‘The Issue Is Almost Exclusively Palestine’: Palestine And British By-Elections

The main threat to Labour in the by-election came from the Liberal Party. Barnett Janner, a leading activist in the English Zionist Federation, was chosen as the Liberal candidate. His election address emphasised his longstanding commitment to Zionism and claimed that his party was ‘at the forefront of the fight’ against the White Paper, which he regarded as reneging on the British pledge made in the 1917 Balfour Declaration to create a Jewish National Home in Palestine.[2] When Liberal leader Lloyd-George strongly criticised  the government’s proposals in the House of Commons, one Labour MP accused him of having ‘one eye on the Mount of Olives and the other on a [Jewish] part of the East End of London where a by-election is about to take place.’[3]

In response to Janner, the Labour candidate James Hall issued a special leaflet which insisted that the Labour government was still committed to creating a Jewish National Home.[4] He also informed the party’s Labour-Zionist affiliate Poale Zion that if elected he would vote against his own government if it sought to implement the White Paper.[5] Satisfied by these reassurances, Poale Zion backed Hall’s campaign, a decision that was so controversial that when Poale Zion leaders addressed a meeting in support of Labour, police protection was required to ensure the rally could go ahead.[6]

Labour also faced a challenge from the far left. The Communist Party of Great Britain was resolutely anti-Zionist and viewed the events of August 1929 as a legitimate anti-colonial revolt. Harry Pollitt stood as the Communist candidate and his election address strongly criticised the Balfour Declaration, and when asked whether he believed in Palestine for the Jews, Pollitt replied that he believed in ‘the world for the workers’.[7]

In the end, Labour held the seat but had its majority significantly reduced, with Janner finishing a strong second. Pollitt’s respectable performance indicated some Jewish voters were prepared to support an explicitly anti-Zionist party; a reminder that minority communities are not monolithic. In February 1931, Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald essentially annulled the White Paper, although as Paul Kelemen points out, the Whitechapel and St Georges by-election was not the main factor in this decision.[8]

Nevertheless, this case does demonstrate how for almost a century, Palestine has at times had significant implications in a British electoral context. The way the issue has featured, however, has dramatically changed, in conjunction with the make-up of the British electorate. For the duration of the Mandate years (1920-1948), British voters were by and large not sympathetic to the Arab Palestinian nationalist cause.

But with the large-scale migration of South Asians, particularly Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Kashmiris, (along with broader shifts in public opinion) the Palestinians now have a supportive voting bloc in some parts of the UK. Indeed, the parliamentary constituency which now represents the area of Whitechapel has shifted from having a sizable Jewish population to becoming one of the largest British Muslim electorates.

Still, in these differing examples from different moments in history, we do see common threads: intra-party disputes; political leaders intervening in foreign policy driven primarily by domestic concerns; candidates challenging their own party leadership in order to secure elections; and the sudden electoral significance of otherwise disregarded minority communities—Jews in 1930 and Muslims today. More importantly, these instances serve as case studies that demonstrate how Britain’s past as a colonial power and its present status as an active player in the Middle East means that our understanding of the interplay between British political history and contemporary politics in Britain can never solely be confined to the local or national arena.