1952), pp. 217. 221 position as Foreign Secretary. The decisions he made would reverberate till at least the end of the Cold War. The bond between the two men, despite their manifold differences, was unshakable. Alan Bullock, whose three-volume biography of Bevin remains perhaps the definitive account of his life some fifty years after its publication, remarked that the relationship between Attlee and Bevin was ‘one of the most successful political partnerships in English history.’15 This was no exaggeration. Bevin remained unshakably loyal to Attlee, on several occasions preventing individuals or factions within the Labour party from attempting to usurp Attlee, even when Bevin himself was offered the top job in exchange for supporting a party coup in July 1947.16 As Attlee himself put it, Bevin was ‘the living symbol of loyalty […] once he gave his trust to you he was like a rock.’17 In return Attlee granted Bevin a wide degree of latitude over foreign policy, as well as constantly discussing matters privately with Bevin on a wider array of government policy before any decisions were made. After Cabinet meetings, Attlee and Bevin would often remain behind to discuss the most pressing issues of the day and what the Government’s approach to them should be.18 Thus, while there would be disagreements and tensions between the two men during the six years that spanned the two Attlee ministries, there was a large degree of consensus between Attlee and Bevin on many issues that passed in front of the Cabinet. ‘In fact,’ as Michael Foot has remarked, ‘often enough Bevin was Attlee. It would be folly to overlook the powerful authority of this composite figure.’19 Bevin’s death in April 1951 would deeply affect Attlee, who seems to have felt he had let his friend down in the last year of his life by appointing him Privy Seal as a conciliation prize when it became clear that, although the mind was willing, the great bulk of flesh was by now weak and no longer up for the job of 15 Alan Bullock, Ernest Bevin, pp. 56. 16 Ibid., pp. 56, 441-442. 17 Kenneth Harris, Attlee (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1982), pp. 294. 18 Bullock, Ernest Bevin, pp. 57. 19 Michael Foot, Aneurin Bevan: A Biography (vol.2) (London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1962), pp. 32. 222 Foreign Secretary. Yet, despite this rift in the last months of Bevin’s life, in six years as Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary, the two men had helped to redraw much of the world map. Bevin’s grip on British foreign policy was thus near absolute, and the Foreign Secretary brooked no opposition from other colleagues. Throughout his tenure, Bevin faced consistent opposition over a number of foreign policy issues by around 50-75 Labour MPs, many of them fresh faces in the Commons who, largely committed to Labour’s domestic plans, found vent for their wider frustrations by critiquing the party’s foreign policy.20 Nevertheless, given the size of Labour’s majority, and the fact that Bevin normally appealed to the opposition to lift foreign policy from the arena of party politics, such revolts posed little threat to Bevin’s will.21 Whilst the story that, upon hearing a colleague state that Herbert Morrison was really his own worst enemy Bevin whipped around to growl ‘not while I’m alive he ‘aint,’ is likely apocryphal, it is certainly true that Bevin’s relations with his cabinet colleagues were never easy. Any incursion into his domain, as he saw it, could earn the trespasser a verbal slap down and the lasting mistrust of a Foreign Secretary who had a long memory. Bevin’s Personal Private Secretary, Roderick Barclay, describes how the Foreign Secretary used to refer to the Government’s foreign policy in the first person, often talking of ‘my policy,’ or stating, ‘I intend to do this.’ Very few cabinet colleagues were welcome to give their opinions, although Barclay recorded that the opinions of Sir Stafford Cripps and Aneurin Bevan were sometimes taken on board despite Bevin’s antagonism towards them, as he respected their intelligence. Junior colleagues were never welcome to proffer an opinion, with Bevin’s usual response being to dismiss them and note to his colleagues ‘that young man, ‘e worries me.’22 Whilst in the case of Palestine, George Hall, and later Arthur Creech Jones, may have been expected to exert some control as 20 Michael R. Gordon, Conflict and Consensus in Labour’s Foreign Policy, 1914-1965 (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1969), pp. 210-211; Bullock, Ernest Bevin, pp. 61. 21 Bullock, Ernest Bevin, pp. 80; Nicholas Owen, “Decolonisation and Post-War Consensus,” in The Myth of Consensus: New Views on British History, 1945-64 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001) pp. 175-176. 22 Roderick Barclay, Ernest Bevin and the Foreign Office (Self Published, 1975) pp. 39, 77. 223 Secretary of State for the Colonies, this was rarely the case. Bevin was perfectly happy to roll over his juniors. Given the implications Palestine raised for imperial security, relations with the Arab states, and with the United States, it is little wonder that Bevin saw the issues arising there as his direct purview, and the Colonial Office as a junior party there to aid him in imposing his decisions. Bevin’s purview over Palestine was also recognized abroad. In America, William Averell Harriman, who was coming to the end of his brief period as the United States ambassador to Britain before returning to the US to take up the post of Secretary of Commerce, informed Under Secretary of State Dean Acheson that Bevin viewed Palestine as his ‘own primary responsibility.’23 Meanwhile, Zionist leaders of all stripes also recognized Bevin’s role in deciding all matters of policy around Palestine. Moshe Shertok and Emmanuel Neumann, representing the Jewish Agency in London during talks with the British Government in early 1947, reported that Bevin was indisputably ‘the boss’ and recognized that he was the man they would have to do business with – regardless of their personal feelings towards him.24 Indeed, personal relations were often far from warm, with Ben Gurion referring to Bevin as ‘mad with hatred of Jews and Zionism,’ whilst Golda Meir would later write that she had never been sure whether the Foreign Secretary was ‘a bit mad or merely anti-Semitic, or both.’25 Nevertheless, recognising the Foreign Secretary’s primacy in these matters, Ben-Gurion arranged to have a private meeting with Bevin on the 12th February 1947 to discuss the Government’s (i.e. Bevin’s) Palestine policy.26 Meanwhile Begin would later label British rule in Palestine during these final years of the Mandate, ‘the Bevin regime.’27 Even throughout the 23 Averell Harriman, ‘telegram from Harriman to Dean Acheson,’ 21st August 1946, American National Archives, FRUS 1946(7). 24 Moshe Shertok and Emmanuel Neumann, ‘meeting,’ 29th January 1947, Central Zionist Archives, Z4/303/32. 25 Golda Meir, My Life (London: Weidenfeild & Nicolson, 1975), pp. 154; David Ben-Gurion, ‘diary entry,’ 28th August 1947, Ben Gurion Archive, Ben Gurion Diary 1917-1951. 26 Penkower, Palestine to Israel, pp. 359. 27 Menachem Begin, The Revolt, pp. 404. 224 early years of the State of Israel’s existence, Bevin appeared as an omnipotent bogeyman to Begin, a man who had schemed, in the Irgun leader’s mind, to limit the land Israel should receive during partition and given away land to King Abdullah that belonged by right to Israel and which Britain had just granted independence to in the form of the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan.28 Even after the British had left Palestine and the Israeli state had been established, Begin and his Herut party continued to demonize Bevin. A poster by the party from the early 1950s shows Bevin and Ben-Gurion in cahoots protecting and (literally) supporting King Abdullah.29 Bevin was thus a monumental figure, being perhaps the last British Foreign Secretary to be able to wield such power over the world and certainly one of the few able to do so with a largely free rein. Yet this also meant that any foreign policy disasters could be laid firmly at his door. Palestine would turn out to be just such an issue. Financial Pressures A major problem with Zionist terrorism was the financial burden it imposed upon an already struggling Britain. Despite its diminutive size, Palestine had a disproportionate fiscal impact on the delicate finances of the British Government. The cost to the treasury of running and policing Palestine totalled nearly £18 million in the six months leading up to March 1946, or around £35 million annually.30 Although this was just 3% of the 1947 defence budget it was a slice of the military’s financial pie that could have been put to use in a number of other places, such as Greece where Britain was essentially bankrolling an autocratic monarchy against communist insurgents, in the British Zone of Germany where Britain was facing mounting 28 Colin Shindler, Israel, Likud and the Zionist Dream, pp. 43. 29 See figure 4 in the appendix. 30 [Hansard] Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, 23rd July 1946, volume 425, column 1871; Bruce Hoffman, Anonymous Soldiers, pp. 383. 225 Russian hostility, or in Turkey and Iran where Russia was also increasing its interference.31 As the first stages of the Cold War played out in Europe, Zionist terror was an unwelcome distraction from the wider geopolitical situation. The effect upon the Mandate Government’s finances was significant. By 1947, security expenditure was consuming a third of the budget of the Palestine Government and there was a projected net-deficit of half a million pounds for the financial year.32 By May, almost the entire reserve budget had been swallowed up by terrorism.33 During 1946 and 1947 Jewish terrorism caused damage of around £1.5 million – the equivalent of around £50 million today.34 Meanwhile, there was little the Mandate Government could do to recoup the money or prevent further losses. With a financially impoverished metropole, and no end to terrorism in sight, Cunningham had to make do with adding a few pennies as surcharges to the sale of heating fuel.35 The High Commissioner also suggested taking the radical step of sequestering £5 million from the Jewish Agency and other Zionist groups in order to keep the Mandate financially afloat, though this measure was rejected.36 Nevertheless, the fact that Cunningham – always so cool and collected – was seriously suggesting such a measure demonstrates the financial straits the Palestine Government found itself in as a result of losses to terrorism. And Cunningham had every reason to be worried – such financial pressures prevented the Government from achieving any wider aims or projects. It was all very well for Richard Stubbs to go to London in an attempt to browbeat the national press into paying attention to the education, health care, afforestation, road development and safety projects that the Palestine Government had been 31 Hoffman, Anonymous Soldiers, pp. 383. 32 Arthur Creech Jones, ‘draft letter from Creech Jones to Hugh Dalton,’ 6th March 1947, NA, CO 537/2279. 33 Creech Jones, ‘Palestine – Financial Situation: Cost of Terrorist Damage and Other Illegal Activity,’ 18th May 1947, NA, CAB 129/19/11. 34 Hoffman, Anonymous Soldiers, pp. 452; for conversion of costs over time see: Inflation calculator | Bank of England and Currency converter: 1270–2017 (nationalarchives.gov.uk) 35 Hoffman, Anonymous Soldiers, pp. 398. 36 Hoffman, Anonymous Soldiers, pp. 398; Creech Jones, ‘Palestine – Financial Situation: Cost of Terrorist Damage and Other Illegal Activity,’ 18th May 1947, NA, CAB 129/19/11. 226 working on (see the previous chapter), but a government with no money could no longer adequately deliver such projects.37 As early as 1945, the Palestine Government was spending over eight times as much on security as it was on health and nearly six times as much more than on education.38 Cunningham for one regretted that such high security costs had prevented money being spent on other civil projects.39 When the Friends of the Palestine Folk Opera applied for financial assistance in January 1947 after a string of well-received performances, their overtures were turned down regretfully by the Chief Secretary who regretted that, ‘in the present circumstances,’ the Palestine Government was unable to offer any help to the group.40 This must have been a painful decision for both the Friends and the Palestine Government since British involvement with the Yishuv’s musical culture went back to the earliest days of the Mandate.41 The financial cost was also felt in terms of manpower. Palestine was now home to four times as many troops as it had been during the Arab Revolt – a sure sign of the seriousness of the situation and of the failure to counter Zionist terror.42 At a time when Britain was desperate for demobilization in order to power industry, British troops were tied down facing a terrorist threat they seemed to find it impossible to overcome. By 30th June 1947, as a result of the depletion of dollar reserves and the high cost of raw materials, Hugh Dalton announced a series of austerity measures in the House of Commons. Significant reductions in imported tobacco, gasoline, and newspaper print were needed to close the gap with exports which were lagging behind. These were necessary to pay the bill for food imports from abroad and avoid, it 37 Richard Stubbs, Palestine Story: A Personal Account of the Last Three Years of British Rule in Palestine, pp.75. 38 Saul Zadka, Blood in Zion, pp.182. 39 Tom Segev, One Palestine, Complete, pp. 514; Creech Jones, ‘Palestine – Financial Situation: Cost of Terrorist Damage and Other Illegal Activity,’ 18th May 1947, NA, CAB 129/19/11. 40 Tom Segev, One Palestine, Complete, pp. 485. 41 Ronald Storrs, Orientations (London: Nicholson & Watson, 1939), pp. 327; see also Jehoash Hirshberg, Music in the Jewish Community of Palestine 1880-1948: A Social History (Oxford: Clarendon Paperbacks, 1995). 42 Hoffman, Anonymous Soldiers, pp. 383. 227 was hoped, further rationing.43 As David Edgerton has convincingly argued, when they came to power in 1945, Labour were focussed primarily on ‘a national programme of economic development, in which exports were central.’44 The new social services which they created were secondary to this, and needed a firm national economic basis if they were to succeed – welfare was secondary to production. Such a failure to maintain a balance of payments was thus an embarrassment for the Government, suggesting its economic approach was not working and provided a soft spot for the opposition to exploit. After Dalton had finished talking, one Tory backbencher highlighted the gravity of the situation which ‘means that unless we get a second American loan, or raise our production substantially, we are slipping down hill rapidly to widespread unemployment and grave food shortages,’ before chiding the Government and landing a blow on their policies by asking whether ‘is it not time that the Government abandoned their present economic policy in favour of one which would unite the people to give us the production we want?’45 In order to boost production, and avoid further economic travails, significant manpower would be needed – such as that tied down in Palestine. Churchill also assaulted the Government, attacking both the economic situation and the chaos in Palestine in January 1947. Estimating the cost of Palestine to be ‘between £30 million and £40 million a year,’ he lamented that this money ‘would do much to help to find employment in these islands, or could be allowed to return to fructify in the pockets of the people.’46 Churchill noted that ‘there is the manpower of at least 100,000 men in Palestine, who might well be at home strengthening our depleted industry. What are they doing there? What good are we getting out of it?’ he asked.47 The Government had no answer. Although many Conservatives 43 [Hansard] Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, 30th June 1947, volume 438, columns 958-961. 44 David Edgerton, The Rise and Fall of the British Nation: A Twentieth Century History (London: Penguin, 2019), pp. 218. 45 [Hansard] Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, 30th June 1947, volume 438, columns 964-965. 46 [Hansard] Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, 31st January 1947, volume 432, columns 1348-1349. 47 [Hansard] Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, 31st January 1947, volume 432, columns 1347-1348. 228 were critical of the Labour Government’s decision to abandon parts of the empire and ‘scuttle’ as Churchill especially termed it, the sheer number of troops tied down in Palestine made the situation there an easy target for opposition invective as the British economy seemed to tumble from problem to problem, and exports struggled to keep pace with necessary imports. Fundamentally, terrorist attacks themselves also caused widespread financial damage to infrastructure and equipment across Palestine. In November 1946, a series of attacks against rail tracks and roads by the Irgun resulted in £30,000 of damage.48 As well as these initial costs, disruption to train lines meant citrus crops marked for export had to be trucked to ports at an additional cost of £10,000. The amount of oil transported by rail meanwhile dropped by a third, whilst this figure stood at a staggering 75% drop for potash.49 Thus every attack was damaging not just in terms of the initial damage, but the corollary costs involved as well. This was not the first time the Irgun had made such concerted efforts to target the railway system either. On April 3rd 1946, a series of coordinated attacks led to £16,000 worth of damage to track, station buildings, and rolling stock. Further damage was only prevented by an RAF reconnaissance plane spotting a column of 30 fighters near Rehovot, a stroke of luck which led to the fighters’ capture.50 Although infrastructure such as railway lines and roads were targets due to their nature as means of transportation of goods and troops and thus also of control, the real target remained British military equipment and vital military and trade infrastructure. The Irgun hit the jackpot in late February 1946 when they managed to destroy 14 planes and damage 8 more, including Halifax Bombers and Spitfires, during coordinated attacks on 5 airbases across Palestine.51 These were costly machines, of importance to Britain’s colonial security, and which could not easily be replaced. Continued attacks on RAF bases eventually 48 Hoffman, Anonymous Soldiers, pp. 346. 49 Ibid., pp. 348-349. 50 Ibid., pp. 255 51 Edward Horne, A Job Well Done, pp. 296. 229 led to the Sixth Airborne Division being sent to neighbouring Egypt to avoid further losses.52 In the immediate aftermath of the King David Hotel bombing, Attlee made a statement to parliament on 1st July 1946, saying that the damage caused by the Irgun, Lehi, and Haganah collectively had totalled £4 million in the previous six months.53 And things only seemed to getting worse. The Lehi’s targeting of the Haifa oil refinery in March 1947 led to £400 million worth of damage and the loss of 16,000 tons of oil.54 The loss of such a high quantity of a valuable, tradable commodity was a disaster for Britain, coming at a time of heavy financial strain when the country was in dire need of US dollars in order to weather the introduction of the convertibility of sterling into US dollars which was due to come into effect on 15th July 1947 – a measure forced on Britain by the Anglo-American Loan.55 Convertibility and the crisis that followed would prove to be a complete disaster for Britain, signalling to the world that sterling was no longer the preeminent global currency it had been before the war and eventually leading to the devaluation of the pound in 1949.56 Within a month of convertibility being introduced, the government had haemorrhaged $1 billion of their dollar reserves and were quickly forced to suspend the arrangement or face bankruptcy.57 The oil that Lehi had targeted would not have plugged that gap, especially as the UK was itself spending its dollar reserves in order to import goods – spending between January and July 1947 around £400 million in dollar reserves.58 Nevertheless, the loss of vital oil supplies and the damage of key export infrastructure was a significant blow for Britain as it sought to claw its way out of the economic black hole which the country was fast approaching. 52 Zadka, Blood in Zion, pp. 70. 53 [Hansard] Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, 1st July 1947, volume 434, columns 1795-1797. 54 Penkower, Palestine to Israel: Mandate to State, 1945-1948, pp. 375. 55 L.V. Scott, Conscription and the Attlee Governments: The Politics and Policy of National Service 1945–1951 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993) pp.154; Alain Naef, An Exchange Rate History of the United Kingdom 1945–1992 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022), pp. 6. 56 Naef, An Exchange Rate History of the United Kingdom 1945–1992, pp. 6. 57 Naef, An Exchange Rate History of the United Kingdom 1945–1992, pp. 12. 58 [Hansard] Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, 18th July 1947, volume 440, column 809. 230 As well as this sort of destructive economic damage, the Irgun and Lehi were not against simple theft as a way to bankroll their operations. Although Lehi raids on banks have been well documented, the Irgun also engaged in somewhat more speculative thievery. On 6 October 1944 for example the group snatched £100,000 worth of woven goods from government stores in Tel Aviv, all in broad daylight. The operation involved 45 men over four hours and, though they could hardly hope to make the retail price for the goods, they secured £40,000 Palestinian pounds for the material from buyers – a substantial sum.59 Whilst attacks against British infrastructure was designed to show the Irgun and Lehi had the power to disrupt British rule and target valuable goods which Britain badly needed, theft was both a necessity for the groups – both of whom sometimes struggled to gather adequate funds or necessary arms – whilst having the added bonus of being economically damaging to the British, though admittedly nowhere near as much so as acts such as the Haifa pipe line attack, or the bombing of the King David Hotel. The Lehi often found their shortage of arms necessitated attacking British positions in order to steal weaponry, such as the brutal raiding of the motor pool of the Sixth Airborne Division on April 25th 1946 in order to secure more guns for use by the organization.60 Larger attacks were difficult, but not unheard of. During the period of the United Resistance Movement, the Irgun managed to steal £35,000 from a train in Hadera with the help of Palmach troops.61 Much discussion in Cabinet and by senior politicians hinged on the financial impact of Palestine upon Britain. For Bevin, Palestine was an economic lifeline, with the oil that could flow through British ports vital to Britain’s post-war economic recovery, providing ‘a great deal of motive power for our industry’ and without which there was ‘no hope of being able to 59 Eldad Harouvi, Palestine Investigated, pp. 129. 60 Hoffman, Anonymous Soldiers, pp. 258. 61 Hoffman, Anonymous Soldiers, pp. 245. 231 achieve the standard of life at which we are aiming in Great Britain.’62 Abandoning Palestine would also mean allowing for American (commercial) and Russian (political) penetration not just of Palestine but the wider Middle East. This was unacceptable, and Bevin was not the only one worried about this possibility. Towards the end of his tenure as Foreign Secretary in the coalition government, Eden had warned of US and Russian interference in the region, noting with some alarm that ‘both the Americans and the Russians are now beginning to take a new interest in the area,’ and pointed to increasing financial ties between the US Government and Ibn Saud as well as a number of new Russian diplomatic missions that had cropped up in the Middle East during the course of the war.63 Bevin warned the cabinet in late 1945 that ‘Britain should not make any concessions that would assist American commercial penetration into a region which for generations has been an established British market.’64 Meanwhile Russia would naturally desire to destabilise British rule in the region from whatever foothold they could gain, as well as potentially reaping economic benefits themselves. Bevin feared that abandoning Palestine would gift oil resources to the Russians and make a difference of ‘100 millions in the government’s balance sheet’ as well as effecting the potential for dollar earnings which the UK so badly needed.65 In essence, withholding US and Russian access to the region was seen as the only way to secure the economic benefits that could accrue to Britain through its control of Palestine. Control over the shipping and sale of Middle Eastern oil reserves was vital for Brain’s financial recovery and righting Britain’s balance of payments, outweighing the impact of terrorism. Meanwhile, at the Treasury, Hugh Dalton took a very different approach, arguing that overseas commitments had to be scaled back to secure Britain’s financial recovery. His 62 ‘Defence Committee Meeting,’ 1st January 1947, NA, CAB 131/5. 63 Anthony Eden, ‘Foreign Secretary Eden’s memo on Palestine,’ 10th April 1945, TNA, CAB 66/64. 64 Ernest Bevin, ‘memorandum on Middle Eastern policy,’ 17th September 1945, TNA, CAB 129/2, 65 Ernest Bevin, ‘letter from Bevin to Attlee,’ 9th January 1947, TNA, FO 800/476. 232 approach owed much to the advice of Lord Keynes who had argued that the American Loan which Britain had secured was at the moment required primarily to meet British overseas spending and military commitments.66 Already in May 1947 he had warned the cabinet that the British taxpayer could ‘not be expected to assume further burdens in respect of Palestine.’67 Palestine was simply too costly in Dalton’s view. Dalton’s view was shared by Aneurin Bevan, who even explicitly singled out Palestine during a Cabinet discussion on the 29th July 1947 on the rapid depletion of American credit, as an area from which Britain should withdraw in order to save funds.68 A severe reduction of British troop numbers in Palestine was also advocated in a petition by 19 left-wing Labour MPs as a way of helping to meet the challenges of the economic crisis Britain found itself in.69 Unsurprisingly, Bevin remained unimpressed by this idea, arguing in the same cabinet meeting that the answer was an increase in exports.70 This inevitably included oil which was shipped from Palestinian ports. He also argued against a British retreat from its overseas commitments. But even Bevin was beginning to feel that in some areas the burden of military expenditure was beginning to outweigh the financial benefits that could be gained for Britain. In the case of Greece where Britain had been sinking considerable money in propping up the autocratic Greek Monarchy against Communist insurgents, Bevin warned the Americans in early 1947 that he would have to withdraw British troops by March, risking further Russian penetration into Southern Europe. However, even things here were not as they seemed. If he lacked the knowledge of global affairs that his predecessors had when they came to the job, the Foreign Secretary knew shipping, having worked on the docks at the start of his working life. There simply weren’t the ships to transport all British troops out of Greece that quickly.71 This 66 Ben Pimlott, Hugh Dalton: A Life (London: J. Cape, 1985) pp.498. 67’Cabinet,’ 20th May 1947, TNA, CAB 128/9/47. 68 ‘Cabinet,’ 29th July 1947, TNA, CAB 128/10/16. 69 ‘Petition,’ Bodleian Library, papers of Clement Richard Attlee, 1st Lord Attlee, MSS. Eng. C. 4794, Box 9. 70 ‘Cabinet,’ 29th July 1947, TNA, CAB 128/10/16. 71 Derek Leebaert, The World After The War, pp.89 233 was a double bluff intended to secure further US financial and military support in Greece, and a remarkably successful one at that: On the 12th of March Truman declared what has become known as the ‘Truman Doctrine’ pledging funds and support to those states threatened by a Communist takeover.72 The key difference in Palestine, besides the question of oil, was that US aid and support was nowhere forthcoming (as the next section demonstrates), leading Bevin to struggle on throughout early 1947 and attempt to get Arabs and Jews to sit down together and sort out their differences at the London Conference. However, by late December 1946 even he had decided that British rule was becoming increasingly untenable for a number of reasons including insufficient financial resources.73 It was simply that there was no easy way out that would prevent terrorist attacks, secure British interests, keep the Arab states happy, prevent Russian intrusion in the region, and keep the Americans off Britain’s back. There were numerous problems and copious hypotheticals that had to be juggled, leading to a sometimes inconsistent approach from Bevin. By early January 1947 he was again arguing that Britain’s presence in the Middle East, including Palestine, was vital for British interests and was fundamental to Britain’s defence policy.74 Yet clearly even Bevin was beginning to wobble in his cost balance equation of Palestine’s worth as the financial costs of terrorism mounted and the overall economic situation deteriorated. Essentially, the difference between Bevin at the Foreign Office and Dalton at the Treasury was over whether Palestine was overall an asset or a drain. Bevin saw the necessity of Middle Eastern oil continuing to flow through Palestine, and the prevention of American and Russian intrusion into the region as outweighing the costs of continued trouble in Palestine. For Dalton, this cost was far too high and no longer sustainable as Palestine – thanks in large part to 72 Roderick Beaton, Greece: Biography of a Modern Nation (London: Penguin Books, 2019) pp.300 73 Ernest Bevin, ‘minute from Bevin as read by Beeley to Attlee,’ undated, TNA, FO 371/61761. 74 Pierson Dixon, ‘Dixon’s note,‘ 9th January 1947, TNA, FO 800/476. 234 the destructive acts of the Irgun and Lehi – was eating up huge sums of money, with little to show for it. By late 1946, even Bevin, though wary of the effects any withdrawal would have, recognized the financial burden was too much to bear for much longer. The financial crisis precipitated by convertibility – which the Irgun and Lehi helped to deepen through their acts of violent destruction and which necessitated increasing numbers of soldiers and policemen to be thrown into Palestine, adding to the financial burdens Britain faced – led to a tipping point. Overseas commitments simply had to be reduced and staying in Palestine – that recurrent burden on Governments and taxpayers alike – was no longer feasible.75 A parliamentary paper issued by Creech Jones and the Colonial Office brought home this cost to MPs. Here, the perception that Palestine was a financial burden was quantified in concrete terms, and the exponential growth of expenditure in Palestine made clear through a series of appendixes. During 1938, whilst the Arab Revolt raged, public expenditure (including security costs) had been around £5.6 million, whilst the revenue generated in Palestine was around £6 million – allowing the administration to just about break even. However, by 1946 the total expenditure was over £20.4 million, whilst revenue reached only £19.7 million. This was an increase of over 364% in expenditure in the space of eight years, an eye watering figure, especially for a country facing such economic travails as Britain.76 Although no breakdown of costs is given in the paper, the above section suggests that the cost of security, policing, and repairs was what was driving this rapid increase. Broken down another way, Palestine was costing over £760,000 per square kilometre of territory by 1946. Naturally, given that the world had just seen the most destructive conflict in history, with resources ploughed into warfare, supply chains disrupted, and natural resources consumed in 75 L.V. Scott, Conscription and the Attlee Governments: The Politics and Policy of National Service 1945–1951, pp. 155. 76 Parliamentary Paper, The Colonial Empire (1939-1947) (London: His Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1947), cmd. 7617, pp. 118-119. 235 an unprecedented manner, financial dislocation meant that costs everywhere were increasing. Yet Palestine stands out for its rapid increase in costs and for its size to expenditure ratio. For example, Kenya, nearly twenty-two times larger than Palestine, had an expenditure of just over £6.6 million in 1946 and a revenue surplus of £1.3 million.77 Per square kilometre, the administration in Kenya were spending just over £11,415, over sixty-six times less than their counterparts in Palestine. Indeed, only two other British territories demonstrated such rapid growth in expenditure costs in this period, ending up being more expensive than the Mandate by 1946. The first was Ceylon, which had been badly hit during the Second World War, being a front-line base against the Japanese after the fall of Singapore in February 1942. It had also suffered from a series of strikes during the war, an attempt by mutinying Ceylonese soldiers to turn the island over to the Japanese, and continual agitation by nationalist and communist groups for freedom for the island.78 Still, by 1946, although the island had an expenditure of over £26.2 million, the administration was just about breaking even.79 The country was also, despite the outlay in expenditure, a great boon for Britain financially given the production of rubber for export markets which meant that the country was exporting over £57.3 million worth of goods and materials in total during 1946, much more than it was importing.80 Malaya, the other territory which was outstripping Palestine in terms of expenditure, was costing around £31 million in 1946.81 Like Ceylon, Malaya had suffered during the war, being occupied and brutalised by the Japanese military who carried out massacres and especially targeted the Chinese population of the Island, forcing them to raise Malaya $50 million to atone for 77 Parliamentary Paper, The Colonial Empire (1939-1947) (London: His Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1947), cmd. 7617, pp. 118-119. 78 See: Ashley Jackson, Ceylon at War, 1939-1945 (Warwick: Helion & Company, 2018). 79 Parliamentary Paper, The Colonial Empire (1939-1947) (London: His Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1947), cmd. 7617, pp. 118-119. 80 Parliamentary Paper, The Colonial Empire (1939-1947) (London: His Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1947), cmd. 7617, pp. 123. 81 Parliamentary Paper, The Colonial Empire (1939-1947) (London: His Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1947), cmd. 7617, pp. 119. 236 Chinese war efforts against the Japanese.82 Yet despite the damage wrought by the Japanese on the island, the tin mines and rubber plantations in Malaya’s north were again a godsend for British efforts at financial recovery after the war, with America snapping up much of the exports produced.83 Palestine meanwhile could not compete with such figures. Although the country had been targeted during the war by Italian, German, and Vichy French air raids, the damage was rather modest in comparison to that wrought on many other territories.84 Yet its exports, including oil, reached just £24.4 million in 1946, whilst imports were far higher at over £71 million – a severe imbalance of payments. Palestine was becoming an economic Bermuda Triangle for the British Government – money went into it in the form of soldiers, material, etc. whilst losses meant that nothing seemed to be coming out at the other end. Violence continued and no flow of troops or money into Palestine seemed to make any difference as military and financial loses climbed. It would be absurd to say that Palestine was choking the lifeblood out of Britain, but unrest there was certainly exerting an uncomfortable financial pressure on Britain’s financial jugular. From Palestine, Henry Gurney summed up the financial implications for Britain in the summer of 1947 thus: ‘our sterling balances are being reduced by terror. That is the core of the whole matter that we have a tremendous expenditure owing to terror.’85 An already asthmatic British economy was being choked by the vice like grip terror had in Palestine. The Mandate had been predicated on the assumption that Jewish capital would ensure the maintenance of Palestine as a solid business investment for the British, with the country largely paying for itself. Britain had swallowed up Palestine in the aftermath of the First World War on these assumptions, only to find that the Mandate was financially toxic, the Jewish Revolt being just the most recent toxin 82 Boon Kheng Cheah, Red star over Malaya: resistance and social conflict during and after the Japanese occupation of Malaya, 1941-1946 (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 4th edition, 2012), pp. 24. 83 Leebaert, The World After the War, pp. 126. 84 See: Nir Arielli, “‘Haifa is still Burning’: Italian, German and French Air Raids on Palestine during the Second World War,” Middle Eastern Studies 46/3 (2010). 85 ‘Minutes of a conversation between Gurney and Horowitz,’ 27th May 1947, CZA, S 25/28. 237 after successive Palestinian Arab disturbances. By 1947, it no longer made any financial sense to remain in a country that was sucking in money and costing Britain millions, for no reasonable returns. The America Issue: As well as theft, the Irgun had other ways to make money. Fundraising by the Irgun in America was a source of constant irritation to the British authorities, who were scandalised by the failure of the US to act against such activities. One such fundraising effort commenced on the evening of the 5th of September 1946 at Broadway’s Alvin Theatre with the production of A Flag is Born written by Ben Hecht, with an accompanying score by Kurt Weill, and produced by the American League for a Free Palestine – essentially an Irgun front in the US. The play depicted three Holocaust survivors attempting to reach Palestine. At one point, the youngest of these, David – played by an up-and-coming young actor by the name of Marlon Brando – is greeted by three soldiers representing the Haganah, Irgun, and Lehi who state that they ‘promise to wrest our homeland out of British claws as the Americans once did,’ and urge him to join them and ‘fight for Palestine.’86 Although the premise of representatives of members of the Haganah, Irgun, and Lehi appearing shoulder to shoulder was absurd, the play pulled at American audiences’ heartstrings – practically yanked at them indeed – with Brando’s character delivering a heart rending soliloquy condemning Jewish-American inaction during the Holocaust, his voice rising in an angry crescendo as he demands of the audience, ‘Where were you, Jews? Where were you when six million Jews were being burned to death in the ovens? Where were you?’ Brando later recalled that the accusation ‘sent chills through the audience,’ and in some instances ‘Jewish girls got out of their seats and screamed and cried from the aisles 86 Bruce Hoffman, Anonymous Soldiers, pp. 323. 238 in sadness.’87 Amongst a community deeply questioning whether they had done enough to aid their co-religionists in Europe as the genocidal Nazi regime and its accomplices had methodically annihilated European Jewry, such questions inevitably touched a nerve. The play concluded with Brando’s David yet again berating the audience, demanding to know ‘when the six million were burned and buried alive in lime, where were you?... Nowhere! […] A curse on your silence,’ before immediately delivering the pièce de resistance of the play’s emotional blackmail: ‘And now you speak a little. Your hearts squeak – and you have a dollar for the Jews of Europe. Thank you. Thank you.’88 This final speech set the scene for Ben Hecht’s exhortation to the audience on the opening night to ‘give us your money and we will turn it into history’ which was thus likely to find sympathetic ears and wallets.89 On subsequent nights the manager would take to the stage at the end of the performance, lit by a spotlight, and inform the audience that any money donated would immediately be transferred abroad to buy ships to take European Jews to Palestine.90 Such ‘illegal immigration’ was another strain for the British, but the front cover of the play’s programme hinted at what else donations might be used for, with an image of a Jewish fighter grasping a rifle.91 The play proved such a success that its one week run was eventually extended to ten weeks, before the performance went on tour, visiting a number of key US cities including Detroit, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chicago, and Boston.92 The play raised $400,000 dollars (Hecht claimed the figure was $1 million) for the Zionist cause – a significant fund raising success.93 Although not all of the money went to Palestine – the League had its own costs to cover, keeping $166,000 – it was nonetheless a profound 87 Marlon Brando and Robert Lindsey, Brando: Songs my Mother Taught Me (New York: Random House, 1994), pp. 108. 88 James Barr, A Line in the Sand, pp. 329-330. 89 Bruce Hoffman, Anonymous Soldiers, pp. 324. 90 James Barr, A Line in the Sand, pp. 330. 91 See figure 5 in the appendix. 92 Stephen J. Whitfield, “The Politics of Pageantry, 1936-1946,” American Jewish History 84/3 (1996): pp. 249. 93 James Barr, A Line in the Sand, pp.330; Baumel-Schwartz, The “Bergson Boys” and the Origins of Contemporary Zionist Militancy, pp. 220. 239 demonstration of the success the Irgun could achieve in raising funds abroad.94 Many donors also specifically asked that their donations go to the efforts of the Irgun and not be used to fund or underwrite League activities.95 Naturally the British Government and press were incensed by the play’s message, with The London Evening Standard labelling A Flag is Born ‘the most virulent anti-British play ever staged in the United States.’96 Ben Hecht became perhaps the most reviled writer of the immediate post-war period, with The Daily Mail characterising him to its readers as ‘a vitriolic Zionist volcano still with a touch of the carnival huckster.’ After providing a profile of the writer they concluded by stating that ‘today, backed by his huge earnings, he sits in a 160-year-old sumptuously furnished country house penning violent attacks on Britain.’97 Again and again, the press derided Hecht as a ‘penthouse warrior.’98 The implication was that whilst British boys suffered at the hands of terrorists, Ben Hecht sat smugly in his luxurious surroundings in the US, preaching violence from afar. The press tore Hecht apart in their editorials and columns at every opportunity they got after September 1946. Yet, The London Evening Standard spoke too soon in its labelling of Hecht’s play. A Flag is Born was mainly concerned with following the fate of the three Holocaust survivors, and whilst the British appeared as the antagonists, Hecht was about to produce a play far more offensive to British sympathies. In early 1947 Hecht received a letter from Begin thanking him for his efforts and suggesting that he adapt the story of Dov Gruner, the captured Irgun member whose fate – much ruminated over by the British – became a cause celebre for the organization, for the stage. The resulting work was provocatively titled The Terrorist. Debuting 94 Baumel-Schwartz, The “Bergson Boys” and the Origins of Contemporary Zionist Militancy, pp. 220. 95 Baumel-Schwartz, The “Bergson Boys” and the Origins of Contemporary Zionist Militancy, pp. 221. 96 Whitfield, “The Politics of Pageantry, 1936-1946,” pp. 247. 97 The Daily Mail, 27th May 1947. 98 Tony Shaw and Giora Goodman, Hollywood and Israel: A History (New York: Columbia University Press, 2022), pp. 27. 240 at New York’s Carnegie Hall, the play reportedly raked in a further $50,000 for the cause.99 Although the historiography tends to focus on A Flag is Born given its emotional effect and the number of big names involved in various aspects of the play’s creation and performance, Hecht’s other creations also further soured British relations with the US and helped to raise sums for the Irgun which were not insubstantial. Hecht made matters worse by issuing a statement in May 1947, stating in an open letter to Jewish terrorists in Palestine that ‘Every time you blow up a British arsenal, or wreck a British jail, or send a British railroad train sky high, or rob a British bank, or let go with your guns and bombs at the British betrayers and invaders of your homeland, the Jews of America make a little holiday in their hearts.’100 The Daily Telegraph condemned the ‘venom and viciousness of his propaganda,’ and labelled him an ‘abnormal terrorist.’101 As even those in America unsympathetic to British actions in Palestine reacted with horror to the death of the two sergeants in late July 1947, the press again attacked Hecht with The Daily Mail printing the headline ‘Ben Hecht Has Nothing to Say,’ condemning his silence in the face of the Irgun atrocities and noting that ‘he was full of words for the three hanged Jews, but had no words for the two hanged Englishmen.’102 Hecht’s statements were not forgotten even after the Mandate’s end, with the Cinematograph Exhibitors’ Association, a trade union representing all major British cinemas, boycotting all films which Hecht was involved in between 1948 and 1952.103 Hecht was an ardent believer in the Irgun’s cause, but it was the American League for a Free Palestine which had been the driving force behind the creation of A Flag is Born. The organization was one of a number of fronts created by the so-called ‘Bergson group,’ a 99 Shaw and Goodman, Hollywood and Israel, pp. 26. 100 Ben Hecht, A Child of the Century (New York: New American Library, 1955), pp. 576-579; Whitfield, “The Politics of Pageantry, 1936-1946,” pp. 250. 101 The Daily Telegraph, Friday 9th June 1947. 102 The Daily Mail, Friday 1st August 1947. 103 The New York Times, Sunday 24th October 1948 241 collection of individuals spread across the US, Europe, and Palestine and named after the group’s founder, Peter Bergson – the pseudonym of Hillel Kook – who was operating in America. Bergson had been approached by Jabotinsky to join a delegation of Irgun supporters in the US in 1940 and quickly became the group’s undisputed leader.104 One former member of the delegation, although by this time he had left America, was Robert Briscoe – the former IRA gun runner who sought to aid the Irgun and Revisionist cause in any way he could. The group avoided direct contact with, or publicly supporting the Irgun in Palestine until 1944, although the connection was always there in the background.105 The relationship between the Irgun and the Bergson group, and therefore between Begin and Bergson, was far from simple. The Irgun looked upon the group as answerable to themselves and evidently saw it as an American ATM. Yitzhak Ben-Ami, one of the US delegation’s Sabra members, made contact with Begin whilst he was in Palestine during the period of the United Resistance Movement and stressed his fears that cooperation between the Haganah and Irgun was too much of a risk. Begin reassured him, stating simply ‘don’t worry. We will not sell ourselves for a pot of gold.’ Haim Landau, Begin’s chief-of-staff who was also in attendance added ‘the only pot of gold we’re looking for is to come from you fellows.’106 Yet the American League for a Free Palestine, and the Bergson group more generally, did not always see its role in the same terms and fiercely guarded its autonomy, often refusing to hand funds over to the Irgun even when it was directly asked to do so.107 However, despite these disagreements, it is indisputable that the League played a crucial part in carrying out a good deal of propaganda for the Irgun in America, and in so doing, raising considerable sums for their use. In The Revolt, Begin relegates Bergson’s role to a mere footnote, yet is forced to 104 Baumel-Schwartz, The “Bergson Boys” and the Origins of Contemporary Zionist Militancy, pp. 12. 105 Ibid., pp. 200. 106 Yitzhak Ben-Ami, Years of Wrath, Days of Glory: Memoirs from the Irgun (New York, N.Y: Shengold Publishers, 1983), pp. 355. 107 Baumel-Schwartz, The “Bergson Boys” and the Origins of Contemporary Zionist Militancy, pp. 235. 242 concede within it that Bergson’s ‘ingenuity in keeping a fierce light of publicity upon the Irgun’s struggle was an important factor in the success of the revolt.’108 Why exactly Begin does not mention Bergson’s role in helping to bankroll the Irgun is not clear, but the Irgun certainly owed the League a debt (quite literally) of gratitude for its financial contributions and PR efforts. Indeed, when it came to mobilizing popular support, the Irgun, though failing to garner such support at home, had a remarkable degree of success internationally. In The Revolt, Begin refers to the ‘glass house’ effect whereby the world media was increasingly focussed on issues in Palestine, and particularly British counterterrorism efforts. As we have seen, Richard Stubbs, the Palestine Government’s Press Officer, was constantly firefighting on several fronts as the press savaged British actions in Palestine. Thus, every time the Irgun pushed the British to overreact or react harshly to terrorism - cordoning off and searching areas, slapping down curfews or even, in a number of cases, pushing troops to riot, vandalize property and attack passing Jews – they scored a victory. The media of the world watched closely and reported what they had seen. Begin notes with satisfaction that ‘the daring attacks of a handful of rebels’ continually garnered more publicity, especially in America, than the numerous battles being fought in Greece at the same time, battles with decidedly more importance in shaping the post-war world.109 The Irgun could pursue terror whilst media attention provided ‘an invisible lifebelt’ that hampered heavy handed British responses leading to increasing frustration on the part of the British.110 Begin was effectively able to weaponize what today we would identify as a form of ‘jiu jitsu politics.’ This model states that ‘anger is the emotion sought by terrorists aiming to elicit 108 Menachem Begin, The Revolt: The Story of the Irgun (Steimatzky’s Agency Ltd.: Tel Aviv, 1972) pp. 63. 109 Begin, The Revolt, pp. 55. 110 Ibid. pp. 55. 243 overreaction to their attacks— using the enemy’s strength against him.’ 111 This in turn creates a backlash which can be utilized by terrorist actors in a number of ways. In the case of terrorism and counterterrorism in Palestine, the Irgun were able to create a feast for the media, approaching global newspapers with stories of British brutality mixed with statements by the organization which were duly reported ‘from Sydney to San Francisco’ which helped keep Palestine ‘the focus of international attention’ as Begin later bragged.112 Richard Stubbs, trying to control unfavourable press coverage as best he could noted that such stories ‘fed the sensation seekers among the newspaper correspondents with material that filled the columns of the world press, laying the foundation for the anti-British campaign by the extremists in the United States.’113 American popular opinion was deeply important to the Irgun. Begin knew that Britain could not afford to ignore the opinions of their ‘rich transatlantic cousin’ and thus strove to mobilise American support for the struggle to help inflate his metaphorical lifebelt through the press.114 The actions of Hecht and the American League for a Free Palestine did admittedly generate some opposition even in America. Many people within the entertainment industry turned on Hecht. Edward G. Robinson, one of Hollywood’s big stars, never acknowledged Hecht again whilst Louis B. Mayer – co-founder of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios – became an anti-Zionist during the period of Ben Hecht’s Zionist plays and pronouncements as he believed the Palestine issue was making trouble for America’s Jews politically and financially.115 Many studios were with Mayer on the Palestine issue, for business reasons if not for political ones. Britain and the English-speaking dominions were Hollywood’s most important audience 111 Clark McCauley, “Constructing Terrorism From Fear and Coercion to Anger and Jujitsu Politics,” in Constructions of Terrorism: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Research and Policy, ed. Richard Burchill, Scott Howard Englund, and Michael Stohl (Oakland, California: University of California Press, 2017), pp. 84. 112 Begin, The Revolt, pp. 119. 113 Richard Stubbs, Palestine Story, pp. 30. 114 Begin, The Revolt, pp. 55. 115 Tony Shaw and Giora Goodman, Hollywood and Israel, pp. 26, 30. 244 – it made no sense to aggravate that market. Hecht’s later ‘cancellation’ by the British media market proved they were wise to refrain from taking the Irgun’s side as Hecht had done. Ironically, the first American feature film about Palestine, My Father’s House, shot in 1946 on location, suffered delays after studio equipment was damaged in an Irgun attack. The office they were renting to store their cameras and filming paraphernalia was just around the corner from the King David Hotel.116 American Zionist organizations, meanwhile, perhaps understandably feeling threatened by Hecht and the AFLP’s media successes, were equally scathing. Hecht, the American Zionist Emergency Council stated, was a nobody with no official backing except from ‘a small insignificant group of gun toting extremists.’ More cutting were the comments of Israel Goldstein, the president of the Zionist Organization of America – the organization that could best lay claim to representing the views of most American Zionists – who described the founding of the ALFP and its subsequent actions ‘a comic farce which is possibly suitable for operas.’117 The League made many enemies, and, as many of its own members admitted, had failed to register any diplomatic achievements or gain the ear of any significant political players. Yet, as Judith Tydor Baumel has noted in her study of the Bergson Group, British correspondence conveys the distinct impression that they were deeply perturbed by the group’s activities.118 Whilst small and operating outside of mainstream Zionist circles, and with limited organizational machinery, the League had an exceptional reach in terms of public relations. The league had successfully attracted forty thousand supporters and secured the financial and moral support of a number of leading society figures. At a time when Britain was attempting to co-opt the United States’ support for its policies in Palestine, the League was able to turn the 116 Shaw and Goodman, Hollywood and Israel, pp. 32. 117 Baumel, The “Bergson Boys” and the Origins of Contemporary Zionist Militancy, pp. 232 118 Ibid., pp. 231. 245 public mood decidedly bitter, turning ordinary Americans into critics of Britain in Palestine. So successful was this campaign of vitriol that by 1948 a British civil servant on a working trip to the United States was shocked to hear a campaigner in New York tell a cheerful audience that, ‘you’re hurrying home to your cocktails we know. But spare a few dollars to help us make some really good cocktails with the blood of British soldiers.’119 Meanwhile, in London, the normally mild-mannered Attlee was incensed at the level of support the Irgun had in America, complaining that William O’Dwyer, the mayor of New York (and an associate of Robert Briscoe – Jabotinsky’s Irish Irgun enthusiast), had initiated a fund raiser aimed at sending £250,000 direct to Palestine for help acquiring ‘men, ships, [and] guns.’ As Attlee pointed out to Harold Stassen, a rising Republican star, ‘the guns which are being subscribed for in America can only be required to shoot at British soldiers in Palestine, and it is a matter for the greatest regret that they should be supplied from the United States.’120 Even US intelligence reports noted that donations to the Irgun were substantial, with large-denomination US bank notes in circulation across Tel Aviv, a clear sign the money was reaching its intended targets.121 American displeasure with British activities in Palestine was clearly beginning to filter through to the political sphere as well with Senator Robert Taft, one of the most influential Republican members in the Senate, explicitly linking events in Palestine with the outcome of ongoing loan negotiations with the British – a lifeline Britain desperately needed.122 The matter quickly became non-partisan with Democratic Congressman Emanuel Celler of Brooklyn declaring publicly that America should target Britain’s ‘pocket nerves’ by refusing any economic aid until ‘unless Great Britain gives us assurance that she will live up to treaty pledges 119 From The compulsive ‘Cuppa’ [unpublished], MECA, St Antony’s College, in the Fletcher-Cooke Collection GB165-0107, pp. 13. 120 Quoted in Ritchie Ovendale, Britain, The United States, and the End of the Palestine Mandate, 1942-1948, pp. 202-203. 121 SI Intelligence Field Files, ‘Report 505,’ 9th July 1947, Washington Registry, RG 266. 122 Peter Clarke, The Last Thousand Days of the British Empire, pp. 390. 246 and platform promises concerning Palestine.’123 With the matter hotly debated by the political elites, Gallup Polls showed that Americans were two-to-one against the loan agreements, a surprising figure given that Gallup polls in 1946 had shown that few Americans placed foreign affairs high on the list of their country’s priorities.124 Whilst Taft and Cellar undoubtedly had other political motivations for trying to complicate the loan agreements, even seasoned Anglophiles were turning against Britain as a result of all the bad press which the Bergson Group was helping to generate for Britain. Felix Frankfurter had spent time as a student at the University of Oxford in 1920, returning in 1933-4 to act as a visiting professor, eventually receiving an honorary doctorate from the institution.125 He was widely perceived as a friend of Britain, and the Press Officer of the British Embassy in America received a deep shock when in the autumn of 1946 he attended a dinner party in Georgetown held by Frankfurter and his wife, only to be treated ‘almost immediately,’ as the Press Officer related, to ‘a bitter attack on Ernest Bevin whom he described as the true successor to Hitler.’126 A number of key election battles also led to politicians weaponising the Palestine issue for political ends. Truman’s demand for 100,000 Jews to be immediately admitted to Palestine was also a piece of savvy electioneering. Often viewed as a sop to the Jewish population of New York, who counted for a third of the electorate, ahead of the New York Mayoral elections, there can be no doubt that the position was popular with the American public more generally.127 The League, essentially a front for the Irgun, had laid the groundwork for a showdown between America and Britain. Naturally, British public opinion regarding the US was soured by 123 Rafael Medoff, Militant Zionism in America the rise and impact of the Jabotinsky movement in the United States, 1926-1948 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2002), pp. 143. 124 Derek Leebaert, The World After the War, pp. 32. 125 Isiah Berlin, Personal Impressions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), pp. 112-119; Derek Leebaert, The World After the War, pp. 74. 126 William Clark, Three Worlds: Memoirs (London: Sidgewick & Jackson, 1986), pp. 64. 127 Alan Bullock, Ernest Bevin, pp. 175. 247 American pontificating over Palestine as Mass Observation surveys suggest, with people in the UK fuming that the US was standing on the side-lines, playing politics and telling Britain what to do whilst offering no help.128 This situation, in which two ostensible allies were diametrically opposed, was hardly beneficial for either side, and certainly not for Britain who needed American financial support. As Bevin noted to the Cabinet as early as October 1945, ‘the agitation in the U.S.A. was poisoning our relations with the U.S. Government in other fields.’129 The solution, as Bevin saw it, was to launch the Anglo-American Commission of Inquiry the find a solution to the issue of Palestine acceptable to both the British and the Americans. However, the Committee proved a disaster for the British, with the unanimous recommendations of the committee members being unworkable and liable to cause further unrest. Most embarrassingly, the Committee endorsed Truman’s call for 100,000 Jews to be allowed to enter Palestine.130 Whilst Bevin held out the hope that, having been drawn into the Committee, the US would now have to contribute to implementing any of its own recommendations, no such assistance was ever likely to materialize. The Truman Government had no desire to become bogged down in Palestine themselves. Furthermore, if American GIs were to be tied down in Palestine, it would be a gift to Republicans who now had a majority in both the senate and house of representatives (the first time since 1928 this had happened) and was bound to reignite American isolationism.131 In a meeting of the British Cabinet’s Defence Committee, Attlee was downbeat about the prospect of obtaining American support, noting that the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry had ‘proposed a policy which would set both the Arabs and Jews against us’ whilst ‘we should have to go it alone’ without US support. Noting that Palestine was a heavy burden for 128 Mass Observation, ’Attitudes Towards the USSR [Sic],’ 1947, pp. 8. 129 Alan Bullock, Ernest Bevin, pp. 176. 130 ‘Recommendations of the Anglo-American Committee of Enquiry,’ 20th April 1946, TNA, PRO 30/78/30, Recommendation No.2. 131 Leebaert, The World After the War, pp. 75; Ovendale, Britain, The United States, and the End of the Palestine Mandate, 1942-1948, pp. 175. 248 Britain to bear alone without US support, Attlee suggested ‘it was time that others helped to share it with us.’ 132 Clearly the prospect of a wider internationally supported solution to the problem of Palestine was now on Attlee’s mind. Seeking to address the diplomatic damage severely exacerbated by the League for a Free Palestine, Bevin had inadvertently blundered in his attempt to co-opt the US and address the growing divisions between the UK and her ally. The Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry had merely poured more oil on the fire, whilst the US sat back and watched Britain scramble to deal with the outcome. The actions of a few fringe Irgun supporters had become bound up in UK-US tensions and attempts to politically out-manoeuvre each other that helped to push the British Government to approach the American Government and propose a joint committee, a venture that had ultimately backfired badly. Instead, the toxicity that Palestine had fostered continued to linger, with Bevin writing bitterly to Secretary of State Byrnes that events in Palestine and aggressive Jewish lobbying in the US were ‘poisoning relations between our two peoples.’133 The Cabinet were in a bind. On the one hand, they wanted to continue discussing the situation and potential solutions with the Americans, but at the same time it felt it had to take strong action against Jewish terrorism as they were being urged to authorise by Cunningham, Montgomery, and Chief of the Imperial General Staff Alanbrooke.134 As chapter three demonstrates, morale was plummeting by this time and allowing soldiers to go on the offensive was seen as vital both to attempting to restore order and boost morale. The Government were trapped in a ‘glass house’ of their own making – there was a need to act, but any action would inevitably lead to American views hardening against Britain. 132 ‘Cabinet Defence Committee,’ 14th April 1946, TNA, WO 32/10260. 133 Quoted in Ovendale, Britain, The United States, and the End of the Palestine Mandate, 1942-1948, pp. 120. 134 Alan Bullock, Ernest Bevin, pp. 293. 249 To add one final insult to injury, groups like the American League for a Free Palestine received charitable status, allowing every penny to be put to use aiding the Irgun. The US authorities paid little attention to British complaints, including one by the 1st Baron Inverchapel, the British Ambassador in Washington, to the State Department.135 Perhaps the US authorities would have looked on British attempts to curtail this flow of cash more sympathetically if they could have seen the trouble they would themselves face in the run up to the first Arab-Israeli War when the FBI sought desperately to prevent Zionists from shipping munitions through American ports. Strangely, one of these shipments was facilitated when Teddy Kolek gave federal agents the run around by discreetly switching a bag containing roughly $1 million with a sympathetic friend’s empty bag at the Copacabana Bar in New York. The bag was duly delivered to the Irish ship captain for his illegal smuggling. The captain, if he looked closely at Kolek’s friend, must have been somewhat baffled to be receiving his payment from none other than Frank Sinatra.136 Security: ‘If we cannot learn, if the only effect upon us of the presence of the dynamiter in our midst is to make us multiply punishment, invent restrictions, increase the number of our official spies, forbid public meetings, interfere with the press, put up gratings […] in our House of Commons, scrutinize visitors under official microscopes […] I venture to prophesy that there lies before us a bitter and evil time.’ – Auberon Herbert, ‘The Ethics of Dynamite,’ 1894.137 135 The Economist, Saturday 24th May 1947. 136 Andrew Mumford, Counterinsurgency Wars and the Anglo-American Alliance The Special Relationship on the Rocks (Washington DC: Georgetown University Press, 2017), pp. 47. 137 Auberon Herbert, “The Ethics of Dynamite,” Contemporary Review (May 1894), vol. LXV, January-June 1894, pp. 667-687. 250 Writing against the backdrop of widespread Anarchist violence in Europe and America, Herbert’s critique of the Government’s response to terrorism is as pertinent today as it was then. Herbert argued forcefully against what today we might term ‘counterterrorism measures’ on the grounds that such measures restrict personal liberties and are unacceptable to a ‘free’ society. Measures made to curtail terror only reinforce society’s fear of terror and of their own rulers who wield such coercive power, and in many cases, when applied to politics, separate the governed and the governing in unacceptable ways. As we have seen in the previous chapter, security measures were often startling to the public, who were more likely to be panicked than reassured by them. However, it was not the public who were primarily at risk. In the face of Zionist terrorism, a number of security measures were introduced, and existing measures strengthened in an attempt to keep ministers, diplomats, and other officials, as well as to some extent the general public themselves safe. However, both the adequacy and the wisdom of certain security methods are questionable, whilst the need for such measures demonstrated the inadequacy of the Government’s response to Irgun and Lehi terrorism and kept the threat alive in people’s minds. As mentioned in the previous chapter, Bevin was provided extra security for his trips to France to avoid any chance of terrorists assassinating him in Paris. As well as additional guards in the room with him at all meetings, the George V Hotel where Bevin was staying was cleared of guests and the restaurants and bars were closed to the public. Plainclothes police officers were also placed in the hotel to pose as staff members.138 These precautions were reported in the British press on 29th August 1946, only to be strenuously denied by the Foreign Office.139 No such denial was issued when security was heightened for the state opening of Parliament in 138 ‘Top Secret Meeting,’ 24th July 1946, TNA, KV 2/3428; Hoffman, Anonymous Soldiers, pp. 321. 139 Hoffman, Anonymous Soldiers, pp. 321. 251 1946, despite the hysteria the press managed to spin from the story as has been seen in the last chapter. Other measures were visible for all to see. After the failed attempt to blow up the Colonial Office, special guards were placed at London train terminals and underground stations.140 Perhaps the Foreign Office and security services were worried about the impression it would give it was shown going to such extraordinary lengths to protect Bevin out of fear of the reach of the Irgun and Lehi. Indeed, this seems to be the first time the security services were involved with such a large-scale operation to protect a Cabinet Minister, and it is entirely likely that the Foreign Office were concerned at the precedent, wishing to down play it as much as possible. However, what is perhaps most remarkable is the lack of any security related to the Palestine situation for other high-ranking officials and administrators linked to the country. The fact that Lehi letter bombs were able to find their way from Europe to their intended targets demonstrated a terrifying ineffectiveness on the part of the security services. This was sometimes compounded by the carelessness of officials. Former High Commissioner Harold MacMichael received a suspicious package on the 4th June 1947 and opened it, examining its contents close enough to report that the device ‘contained a quantity of material with the appearance of toffee, in between two pieces of cardboard,’ with ‘several pieces of wire […] connected to it,’ before alerting the police.141 Although he had long since stepped down from the role of High Commissioner three years earlier, MacMichael had long been a target of the Lehi (including on the very day he left Palestine) and had continued to receive threats sent directly to his residence upon his return to the UK.142 That the security services were not monitoring MacMichael’s mail or taking any precautions for his safety, and that MacMichael himself seems to have been rather blasé about the risk to himself baffles belief. Other Lehi 140 Rose, 'A Senseless, Squalid War,' pp. 136-137. 141 ‘Statement of Witness,’ 4th June 1947, TNA, EF 5/12. 142 ‘Statement of Witness’ and threatening letter attached, 4th June 1947, TNA, EF 5/12. 252 targets also received their parcels courtesy of the Post Office without a hitch. It was perhaps Cripps who came closest to disaster. A secretary received the parcel and noticed it was starting to get hot and had the foresight to dunk it in a bucket of water.143 It appears the bucket may have been provided for just such a risk, though if so, it was a remarkably low-tech security measure. Nevertheless, it did avert disaster. Anthony Eden meanwhile carried his parcel around all day, mistaking it for a Whitehall circular.144 The British state was not prepared to have to deal with terrorist bomb threats to senior politicians and civil servants. This was particularly surprising given that the IRA, and especially the London IRA, had managed to target political and military figures in the 1910s and 1920s (Sir Henry Wilson MP was assassinated in London in 1922 for example) had led to security measures being introduced in late November 1920. Lloyd George and other high-ranking ministers had received security guards, the public galleries in the House of Commons and the House of Lords had been closed, and 150 policemen from the Metropolitan Police had been posted around key sites in London.145 Yet when Irgun and Lehi terrorism reached Britain the lessons of the past had seemingly been completely forgotten. Meanwhile, in the face of the letter bombing campaign, Home Office officials responded by introducing new security measures and considered implementing the use of a device called an ‘inspectoscope.’ The futuristic sounding device, later referenced in Ian Fleming’s Moonraker, was in essence a crude x-ray machine. The device had originated in the US as an anti-sabotage measure with workers being subjected to checks to limit theft from employers, yet it appears the Government had in mind a very different use for the device. As the Home Office file noted on a sheet of paper attached to a brochure from the ‘Sicular 143 Walton, Empire of Secrets, pp. 80. 144 Walton, Empire of Secrets, pp. 80. 145 Peter Hart, “'Operations Abroad': The IRA in Britain, 1919-23,” The English Historical Review 115/460 (2000): pp. 98. 253 Inspectoscope Company,’ the machine could serve as an ‘apparatus to permit inspection of an individual to discern hidden prohibited articles.’146 This was all the more necessary given the presence of Yaakov Eliav, one of Lehi’s best bomb makers just over the Channel in France. Eliav had created the (equally James Bond sounding) ‘explosive coat.’ This was essentially a normal coat where the shoulder padding was removed and replaced with plastic explosives and concealed the wiring needed for the explosive in the lining of one of the arms. This could then be removed and assembled once the wearer had reached their final destination. In March 1947, Eliav had also tasked Jacques Martinsky, a former French Resistance fighter, with entering Britain with explosives hidden in a cavity in his prosthetic leg. Martinsky was not allowed to disembark when he arrived in the UK as MI5 already had their eye on him, but a day later a bomb was detonated in the Colonial Club, near Trafalgar Square. Robert Mishrahi, who planted the bomb, was also one of Eliav’s operatives and had smuggled the explosives across the Channel in one of the Lehi bomb expert’s ‘explosive coats.’147 Although it appears the device was never purchased, the file demonstrates the threat posed by Lehi operatives especially and the high-tech measures the British Government was forced to consider in order to keep its personnel safe. Yet again, money was the crucial limitation when it came to security. The Second World War had seen the expansion of the intelligence services, sucking in unparalleled funds and recruiting large numbers of staff. But the end of the war and Labour’s policy of austerity meant that MI5’s staff was slashed from 250 to just 100 people.148 Whilst some historians of espionage and security, such as Calder Walton, have located this whittling down of state security apparatus as being based in ideological and historical distrust of the intelligence 146 ‘Apparatus to permit inspection of an individual to discern hidden prohibited articles.’ (date not given) 1947, TNA, EF 5/12. 147 Cesarani, Major Farran’s Hat, pp. 85-86. 148 Walton, Empire of Secrets, pp. 76. 254 services on the part of the Labour party, this is not necessarily the case.149 Over the course of the war, the Labour party and Dalton (who established the Special Operations Executive) in particular had developed good relations with the intelligence services. Whilst there may have been some ideological uneasiness about the role of these services, Attlee and the Labour Government worked effectively and constructively with the intelligence services to safeguard British interests.150 It was simply that there was not enough money to keep the services at their wartime levels. As a result, spending on intelligence was taken down from over £6 million in 1945 and capped at just £2.5 million in 1946 where it would remain until 1950.151 Facing the emergence of the Soviet threat in Europe, Palestine was an unwelcome drain on these limited resources. Compounding the financial constraints was the sometimes unreliable nature of intelligence on Palestine. As a result, the security services had to plough considerable efforts and resources into countering a threat they did not always have the full facts about, and seemed unable to counter. Remarkably, as the Cold War began to crystalise, the intelligence services were more focussed on counterterrorism against the Irgun and Lehi than they were on counterespionage concerning the Soviets.152 Palestine was, once again, a drain on wider and potentially much more serious issues. Meanwhile, those security measures still possible were sometimes nonsensical. Duff Cooper, who had been serving as the UK ambassador to France since 1944, woke up on the 28th August 1946 to find the embassy crawling with detectives and police after an anonymous call, presumed to be from a Zionist group, threatened to blow the building up.153 It was decided that, in light of the threat to the British Ambassador to France, an extra guard would be 149 Walton, Empire of Secrets, pp. 75. 150 See, Lomas, Intelligence, Security and the Attlee Government. 151 Lomas, Intelligence, Security and the Attlee Government, pp. 42, 59. 152 Walton, Empire of Secrets, pp. 80; Walton, ‘British Intelligence and the Mandate of Plaestine: Threats to British National Security Immediately after the Second World War,’ Intelligence and National Security 23/4 (2008): pp. 437 153 Duff Cooper and John Julius Norwich, The Duff Cooper Diaries, 1915-1951 (London: Phoenix, 2006), pp. 418. 255 provided whenever Cooper travelled by car, and would sit in the front seat to keep an eye out. Cooper noted the absurdity of these arrangements, confiding in his diary, ‘how a man sitting in the front seat of a car can prevent another man from throwing a bomb at it I cannot understand.’154 In December a sceptical Cooper found himself advised by his security specialist to install a barbed wire fence through the middle of the garden to prevent incursions by operatives from Lehi.155 The fence never went up. ‘I never heard such nonsense,’ the British Ambassador snorted privately.156 Cooper had a point. Such security arrangements were farcical, adding very little security but requiring copious arrangement and creating quite a lot of inconvenience, and attracting plenty of attention. Indeed, both John Rymer-Jones (now back with the Metropolitan Police) and Major General Sir John Templar who was serving as the director of military intelligence, and who would later go on to spearhead the counterinsurgency campaign in Malaysia, believed the threat by the Irgun and Lehi, especially to the British mainland, to be inflated and security measures put in place to be excessive.157 However, with a duty to protect the populace and their own ministers, and undoubtedly themselves swept up in the hysteria, the British Government implemented a series of security measures which ranged from the logical to the ludicrous. But security measures simply attracted further attention, thus feeding the cycle of hysteria which the press fed upon as the previous chapter elucidated. Security measures often did nothing but further demonstrate British impotence in the face of international Zionist terrorism and drew attention to the whole debacle, thus ensuring the public spectacle would continue to be a talking point. Rather than reassuring the populace the Government was instead making them more nervous, and thus doing the Irgun and Lehi’s job for them. 154 Cooper and Norwich, The Duff Cooper Diaries, 1915-1951, pp. 423. 155 Ibid. pp. 424. 156 Ibid. pp. 424. 157 Hoffman, Anonymous Soldiers, pp. 341. 256 Although there were measures taken, it is clear that the Attlee Government was not willing to allow the issue of Palestine to become one which led to outright securitization, either in the UK or Palestine itself. When in November 1946, the CIGS Field Marshal Montgomery attacked what he called Cunningham’s ‘conciliation policy’ as a more defensive and reactive way of dealing with the Irgun and Lehi, and called for more widespread military action against the groups, he was rebuffed by the Government.158 Montgomery’s gung-ho, all-guns-blazing approach was rejected, and the more cautious method of the High Commissioner greeted with approval. Doubtless, this reflected in part the fear of an American reaction to a violent counterterrorism operation. Political factors thus also affected Britain’s possible security arrangements. But also, it seems unlikely that Attlee, Bevin, or most of those in the Cabinet would have been comfortable taking such extreme measures in peacetime. There was also a vocal group within the parliamentary Labour party that would not have stood for such action, viewing it merely as antithetical to Labour beliefs to introduce more state security in the name of holding onto a small part of the Empire.159 Such securitization would also have received little backing from the Conservatives, and would more likely have been an own goal, given that Churchill had accused Labour policy of being ‘abhorrent to the British ideas of freedom,’ and predicted, during a rather disastrous election broadcast in 1945, that Labour ‘would have to fall back on some form of Gestapo’ in order to rule.160 Crushing the Irgun and Lehi was simply not an ideologically, economically, or politically feasible solution. As Richard Crossman summed up in arguing against harsher measures: ‘We are not Nazis.’161 On the Conservative side, Churchill himself noted in a debate on the security situation in Palestine that ‘this is a conflict with the terrorists, and no country in the world is less fit for a conflict with terrorists than Great 158 Golani, Palestine Between Politics and Terror, pp. 164-183. 159 Michael R. Gordon, Conflict and Consensus in Labour Foreign Policy, 1914-1965 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1965), pp. 133. 160 Richard Toye, ‘Winston Churchill’s “Crazy Broadcast”: Party, Nation, and the 1945 Gestapo Speech,’ Journal of British Studies 49/3 (2012): pp.655. 161 Zadka, Blood in Zion, pp. 173. 257 Britain. That is not because of her weakness or cowardice: it is because of her restraint and virtues, and the way of life which we have lived so long in this sheltered island.’162 Although a romanticized picture of British gentleness, such comments nevertheless reveal the desire to avoid repressive measures against the Yishuv. This is especially telling from a man who had no qualms about brutalising striking workers or putting down rebellions and revolt by ‘natives’ in colonial territories. Perhaps in part it was Churchill’s Zionism that meant he could not countenance largescale armed action against the Yishuv as well as widespread horror at the Holocaust, shared by many (though not all) of his colleagues, which had led to such Jewish suffering. But it also demonstrated the moral, ideological, and political challenges that a protracted counterterrorism effort would incur, not least in America, where the media would doubtless have jumped on the story. It also demonstrated the continuing racialisation of the Yishuv as a European entity.163 Whilst crushing ‘native’ populations who rebelled against colonial rule was one thing, different rules clearly applied to the Yishuv based on their racial and ethnic identity – an unwritten rule of racial understanding meant that the Jewish population of Palestine was unlikely to be dealt with using the same level of force as had been applied to the Palestinian Arab community during the Arab Revolt a decade earlier. Atop the wasp’s nest Without any sign of a political settlement, Palestine was an albatross around Britain’s neck – and one with a sharp beak which refused to stop pecking. For all of the Labour government’s hopes that the Mandate could offer the opportunity to safeguard Britain’s economic, military, and imperial interests – not least against the growing threat from Russia – 162 [Hansard] Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, 31st January 1947, volume 432, columns 1344-1345. 163 See: James Renton, The Zionist Masquerade: The Birth of the Anglo-Zionist Alliance 1914-1918 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); Yair Wallach, “The racial logic of Palestine’s partition,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 46/8 (2023): pp. 1580-1582. 258 keeping hold of Palestine was no longer a viable option. As the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Hugh Dalton, wrote to Attlee in August 1947, Palestine was now of little use to Britain: ‘you cannot in any case have a secure base on top of a wasp’s nest.’ Noting as well the effect Palestine was having on those serving there, and upon the general public he noted that the Mandate was ‘exposing our young men, for no good purpose, to abominable experiences and is breeding anti-Semites at a most shocking speed.’164 A few months earlier, in February 1947, he had confided similar sentiments – albeit more freely – to his diary. ‘E[rnest] B[evin] goes doddering round and round with the Arabs and Jews and nothing ever happens except a long and rising series of outrages in Palestine, which are rapidly producing anti-Semites all through the British Army and Administration.’165 This statement came on the 5th of February, two days before the presentation of the (immediately rejected) Bevin-Beeley plan which proposed a five-year British trusteeship with substantial measures of autonomy for both Jews and Arabs in Palestine. Whilst Bevin was still trying to eke out compromises from the different sides, Dalton had already concluded that whilst the political process was going nowhere, terrorism was creating insurmountable problems for Britain. Dalton’s fear of antisemitism was perhaps not surprising. The chancellor had been largely pro-Zionist and sympathetic to Jewish claims to Palestine since at least the mid-1920s when he had been a lecturer at the London School of Economics.166 Indeed, it could well be argued that Dalton’s pro-Zionist tendencies, remarks, pamphlets, and his careful overseeing of pro-Zionist comments in the Labour national Executive Declaration on the post-war international settlement were in large part what led many Zionists to assume the Labour party was favourable to their goals, and ultimately why so many were deeply angry when they realised 164 Barr, A Line in the Sand, pp. 353. 165 ‘Diary of Hugh Dalton,’ 5th February 1947, LSE. 166 Pimlott, Hugh Dalton: A Life, pp. 137. 259 that a new Labour Government had no interest in an independent Jewish state.167 However, Dalton found he had an unlikely ally in Bevin, who also bemoaned the unsettling levels of latent antisemitism in Britain and the fact that Palestine was no longer suitable for a major British base. In particular he noted that the ‘destruction of the King David Hotel had burned deeply into the hearts of the British people.’ With chaos gripping Palestine the Foreign Secretary felt that ‘the feeling in Great Britain was that the Jews had declared war.’ 168 ‘The British people,’ he warned Weizmann, ‘could not be expected to support indefinitely and alone this heavy burden.’169 Meanwhile, as early as March 1946 Bevin expressed concern that with its volatile atmosphere and uncertain political future, Palestine was not a suitable place to build a major base to protect British interests, despite its proximity to Egypt and the Suez Canal, which he saw as absolutely vital to defend.170 Other MPs were also concerned that the general public, and thus their constituents, would no longer tolerate the continuation of terrorism and general instability in Palestine. Stanley Evans, Labour MP for Wednesbury, noted that Palestine was becoming the ‘talk of the town.’ ‘For the first time in my experience,’ he noted, ‘ordinary decent working men are talking in their pubs and clubs, at the barbers and at work, about the lot to which our lads are being subjected in Palestine at this moment.’171 Creech-Jones acknowledged the fact that the public were at the end of their tether when he rose to speak in the House of Commons on the 12th August 1947, admitting that ‘among the British public there is fierce questioning as to the burden and cost to Britain, and the tragedy involved by Britain continuing to shoulder this international liability.’172 As chapter four has demonstrated, this was no exaggeration. The 167 Pimlott, Hugh Dalton: A Life, pp. 388-391. 168 ‘Minutes of Meeting at Foreign Office,’ 1st October 1946, TNA, FO 371/52560. 169 Quoted in Ovendale, Britain, The United States, and the End of the Palestine Mandate, 1942-1948, pp. 160. 170 Bullock, Ernest Bevin, pp. 243. 171 Zadka, Blood in Zion, pp. 176. 172 [Hansard], Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, 12th August 1947, volume 441, columns 2314-2315. 260 British public were indeed incensed at events in Palestine and fearful of the arrival of terror closer to home. With the public deeply unhappy and events in Palestine spiralling out of control, the value of Palestine as a military base from which to project its power around the region rapidly declined. Irgun and Lehi violence had deeply undermined the hopes successive Governments had for Palestine. Conclusion Palestine was just one of a range of issues Bevin and British foreign policy officials had to deal with between 1945 and 1948. As Bevin himself put it in a speech in the Commons, ‘all the world is in trouble, and I have to deal with all the troubles at once.’173 As well as Palestine, British rule in India was coming to an end, and Indonesia was in the grip of a violent counterinsurgency campaign. In Europe, Britain was bankrolling anti-communism in Greece, deciding the future of Germany, and facing an increasingly hostile Russian state as the first signs of what would become the Cold War began to be apparent to all. Britain also took a leading role in the creation of several international organizations including the United Nations Organization, NATO, and the Commonwealth. Relations with America, inflamed over the issue of Palestine, faced a number of other smaller challenges including a British threat to pull out from Greece and clashes over American access to British markets, as well as wider financial haggling on the part of Britain. The world was being remade after the most destructive war in history, and different global actors were trying to pull the world in radically different directions. As Roderick Barclay, Bevin’s Personal Private Secretary, noted of his boss, ‘to a large extent, […] he was the victim of forces outside his control. Priority had to be given to dealing with the aggressive policies of the Russians in Germany and elsewhere; the British public were 173 [Hansard], Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, 23rd November 1945, volume 416, column 777. 261 exhausted and anxious to see the country’s overseas liabilities reduced rather than extended; and at many points Mr Bevin found himself frustrated as a result of internal American policies.’174 Pierson Dixon, who also served as Bevin’s PPS throughout the later part of the Second World War and Bevin’s time at the Foreign Office, gave the impression in his diaries that most of 1946 and 1947 was tied up with meetings and arguments with the Americans and Soviets. Palestine is hardly mentioned at all, such were the numerous problems Bevin faced.175 Nonetheless, on the 18th December 1946, Dixon noted that Bevin was ‘at the same time handling: (1) the final stages of the C.F.M. [Council of Foreign Ministers] on the Treaties; (2) the first stages of the C.F.M. on Germany […]; (3) Anglo-American negotiations about the fusion of our zones in Germany; (4) U.N.O, with the very different nexus of disarmament, troops and the Atom; (5) the Anglo-Egypt negotiations which we continued to direct awkwardly from New York; (6) Palestine […]. To the major problems should be added (7) Persia and (8) Greece.’176 Despite being just one issue Bevin was facing, it is interesting that Palestine was classed as a ‘major problem’ alongside such large international issues as UK-US and UK-Russian relations, the U.N.O. with its global overview, and the awesome power of the atomic bomb. Facing such a long list of issues to address it is little wonder that Bevin suffered from increasingly poor health throughout his tenure as Foreign Secretary, and died hardly a month after being forced to step back from the position. He spent his last weeks dozing through cabinet meetings and reminiscing with old friends who came to visit, recognizing how ill he really was. Despite his failing health, he still worked diligently, dying of a heart attack whilst in bed reading official papers.177 He had faced many difficult challenges at the Foreign Office, and 174 Roderick Barclay, Ernest Bevin and the Foreign Office, pp. 35. 175 Piers Dixon, Double Diploma: The Life of Sir Pierson Dixon, Don and Diplomat (London: Hutchinson, 1968). 176 Piers Dixon, Double Diploma, pp. 244-245. 177 Alan Bullock, Ernest Bevin, pp. 834-835. 262 overcome many international problems Britain faced. Yet Palestine was his greatest failure and has quite rightly gone down in the historiography as such. Many of the challenges Bevin faced in dealing with Palestine were not new – successive Governments and Foreign Secretaries had found themselves faced by near insurmountable challenges when dealing with the future of the territory. Yet Bevin faced something none of the others had ever contended with: Jewish terrorism. Eden and Halifax had found themselves up against a campaign of mass violence by the Palestinian Arab population during the Arab Revolt between 1936-1939, but the uprising had descended into infighting and effectively been neutralized by a combined carrot and stick approach: the 1939 white paper and massive military intervention to crush the revolt and dismantle its leadership structure. The situation by 1945 was much different. Britain was weaker financially and weary of conflict after over five years of all-out warfare. The Irgun and Lehi proved to be a much adept and successful opponent than the Palestinian Arabs, aware of the power of international opinion and especially American support. This was, as Alan Bullock has put it, ‘the weapon to which the British found no reply, the worldwide publicity campaign financed […] by American Zionists and organisations through Jewish connections with the press, radio and film worlds.’178 Seeking to understand the way in which terrorism operates, Martha Crenshaw has contended that ‘terrorism spreads insecurity, undermines public confidence, and sometimes weakens the economy, which inflicts a material blow but also degrades the government’s international reputation.’179 The actions of the Irgun and Lehi managed all of this and more. By the beginning of 1947 Jewish terrorism was having a profound effect upon Britain, leaving the Government with little option but to get out of Palestine with as little further embarrassment as was possible. 178 Alan Bullock, Ernest Bevin, pp. 447. 179 Martha Crenshaw, Explaining Terrorism: Causes, Processes, and Consequences (London: Routledge, 2011), pp. 10. 263 Attlee’s form of governance was one which clearly benefitted from the ability to compartmentalise the issues the British state faced. Yet Palestine could not so easily be put away in a box. The Irgun and Lehi did a remarkable job of ensuring Palestine spilled into every aspect of British political and social life (as chapter 4 attests), chipping away at the economy, interposing itself into the UK-US relationship, disrupting security in the UK, and generally causing havoc. Jewish terrorism was an issue which destabilised the wider political and economic situation and which could not be ignored, but also could not be adequately dealt with given the constraints upon Britain. It was a lose-lose situation for Britain. Unable to juggle all the competing demands upon its economic and political capital with violence in Palestine, even Bevin could not continue to argue the case for continued British rule in Palestine indefinitely. No individual element mentioned above was enough to force the British to reassess their position, but taken together they had an impact that could not be ignored. The subsequent decision to support the UN plan to partition Palestine and for Britain to evacuate the country by May 1948 and all the bitterness, division, and hatred that has engendered until today, is in no small part a result of the Irgun and Lehi’s ability to apply a constant pressure on Britain in numerous ways – violent and non-violent. In many ways, the burden of Palestine was shed not a moment too soon. Russian aggression in Europe was fast becoming a major concern for Britain and a continued British presence in Palestine would have been a drain and a distraction from the major geopolitical shift happening in Central and Eastern Europe. By 1948, Bevin was refocussing his attention to the Commonwealth and attempting to counter the Soviets in Europe and elsewhere. When he was visited by Lewis Douglas, the American Ambassador to the UK, with James G. McDonald in tow who was on his way to Israel to serve as the first US ambassador there, Bevin seemed irritated at the hostilities breaking out in Israel and the Arab Palestinian territories. He grumpily made a remark to the effect that ‘what with the Berlin crisis, and economic troubles, that it was just too 264 bad that he and his colleagues had to be bothered with Palestine.’180 For Bevin, the nightmare situation in Palestine was over, it was time to move on and refocus. In Britain, news of the first Arab-Israeli war reached the public through radio news broadcasts, news reels, and newspapers. But a largely apathetic public had little interest now British boys were no longer in the crossfire. For thousands of Israelis on the front lines and tens of thousands of Palestinians killed and forced to leave their homes during the Nakba, the nightmare was just beginning. 180 James G. McDonald, My Mission in Israel, 1948-1951 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1951), pp. 23. Conclusions – Terror, Nostalgia, and the Situation Today The penultimate Governor of Aden, Richard Turnbull, once told Dennis Healey, then Secretary of State for Defence, that ‘when the British Empire finally sinks beneath the waves of history, it will leave behind it only two memorials: one is the game of Association Football and the other is the expression “Fuck Off”.’1 He was partly right, at least in the case of Israel and Palestine. Many Israeli football teams can indeed trace their roots back to the years of the Mandate, with some teams such as Beitar Jerusalem actually serving as fronts for members of the Irgun and Lehi.2 Although conveying rather fewer expletive messages, a variety of British signs (including the iconic tiled street signs in the Old City of Jerusalem) which remain in use, can also still be found across Israel and especially in Jerusalem. English retains its quasi-formal status of an official language in Israel. Along with numerous red postal boxes across the country, a smattering of pill boxes and bunkers now repurposed for military or policing purposes by the Israeli authorities or Palestinian Authority (or in at least one case at Majd al-Krum converted into a restaurant), and a handful of grand buildings such as the King David Hotel (with a contentious plaque commemorating the victims of the Irgun bombing) and YMCA building in Jerusalem, these reminders stand as a tangible testimony to thirty years of British rule. However, the British legacy is also ‘visible’ in other ways. It is one of lasting ethnic division, religio-political violence, and a territory abandoned to territorial feuding and bloodletting, with a Jewish state – having dispossessed 750,000 Palestinians in 1948 – now occupying and controlling the lives of over 5 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Britain has much to answer for, and Israelis and Palestinians had, and continue to have, much 1 Denis Healey, The Time of my Life (London: Michael Joseph,1989), pp. 282-283. 2 See, Nicholas Blincoe, More Noble Than War: The Story of Football in Israel and Palestine (London: Constable, 2019); (Tel Aviv, Am Oved, 2023) פלסטין-י" בא וערבים יהודים ויחסי כדורגל: בשער עומדים, עינב עומר , 1948-1917 266 reason to tell Britain to ‘fuck off’. From the moment Allenby and his troops arrived in Palestine, Britain began to interfere more and more with the social and political fabric of the country. Thirty years later, unable to fulfil the dual promise they had made to the Palestinian Arabs and Jewish Yishuv, and faced with a hostile Jewish population amongst whom a radical minority were willing to take up arms against them and a Palestinian Arab community who saw no reason why they should have to give up sovereignty over the land to Zionist Jews, Britain evacuated her forces from Palestine and washed her hands of the issues she had faced (and in some cases created and fostered) for the last 30 years. ‘I sincerely trust we can feel that we left with dignity, using all our efforts to the last for the good of Palestine,’ Alan Cunningham told an audience at Chatham House on the 22nd of July 1948, barely two months after he had sailed away from the port at Haifa for the last time.3 The former residents of Kfar Etzion, a Kibbutz in the Judean Hills, would surely have been aghast had they heard such a statement. Over the course of two days on the 12th and 13th of May 1948, the Kibbutz came under fierce attack from the Arab Legion. Whilst the British were still nominally in charge of law and order in Palestine, Arab forces massacred 127 of the inhabitants of the Kibbutz.4 Celebrating their victory, several Arab soldiers attempted to rape female survivors.5 Meanwhile, the Nakba had already begun. 70,000 Palestinians had already left between September 1947 and March 1948, and more were to flee imminently, especially as reports began to be made of extreme Zionist violence against Palestinian civilians.6 At Deir Yassin on the 9th April 1948, Irgun and Lehi fighters entered the village and killed over a 3 Alan Cunningham, “Palestine – The Last Days of the Mandate,” International Affairs 4/4 (October 1948), pp. 490. 4 Jonathan Fenby, Crucible: The Year That Forged Our World (London: Simon & Schuster, 2018), pp. 436-437; Benny Morris, The Road to Jerusalem: Glubb Pasha, Palestine and the Jews (London, I.B. Taurus, 2003), pp. 139. 5 Fenby, Crucible, pp. 437. 6 Ilan Pappe, A History of Modern Palestine [3rd Edition] (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022), pp. 119. 267 hundred villagers in an orgy of violence.7 Although denying the brutality of the attack, instead claiming that this was mere Arab propaganda, Begin revelled in the fear it created, leading ‘the Arabs to flee in terror’ across Palestine.8 In both cases, at Kfar Etzion and Deir Yassin, the British hardly lifted a finger. An appeal from Hussayn Khalidi, a member of the All-Palestine Government, to the British urging them to come to the aid of Deir Yassin was ignored. This was despite the fact that the British still had forces in Jerusalem which they had used several days earlier to force the Haganah to leave another village, Deir Muhayzin, before garrisoning the town until the end of the Mandate.9 Kfar Etzion was to be included in the area of the proposed Palestinian Arab state, whist Deir Yassin was to fall within the borders of the Jewish state. Where international agreement and British ‘efforts’ to work for ‘the good of Palestine’ failed, violence became the answer. Where was the dignity of the last days of the Mandate here? How did the last stages of British rule demonstrate a British capacity to act for ‘the good of Palestine’ in any way? Every time I’m in Israel and the inevitable question, ‘So, where are you from?’ comes up, I am greeted by a number of standard responses from Israelis. One of the most common is my interlocutor stating, normally tongue in cheek, that if only the British were still in charge things in Israel would be so much better. A certain colonial nostalgia, present also in the literary works of canonical Hebrew writers such as Amos Oz and A. B. Yehoshua post-1967 has viewed the Mandate as part of a perfect, orderly, and cosmopolitan world now lost.10 It stands as reminder of a time when Jews in Palestine were the underdog, fighting oppressive British imperialism; this perception must also offer a temporary balm to the present reality of the 7 Fenby, Crucible, pp. 421; Benny Morris, “The Historiography of Deir Yassin,” Journal of Israeli History 24/1 (2005), pp. 79. 8 Begin, The Revolt, pp. 212. 9 Yoav Gelber, Palestine 1948: War, Escape, and the Emergence of the Palestinian Refugee Problem (Eastbourne: Sussex Academic Press, 2005), pp. 316. 10 Eitan Bar-Yosef, “Bonding with the British: Colonial Nostalgia and the Idealization of Mandatory Palestine in Israeli Literature and Culture after 1967,” Jewish Social Studies 22/3 (2017), pp. 10-15. 268 continued Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory and daily breaking of international law in the West Bank and Gaza. After all, it is much easier to lose yourself in an idealized past of heroic, anticolonial resistance rather than face the fact that Israel has been engaged in a settler-colonial project in the West Bank for the last fifty plus years. Indeed, this sentiment is particularly found – at least in my own experience – amongst the Ashkenazi social elites in places such as Tel Aviv. These liberal minded Israelis, often disenchanted with the failure of any lasting peace post-’93, seek a temporary psychological balm in the brief nostalgia-cum-humour that such comments offer. Focussing particularly on Ashkenazi authors, Eitan Bar-Yosef has contended that ‘writers have thus returned to the idealized landscapes of the Mandate period: some have sought momentary solace from present-day violence; others have searched for alternative political models that challenge the existing order; and still others employ the Mandate’s colonial framework to highlight and criticize Israel’s own colonial practices.’11 Yet this nostalgia seems to have seeped into much of Israeli culture, not just amongst certain sections of the populace, and has become not just a sentiment but has gained a performative role. So much so, that in December 2017, General Allenby returned to Jerusalem to be greeted enthusiastically by crowds of onlookers. Flanked by members of the Allenby family who had flown over especially, the Likudnik Mayor of Jerusalem Nir Barakat and an ensemble of dignitaries and thespians in costume watched as an actor playing the famous general read out the proclamation Allenby had made one hundred years ago to the day, on the 11th December 1917. A cheerful crowd greeted the performance with cheers and applause, with the master of ceremonies gushing over the fact that Allenby’s address had constituted the first 11 Eitan Bar-Yosef, “Bonding with the British: Colonial Nostalgia and the Idealization of Mandatory Palestine in Israeli Literature and Culture after 1967,” pp. 16. 269 quasi-governmental use of Hebrew in Eretz Yisrael in almost a thousand years.12 The fact that the address was a proclamation of Martial Law by a conquering force was conveniently ignored amid the jubilation. Here the Mandate – perhaps fittingly for such a system of rule that suffered from such vague direction from politicians and bureaucrats from London, and which seemed to suffer from much political drift – operated as a ‘floating signifier’ given meaning here by the master of ceremonies. The Mandate here represented the return of Hebrew as a living language to Eretz Yisrael and offered a claim to the land based on linguistic return and ownership. Seeping into the very fabric of cultural consumption, The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem, a widely popular television series based on the book of the same name, has become the latest ‘phenomenon’ to capitalise on a nostalgia for the Mandate period. Highlighting, and perhaps exaggerating, the mixed marriages of Ladino and Ashkenazi families as well as the glamour of the British Mandate with its cultural and social events, the series presents the viewer again with an idealised and cosmopolitan version of the past. The struggle against the British is not the focus here, presenting the audience with a period that, for all of its charms, was simply a paving of the way for Jewish statehood. The fight against the British does appear, especially in the form of Ephraim, a member of the Lehi, but interestingly his characterization is not sympathetic, presenting him as a thug and a threat to both the British and the Jewish community – accurately given Lehi’s tactics of targeting those seen as working or socialising with the British. Yet, whereas the actions of a Lehi fanatic are condemned, the Irgun do not make an appearance at all. This is perhaps wise given the semi-mythical status their commemoration post-’77 (with Begin’s ascension to the premiership) has afforded them – as martyrs and 12 Renee Ghert-Zand, “History repeats itself as Lord Allenby captures Jerusalem’s Old City, again,” Times of Israel (12th December 2017): https://www.timesofisrael.com/history-repeats-itself-as-lord-allenby-captures-jerusalems-old-city-again/ (22nd January 2024) 270 heroes. In no small part, this was due to Begin’s own nostalgia for the days in the underground. Appealing in his election campaign to Mizrahi voters who had been neglected and mocked by the Ashkenazi dominated Alignment party, Begin returned to his time in the underground and praised Mizrahim fighters as some of the bravest members of the Irgun.13 He also surrounded himself with former members of the Irgun and wider underground, both within the party and on his personal staff, such as Ezer Weizmann and Eitan Livni. Even when appointing new and younger staff, Begin still viewed those around him through the lens of his time as Irgun chief, admiring Ariel Sharon as a model of the ‘New Jew’ Begin and Muscular Zionism had been trying to create, and appointing him Defence Secretary after the 1981 election.14 Indeed, as Colin Schindler plausibly theorised, Begin may have seen himself ‘playing out the role of Jabotinsky to Sharon’s youthful radical Begin.’15 If so, it was a nostalgic impulse which was to have horrific results for Israelis, Palestinians, and Lebanese society as Sharon paid even less heed to Begin than Begin had done to Jabotinsky in the following years, culminating in the horrors of Sabra and Shatila. Unsurprisingly, after Begin’s election and his succession by Shamir, the fight against the British became part of the mythos surrounding the foundation of the state of Israel. Countless ceremonies, schoolbooks, and even postage stamps celebrated the fighters of the Irgun and Lehi as liberators and freedom fighters, pushing the two groups to the fore in an attempt to salvage their earlier reputation, even amongst Israelis, as bloodthirsty fanatics. This effort has been extremely successful in rehabilitating the image of the two organizations. Today the Irgun and Lehi are often uncritically viewed as heroes and liberators by Israelis. Perhaps this is unsurprising given the amount of time and effort that has gone into this rebranding since the 13 Eran Kaplan, “Begin, Chach'chachim, and the Birth of Israeli Identity Politics,” Israel Studies 23/3 (2018), pp. 72. 14 Avi Shilon, Menachem Begin, pp.261. 15 Colin Schindler, Israel, Likud and the Zionist Dream, pp. 115. 271 1970s. When last in Israel, gathering research material for this thesis, I spent a not inconsiderable time wondering around Beit Gidi, the Irgun Museum on the beach between Tel-Aviv and Jaffa. The number of children and young people taken around on tours where the valour and honour of the men (and women) of the Irgun and Lehi were praised to the rafters struck me as befitting a dictatorship engaging in a process of heavy historical revisionism. As I was leaving, a small posse of IDF conscripts were just arriving. Socialised upon a diet of Revisionist Zionist hero worship and admiration for the violence of the Irgun and Lehi against the British and Arab Palestinians, it is little wonder at the level of normalisation of Israeli brutality against Palestinians and the mutual distrust between Jewish Israelis and Arab Palestinians and Arab Israelis. A report by the Hebrew University’s aChord Centre in 2021 showed that 24% of secular Israelis, 42% of national religious youth expressed fear and hatred of Arabs. Even amongst secular youth only 59% believed in promoting equality between different groups.16 Although there are numerous complex social, political, and educational reasons for these figures, providing young, armed Israeli Jews with a narrative of Irgun and Lehi heroics is part of an indoctrination process which praises muscular Judaism and Jewish superiority and leads to the dehumanisation of Palestinian and Israeli Arabs. The excesses of the war in Gaza are just the most recent manifestation of this. Yet these manifestations of nostalgia obscure the horrors that were experienced and witnessed during the final years of the Mandate. After nearly four years of research for this thesis, two images shall stay with me – one an image in a metaphorical sense – the product of witness accounts, the other literal and disturbing. Firstly, the descriptions, found in the third chapter, of the fate of Gerald Donald Kennedy, the Postmaster General whose body was blown from the King David Hotel during the attack in July 1946, and hung on the facade of the 16 ‘The Index for Shared Society Progress in Youth 2021,’ Hebrew University aChord Centre (February .(EN (huji.ac.il) pp. 2 (22nd March 2024_ תקציר מדד השותפות 21 :(2021272 YMCA building, broken and near unrecognizable until his remains could be taken down. I cannot imagine what young soldiers and PPF members must have felt witnessing such a scene. The second is a collection of photographs relating to the Lehi letter bombing campaign. The file, found at the National Archives, contains a variety of material, including a defused letter bomb in a white envelope, with no label (pulling it from its sheath certainly gave me a glimpse of the fear terrorism can elicit!). Additionally there was a small parcel of photographs, presumably taken by the coroner in the aftermath of the Lehi bombing of Roy Farran’s house in revenge for his supposed murder of Alexander Rubowitz.17 Not present when a parcel arrived, it was left to Rex Farran, Roy’s brother who shared the same initials, to open the package, which exploded and killed him. He had been badly injured by the blast, but regained consciousness for some time before succumbing to his injuries. ‘Succumbing to his injuries’ is really too mild a phrase, a euphemism which is in many ways inadequate to describe the way in which his body was torn open. Photographs show huge lacerations across Rex’s stomach and groin, a mass of flesh, muscle, and bodily material simply torn out. Two fingers have had their tips blown off and his face is spattered with his own blood. Although it is hard to be certain given the quality of the photographs and the mass of blood and gore which cover his abdomen, Rex Farran also seems to have lost his reproductive organs in the detonation. One cannot imagine the pain he must have been in when he came around from the blast. By sheer coincidence, attending the funeral of my late Grandfather the year before starting this thesis, I discovered that an elderly friend of his had been a close colleague of Roy Farran, having worked with him in Canada. Filling him in, at his request, on the files I had discovered at the National Archives (though not mentioning the photographs) I told him that Rex had regained consciousness after the initial blast. He was absolutely horrified. Now in his 17 See, ‘Unmarked Letter Bomb,’ TNA, EF 5/12. 273 late eighties, he still regards the Irgun and Lehi as out and out bloodthirsty villains and harboured a deep personal animosity for Menachem Begin. Seventy-five years after the Mandate’s end the horror and hatred are still all too real for some people. For me, these experiences have been second-hand, and I myself am removed from the events temporally by decades, and emotionally since the events that occurred at the end of the Mandate remained an academic puzzle for me to unpick for my thesis – academic life offering a barrier against the horrors I was daily uncovering. Yet, I hope that here in this work I have been able to give some sense of the panic, horror, anger, and despair that must have affected those who were dealing with the actions of the Irgun and Lehi in Palestine and the wider British public who were looking on aghast at events that were quickly spiralling out of control there. This thesis does not argue that acts of terror by the Irgun and Lehi were the sole reason for Britain’s departure from Palestine in May 1948. Nevertheless, it would be unconvincing to suggest that terrorism played no part in the end of British rule in the country. During the final years of the Mandate the will of the administration and the discipline of the PPF and army was frayed to breaking point by repeated, brutal attacks. As Chapter three has noted, revenge attacks, troops going AWOL, and riots by British servicemen were increasingly common. Meanwhile, if the destructive nature inherent in Jewish terrorism was not enough, the stringent measures imposed on the Yishuv, and indeed all of Palestinian society, including administration personnel, were themselves detrimentally effecting the ability of the Mandate to function. As Cunningham warned Creech Jones in April 1947, ‘apart from the considerations of continual loss of life and property caused by terrorist activities, it is a matter of constant concern to me as to how long it will be possible to keep the civil administration in being under conditions which security demands have imposed on the civilian element in this country.’18 18 Alan Cunningham ‘Telegram from Cunningham to Creech Jones,’ 4th April 1947, TNA, FO 371/61772. 274 ‘Never before,’ remarked Rex Keating, the assistant director of the British-run Palestine Broadcasting Service, ‘surely, has a group of English men been placed in such a degrading position,’ likening, in poor taste, the situation of himself and his fellow countrymen and women in the country to being akin to a ‘British Concentration Camp.’19 How could Britain have hoped to have continue to administer its duties in Palestine in such a situation? Only the acceptance of the decision of the UN, and the abandoning of their duties in the country prevented a complete break-down (literal and mental) of order amongst the administration, PPF, and British armed forces. Whilst there was, perhaps understandably, a sense of disappointment of not having fulfilled entirely the job they set out to do, most British personnel were just happy to be going.20 In newsreel footage of some of the last soldiers leaving from Haifa, a quintessentially English voiceover notes that, ‘the thought that a difficult and thankless job had been well done must have mattered much less than the prospect of going home.’21 It was true. The British populace was no less pleased that the ordeal was over. Mass Observation had repeatedly shown that people were sick and tired of the continual trouble in Palestine. Edie Rutherford’s comment in her diary in March 1948 that ‘I don’t care what happens in Palestine any more, so long as we withdraw. Anyone can do what they like,’ rather summed up many peoples’ feelings.22 As The Daily Telegraph noted the day after the official termination of the Mandate, ‘there is no doubt that the country has had enough of attempting to solve the insoluble at great cost in life and treasure and without any effective gratitude or cooperation from anybody.’ Later, noting the violence faced, and political intractability between Arabs and Jews, the paper noted that ‘we could now do no more than go.’23 Palestine would continue to hit 19 Bruce Hoffman, Anonymous Soldiers, pp. 396. 20 George Webb, Epitaph For an Army of Peacekeepers, pp. 93. 21 ‘Last British Troops Leave Palestine,’ YouTube, (recorded 8th July 1948, uploaded 21st July 2015): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FyLX_mV3UI (22nd March 2024) 22 Diarist 5447, 20th March 1948, Mass Observation. 23 The Daily Telegraph, 15th May 1948. 275 the news, but in the form of fighting between Israel and the Arab states. Yet many people were now weary of the news from that corner of the globe. As Ms. Rutherford wrote, ‘I wish we wd not report the Palestine war so fully, and I wish all our correspondents wd return home. Let them get on with it.’24 The public had reached a point of fatigue with events in Palestine. Now British personnel were out of Palestine, what happened next interested people very little. True, some people expressed support for the Arab states, hoping the wrongs committed against British forces would now be posthumously revenged by the Arab armies, but despite lingering bitterness, the whole sorry affair was now considered by most people to be closed. The Government in Britain and the administration in Palestine were also under no illusion as to the damage which terrorism had done to Britain’s attempts to administer Palestine and find a solution for the country. Although in the case of the latter aim, they were chasing an illusion, terrorism was a major disruption to the political process and a drain on Britain’s ability to manoeuvre politically. In 1961, Creech Jones returned to the subject of Palestine, laying out, as he saw them, the major issues that had forced the Labour Government to abandon the Mandate. Labelling the situation ‘hopeless and intolerable,’ he noted Jewish and Arab irreconcilability as to the future of Palestine as a major stumbling block. Yet these pressures were compounded as he saw it by both terrorist attacks themselves – especially pointing to the hanging of the two sergeants as a ‘deadly blow against British patience and pride’ – and by the cost of terrorism which necessitated the maintenance of a large garrison in Palestine. On top of this, public pressure affected the options open to the government. As Creech Jones pointed out, ‘terrorism was at its worst and the British public seemed unable to stand much more of it.’25 To Cunningham, also considering the matter in retrospect, Britain’s decision to leave Palestine felt like an admission ‘that England always gives in to force.’26 24 Diarist 5447, 22nd May 1948, Mass Observation. 25 Hoffman, Anonymous Soldiers, pp. 472-473. 26 Hoffman, Anonymous Soldiers, pp. 474. 276 Terrorism was thus one salient reason for the British decision to hand Palestine to the UN and abandon ship as soon as was feasible. Undoubtedly terrorism converged with numerous other issues such as Britain’s economic weakness, the poisonous effect of Palestine on UK-US relations, the arrival of ships of illegal Jewish migrants, the failure of any political process for a shared Arab-Jewish state to be accepted by any side, international opprobrium, and British fatigue of constant firefighting in Palestine without any clear political endgame for the country. Yet, as the previous chapter demonstrates, so many of these issues were interrelated with the actions of the Irgun and Lehi. Jewish Terrorism thus affected countless aspects of British politics, international affairs, military manners, and economics. It could not be ignored, it seemed impossible to solve, and it thus pushed the British to their limit and finally convinced them that there was no point staying in Palestine any longer. A Postscript The final stages of this thesis have been completed against the backdrop of Hamas’s attacks against civilian, police, and military targets in Southern Israel on the 7th October 2023 and the inevitable round of violence this provoked from Israel. The impact of terror, carried out by a group relying on low-tech methods and with limited external international support, were clear for all to see. Over a thousand Israelis became casualties of Hamas brutality, whilst over two hundred were taken hostage to be held for political leverage. The impact on ordinary Israelis was profound. The sense of insecurity, of lives turned upside down, the fear as Hamas operatives remained active in Israel in the days after the attack, the anger at both the perpetrators and the Government who had not kept its citizens safe. Over two thousand miles away, I scrambled to get in touch with friends and colleagues in Israel, some of whom had families on Kibbutzim – a target of Hamas brutality. Though my pain and suffering was much less that theirs, I waited in fretful anticipation of, if not a reply, then at least for a ‘seen’ marking 277 on Facebook messenger or two blue ticks on WhatsApp. Meanwhile, I felt a sense of dread for Palestinian friends and colleagues, knowing full well the military response, when it came, would be shocking and brutal, robbing them of safety and tragically claiming loved ones and friends. Anger at the October attacks turned to fear and then more anger again as the Israeli offensive began. Here was jiu-jitsu politics, here was Begin’s ‘Glass House’ method at play as the media captured what was happening in Gaza. All of this then, offered an unwelcome modern mirror of my own research. A major military power unable to counter the actions of a relatively small opposing force of terrorists, forced to engage in a heavy-handed military operation dressed up as ‘counterterrorism,’ their actions drawing international opprobrium. A public left deeply concerned for their safety in the face of intelligence and military failures. A terrorist group aiming to disrupt their enemy’s (subjective) sense of ‘normality’ and wreak havoc using terrorism to advance, as they see it, their national cause. Of course, there are key differences – the Irgun always claimed never to target civilians for instance (though the victims of the King David Hotel bombing suggest otherwise) – but the clear parallels sadly remain. As historians of terrorism, we see the same methods used (and indeed, mistakes made) in Palestine in the 1940s repeated in Algeria, Ireland, and Yemen in the 20th century, in Iraq and Afghanistan in the early 21st, come full circle in the continued terror and violence between Israeli forces and Hamas. Despite what our leaders like to tell us, and the platitudes they repeat to reassure a spooked public, terrorism can indeed be used as a tool by some groups to achieve at least some of their aims and objectives. This has been the case for centuries and will likely be the case for many more centuries to come. Looking back at history, many groups have seen the Irgun and Lehi’s struggle against the British as a model of the successful utilization of terrorism to achieve political aims, just as the Irgun and Lehi looked back to Irish Nationalists, Anarchists, and ancient Jewish assassins. During the Troubles, members of the Irish Republican Army read 278 Begin’s The Revolt as a manual of anti-British terrorism.27 When American forces captured an Al-Qaeda training ground in Afghanistan in October 2001, they found a copy of the book in a library at the facility.28 The Mandate may be over, but the effects of Jewish terrorism rumble on, its afterlife continuing to evolve in new and surprising ways and its message just as vital today as it ever has been. 27 Telegraph Team, “John Bowyer Bell,” The Telegraph, 15th October 2003: John Bowyer Bell (telegraph.co.uk) (21st March 2024). 28 Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (New York: Knopf, 2006), pp. 303. 279 Appendix DSM-5 Diagnostic Criteria for PTSD: A. Exposure to actual or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violence in one (or more) of the following ways: 1. Directly experiencing the traumatic event(s). 2. Witnessing, in person, the event(s) as it occurred to others. 3. Learning that the traumatic event(s) occurred to a close family member or close friend. In cases of actual or threatened death of a family member or friend, the event(s) must have been violent or accidental. 4. Experiencing repeated or extreme exposure to aversive details of the traumatic event(s) (e.g., first responders collecting human remains; police officers repeatedly exposed to details of child abuse). Note: Criterion A4 does not apply to exposure through electronic media, television, movies, or pictures, unless this exposure is work related. B. Presence of one (or more) of the following intrusion symptoms associated with the traumatic event(s), beginning after the traumatic event(s) occurred: 1. Recurrent, involuntary, and intrusive distressing memories of the traumatic event(s). Note: In children older than 6 years, repetitive play may occur in which themes or aspects of the traumatic event(s) are expressed. 2. Recurrent distressing dreams in which the content and/or affect of the dream are related to the traumatic event(s). Note: In children, there may be frightening dreams without recognizable content. 3. Dissociative reactions (e.g., flashbacks) in which the individual feels or acts as if the traumatic event(s) were recurring. (Such reactions may occur on a continuum, with the most extreme expression being a complete loss of awareness of present surroundings.) Note: In children, trauma-specific re-enactment may occur in play. 4. Intense or prolonged psychological distress at exposure to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event(s). 5. Marked physiological reactions to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event(s). C. Persistent avoidance of stimuli associated with the traumatic event(s), beginning after the traumatic event(s) occurred, as evidenced by one or both of the following: 1. Avoidance of or efforts to avoid distressing memories, thoughts, or feelings about or closely associated with the traumatic event(s). 2. Avoidance of or efforts to avoid external reminders (people, places, conversations, activities, objects, situations) that arouse distressing memories, thoughts, or feelings about or closely associated with the traumatic event(s). D. Negative alterations in cognitions and mood associated with the traumatic event(s), beginning or worsening after the traumatic event(s) occurred, as evidenced by two (or more) of the following: 280 1. Inability to remember an important aspect of the traumatic event(s) (typically due to dissociative amnesia, and not to other factors such as head injury, alcohol, or drugs). 2. Persistent and exaggerated negative beliefs or expectations about oneself, others, or the world (e.g., “I am bad,” “No one can be trusted,” “The world is completely dangerous,” “My whole nervous system is permanently ruined”). 3. Persistent, distorted cognitions about the cause or consequences of the traumatic event(s) that lead the individual to blame himself/herself or others. 4. Persistent negative emotional state (e.g., fear, horror, anger, guilt, or shame). 5. Markedly diminished interest or participation in significant activities. 6. Feelings of detachment or estrangement from others. 7. Persistent inability to experience positive emotions (e.g., inability to experience happiness, satisfaction, or loving feelings). E. Marked alterations in arousal and reactivity associated with the traumatic event(s), beginning or worsening after the traumatic event(s) occurred, as evidenced by two (or more) of the following: 1. Irritable behaviour and angry outbursts (with little or no provocation), typically expressed as verbal or physical aggression toward people or objects. 2. Reckless or self-destructive behaviour. 3. Hypervigilance. 4. Exaggerated startle response. 5. Problems with concentration. 6. Sleep disturbance (e.g., difficulty falling or staying asleep or restless sleep). F. Duration of the disturbance (Criteria B, C, D and E) is more than 1 month. G. The disturbance causes clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning. H. The disturbance is not attributable to the physiological effects of a substance (e.g., medication, alcohol) or another medical condition. 281 Figure 1: A British jeep blown up by a mine on a pamphlet issued by the administration – an illustration that cannot have eased nerves. 282 Figure 2: Arab Palestinians watch smoke rising from the Haifa oil refinery, attacked by the Lehi in March 1947. 283 Figure 3: Smoke billows from a burning oil tank after the Lehi attack on Haifa oil refinery, March 1947. 284 Figure 4: A Herut cartoon from the post-’48 period showing Bevin and Ben Gurion lifting up King Abdullah. 285 Figure 5: The front cover of the souvenir programme for A Flag is Born. 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