The secret of the 1917 ‘Balfour declaration’

The British government was by no means the innocent victim of nefarious Zionist influence in offering them their ‘promised land’ in Palestine. The way this story is now told plays on the myth of an all-powerful secret Jewish conspiracy behind the scenes. Well, there was a ‘conspiracy’ of sorts but it was not a Jewish one, and the ringleaders were British.

It is important to emphasise the nature of this commitment to the Zionist cause on the part of the British Establishment during the First World War, because it was part of a specific imperialist policy masterminded by one specific – and secretive – group of imperialists organised around the figure of Lord Alfred Milner and his ‘association of helpers’.

For it was not Balfour (the Foreign Secretary) who wrote this notorious declaration. He simply signed a draft written by Lord Milner and his lieutenant Leo Amery (October 4 1917) with minor modifications (e.g. replacing ‘Jewish race’ by ‘Jewish people’).

At the end of 1916, Herbert Samuel had sent a memo to Milner arguing the case for a Jewish national home in Palestine on strategic grounds. (In addressing himself to Milner, Samuel clearly knew who was pulling the strings in British imperial policy at the time).

In March 1917, Milner’s semi-secret ‘Round Table’ organisation held a ‘moot’ (or congress) to discuss Zionism, and in the June issue of their journal expressed public support for the project. By the summer, Milner avowed himself ‘a convinced supporter of Zionism’. During July, negotiations between the Zionists and the Foreign Office proceeded, and Balfour was won over in principle.

Throughout the summer and autumn, however, Edwin Montagu, the only Jew in the Cabinet, made increasingly desperate attempts to block this dangerous – as he believed it – commitment to Zionism, on the grounds that it could only exacerbate anti- Semitism by identifying the Jews as essentially ‘foreign’ – not fully British. His memo of August 23 (‘The Anti-Semitism of the Present Government’) is an eloquent and tragic appeal, whose forebodings have been subsequently confirmed.

After trying to convince Robert Cecil (Acting Secretary for Foreign Affairs, and himself a member of the Round Table) on September 14, he finally wrote a memo on Zionism itself, pointing out the narrow basis of its support in Britain: Lord Rothschild and Samuel being its main backers. Montagu listed virtually every Jew prominent in British public life – some 46 individuals (including members of Rothschild’s and Samuel’s own families) as opponents of the whole doctrine. This was on October 9, when the Zionist case was up for decision in the Cabinet.

Milner instructed Amery to draw up a ‘moderate’ draft. It is this that was the basis for the ‘Balfour Declaration’. Balfour presented the case to the Cabinet; he gave the main reasons (not including the original strategic ones): in the ensuing debate, Milner, Lloyd George, Smuts, and Barnes were all in favour. Bonar Law (bourgeois Conservative) was neutral and Curzon (aristocratic Conservative) was the only one to oppose it. The decision to publish was on October 31. After this debate, Balfour communicated the outcome to Lord Rothschild for handing to the Zionist Federation on November 2 (the text, as we now have it, is in fact this letter).

What was this commitment all about? Amery’s Diaries (Vol. 1, 1896-1929) make the underlying rationale quite explicit and give an insight into the longer-term thinking of the Milner group regarding Palestine:

‘Our ultimate end’ he writes in 1928, ‘is clearly to make Palestine the centre of a western influence, using the Jews as we have used the Scots, to carry the English ideal through the Middle East and not merely to make an artificial oriental Hebrew enclave in an oriental country.’ (p. 559)

He emphasised that ‘we meant Palestine in some way or other to remain within the framework of the British Empire.’ (ibid.)

Just because a policy fails disastrously, as this one did, does not entitle its instigators to wash their hands of responsibility for its consequences. The Zionists eventually got what they really wanted – a sovereign Jewish State – (after a holocaust of six million during the next war) but they had never made any secret about their aims. Their British promoters, however, have never really come clean about it all. They have melted away – and disappeared even from the history books: who today has even heard of Milner? Blaming a mysterious ‘Zionist influence’ as the crucial factor is a dangerous evasion.

Addendum

The recent remarkable discovery by W. D. Rubinstein that Leo Amery was in fact a ‘secret Jew’ casts these events in a new light.(1) Rubinstein’s revelation that Amery falsified his family background and ancestry cannot fail to elicit a rewriting of the entire story of Britain’s dealings with the Zionists. Furthermore, Amery’s principled support for the Zionist cause in Palestine tends in the same direction. One fears, however, that this important new information could lend substance to the ‘Jewish conspiracy’ theory. Without wishing to minimise the importance of Rubinstein’s new information, I think it important to recall Amery’s pronouncement about the long-term role envisaged for the Jewish state. This belief was perfectly sincere and expresses the profoundly held imperialist doctrine that animated Amery’s whole political career. Moreover, Rubinstein draws attention to the fact that Amery’s papers remain closed to researchers. This is not, I suggest, to protect the ‘secret’ of Amery’s ethnicity but to keep the inner story of Milner’s organisation (and thus the true arcana imperii of the British state) closed to historical inquiry.

A reader’s guide to the Balfour Declaration

Because anything pertaining to the state of Israel is so obviously controversial, there is a huge body of literature, just on the Balfour Declaration alone. What follows (Section 2) deals mainly with the British imperialist conspiracy. Much disinformation still persists, such as Lloyd George’s story that it was a reward to Weizmann for his acetone production process as a contribution to the war effort. This is baloney. Lloyd George, like the rest of his War Cabinet, was already a committed Zionist. The exception was Lord Curzon, the only one with genuine knowledge of the Middle East, who in a detailed memo of October 26 1917, made the most prescient critique. See David Gilmour ‘The Unregarded Prophet: Lord Curzon and the Palestine Question’, Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 25, No. 3 (Spring, 1996), pp. 60-68. Lloyd George, incidentally, was not only a Zionist, but also, despite his early opposition to the Boer War, (as many people today fail to appreciate) an imperialist.

Edwin Montagu’s desperate plea against the Zionist case is in Arab League Office (no date) Edwin Montagu and the Balfour Declaration. Nowadays Montagu’s arguments are routinely slandered by Zionist historians.

There is a brief survey of the long Western tradition of support for a ‘national home’ (outside Europe) for the Jews in: Regina Sharif, Non-Jewish Zionism, (London, Zed Press, 1983), esp. Ch 5.

1: On the Zionist conspiracy

This subject has attracted the attention of a great number of obsessively anti-Semitic writers, who have served mainly to spread confusion and muddy the waters. The vast majority of such texts are without any historical value, and merely repeat one another’s dubious assertions. For those willing to search for nuggets in this dunghill, however, I should mention one piece by Robert John, ‘Behind the Balfour Declaration’ in the Journal of Historical Review, Vol. 6, No. 4 (Winter 1985-6) that does illuminate the background.

But the only genuinely interesting specimen of this (ostensibly anti-Semitic) literature that I have found is Douglas Reed, The Controversy of Zion, (Sudbury, Bloomfield Books, 1978) [originally written in 1956]. This is a quite remarkable book (and hard to find). Despite his patently foolish credulity in being taken in by the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and his refusal to acknowledge the scale of the Nazi project to exterminate the Jews, the author does offer some unique and well-researched findings on the penetration of Zionist influence in London and Washington, especially during the First World War. An ‘impartial’ (or ‘balanced’) reading of this text may seem well-nigh impossible these days, but I would personally consider it essential for anyone who is seriously concerned to disentangle historical facts from the miasma of authorial prejudices in which they are buried.

Chaim Weizmann, Trial and Error: Autobiography, (London, Hamish Hamilton, 1949)

Barnet Litvinoff, Weizmann: Last of the Patriarchs, (London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1976)

What these orthodox Zionist versions of the story exhibit is their sheer incomprehension of the possibility of non-Zionist perspectives. Their contempt for oppositional views amongst Jews is as striking as their refusal to understand alternative (non-Judeocentric) views of history. This same kind of ideological single-mindedness was once redolent of ‘Marxists’ in the Leninist tradition; it is now recognisable as a hallmark of the essentially American world-view of Zionism today. Contemporary Israeli scholars display far less of this knee-jerk American-style hysteria, e.g. Zeev Sternhall, The Founding Myths of Israel, (Princeton University, 1998).

Norman Rose, Chaim Weizmann: A Biography, (N.Y., Viking, 1985)

This is more balanced, and is consistent with my own view that, as far as the Balfour Declaration is concerned, the British Imperialists made use of Weizmann for their own purposes, rather than the other way round.

While Nazi (and now Islamist) fantasies (of a ‘Jewish’ plot to rule the world) are ludicrous, it has to be acknowledged that there really was a Zionist conspiracy (to create a Jewish state in Palestine); there is really no other word for it, but those with delicate sensibilities might prefer to call it a ‘project, ‘scheme’ or ‘plan’. The only organised and principled resistance it encountered came in fact from among Jews themselves; anti-Semites by and large supported it.

To put this in perspective, it is important to remember that there were several different conspiracies at work in many countries during this period; the Nazi movement too was essentially conspiratorial – deriving from the virulent Judeophobia spawned in Russia during the 1890s (the Protocols themselves had been concocted under the auspices of the Okhrana to fuel this conspiracy mania). Even the Poles had a longstanding underground conspiracy (centred on Pilsudski’s so-called Prometheist project of fomenting nationalist revolts within the Russian Empire), and, of course, there were Czech and Irish conspiracies (around Masaryk and Casement respectively). It is the British conspiracy that is the one nobody talks about.

The Zionist project always depended upon anti-Semitism, and was not above stooping to aiding and abetting it, even to the extent of (at least on occasion during the 1930s) colluding with Nazism. As we know to this day, criticism of any aspect of Zionism incurs wrathful accusations of ‘Anti-Semitism’, and this is a source of continual unease. See Jeffrey Herf, ed. ‘Convergence and Divergence: Anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism in Historical Perspective’, Special Issue of The Journal of Israeli History, Vol. 25, No. 1 (March 2006)

2: On the British Imperial project

Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American establishment: from Rhodes to Cliveden (London, Bloomfield Books, 1981) [written around 1949]

This was the starting point for my own researches. Having at first tried scrupulously to falsify it, I have in fact fleshed it out with additional evidence. Anyone interested in understanding how the UK state descended into its present abject submission to the USA, simply has to study Quigley.

It seems that the whole story of Cecil Rhodes’ ‘secret society’ (its recruitment of ‘successor generations’ through the Rhodes Scholarships), its subsequent trajectory under Alfred Milner, and its continuation by his ‘kindergarten’, the so-called Round Table network, and the Royal Institute for International Affairs (Chatham House), has now become common knowledge among scholars everywhere in the world except Britain, where the entire business is still treated with a deafening official silence by the academic ‘establishment’. This is the proverbial elephant in the room.

The role of the Rhodes/Milner project has, of course, always been more or less tacitly acknowledged by historians of the Empire/Commonwealth, and in recent years these protagonists of imperial federation have even been openly acclaimed as precursors of European federalism. See, for example, Priscilla Roberts, ‘Lord Lothian and the Atlantic World’, The Historian Vol. 66 No. 1 (2004), 97–127, and Deborah Lavin’s From Empire to International Commonwealth: A Biography of Lionel Curtis (Oxford University Press, 1995)

The main primary source for Milner’s activities in South Africa is Cecil Headlam, ed. The Milner papers, 2 vols. (1931–3). These are held in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, but as Gollin (1964) points out: ‘Anyone familiar with the Milner Papers knows that the collection is far from complete and that many of Milner’s letters are no longer preserved in it.’ He follows this with a reference to that ‘source’ all-toofamiliar to anyone who tries to enquire into this domain: ‘private information given to the present writer by a number of different persons who were in a position to know.’ (p. 551). This is the veritable signature tune of the British establishment.

A. M. Gollin, Proconsul in Politics: A Study of Lord Milner in Opposition and in Power, (London, Anthony Blond, 1964).

What strikes the outsider most about the standard sources on the members of this imperialist elite is how their authors belong to the same magic circle as their subjects. They all seem to write one another’s biographies and to control the official histories.

Terence O’Brien, Milner, (London, Constable, 1979)

There is something vaguely nauseating in this reappearance of the hagiographic tone in the writing of Milner’s life. There are, however, some details about Milner’s secret activities that are inadvertently revealed amongst the personal trivia. But this is an object lesson on how not to write such a biography: he cannot see the wood for the trees, and gets most of the trees wrong. This is nowhere near as good as:

John Marlowe [Jack Collard] Milner: Apostle of Empire, (London, Hamish Hamilton, 1976)

Rarely mentioned in other surveys, this is one of the best sources for what Milner was up to throughout his life.

Thomas Pakenham The Boer War, (New York, Random House, 1979).

This book disclosed for the first time conclusive evidence of Milner’s collusion with the gold mining corporations during the Boer War to ensure adequate ‘supplies of native labour’ for the mines. This collusion had long been suspected, but had been systematically denied by the entire academic establishment that controlled British Imperial historiography.

The basic literature on Milner’s ‘Kindergarten’ is as follows:

• John Kendle, The Round Table Movement and Imperial Union, (Toronto University, 1975)
• W. Nimocks, Milner’s young men: the Kindergarten in Edwardian imperial affairs, (Duke University, 1968)
• Deborah Lavin, From empire to international commonwealth: a biography of Lionel Curtis, (Oxford University Press, 1995)
• John Evelyn Wrench, Geoffrey Dawson and our times, (London, Hutchinson, 1955)
• Janitor [J. G. Lockhart & M. Lyttelton] The feet of the young men: some candid comments on the rising generation, 2nd edition (1929)
• H. Wyndham, ‘The formation of the Union, 1910–60, South Africa, Rhodesia and the Protectorates’, in A. P. Newton & E. A. Benians eds., With Milner in South Africa (1936), vol. 8 of the Cambridge history of the British Empire (1929-59), 613-40, 34-8
• J. Conway, The Round Table: a study in liberal imperialism, PhD diss., Harvard University, 1951
• J. R. M. Butler, Lord Lothian (London: Macmillan, 1960)
• L. M. Thompson, The Unification of South Africa, 1902-1910 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1960)
• D. C. Ellinwood, Lord Milner’s ‘Kindergarten’, the British Round Table Group, and the movement for imperial reform, 1910-1918, PhD diss., Washington University, 1962
• W. Nimocks, ‘The Kindergarten and the origins of the Round Table movement’, South Atlantic Quarterly, 58 (1964), 507-20
• G. H. L. Le May, British supremacy in South Africa, 1899-1907 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1965)
• S. Marks and S. Trapido ‘Lord Milner and the South African state’, History Workshop Journal, 8 (1979), 50-80
• Lionel Curtis, With Milner in South Africa (Oxford: Blackwell, 1951)
• H. Hodson, ‘The Round Table, 1910-81’, Round Table, 284 (1981), 308-33
• H. Hodson, ‘Looking back: the founders’, Round Table, 315 (1990), 254-6
• D. A. Low, ‘Whatever happened to Milner’s young men: what of their successors?’ Round Table, 315 (1990), 257-67
• R. Symonds, ‘The Round Table and their friends, Oxford and empire: the last lost cause’, Round Table, (1991), 62-79
• A. C. May, The Round Table, 1910-1966, D.Phil diss., Oxford University, 1995
• I. R. Smith, ‘Milner, the Kindergarten, and South Africa’, The Round Table, the Empire/Commonwealth, and British foreign policy, ed. A. Bosco and A. May (London: Lothian Foundation Press, 1997), 35-53
• S. Dubow, ‘Colonial nationalism, the Milner Kindergarten and the rise of “South Africanism” ’, History Workshop Journal, 43 (1997), 53-85

The Lloyd George Coup, December 1916

Lloyd George became Prime Minister in 1916, but he was put in office by the Milner Group, as is obvious to anyone (except, of course, those who won’t acknowledge the existence of such a group). He may have been a Great War Leader, but his power was given to him by others, and it was taken away again in 1922. The story of the plot to oust Asquith has been told many times, and it is amazing the circumlocutory lengths British historians will go to in order to obfuscate the identity of the plotters and the nature of the resulting regime. This feat of mystification would be like pooh-poohing the role of the ‘so-called Bolshevik Party’ in November 1917. Milner’s group was just as organised as Lenin’s, albeit within a different class, and accordingly had to be kept secret (at least as far as the mass of the British people were concerned).

J. E. Wrench (Geoffrey Dawson and our times, London, Hutchinson, 1955) tells the story (for those with eyes to see), and there are further clues in: P. A. Lockwood, ‘Milner’s Entry into the War Cabinet’, The Historical Journal 1964, and in just about every political biography of the period.

Not only was Milner in charge of running the country during the war (controlling food supplies, allocating manpower, economic planning, undermining the labour movement, etc.), but his acolytes surrounded Lloyd George, both in the Secretariat of the War Cabinet and in the PM’s private office (the so-called ‘Garden Suburb’), where Ormsby-Gore, Lothian, Amery & co. were ensconced.

What makes the Kindergarten so important was their astonishing ascendancy to positions of power and influence over British foreign policy in the years before the Second World War. Around 1937, this strange phenomenon was called the ‘Cliveden Set’ – after Astor’s country house, where the Round Table and its hangers-on had their ‘moots’.

Norman Rose, The Cliveden Set: Portrait of an Exclusive Fraternity, (London: Jonathan Cape, 2000)

After the Second World War in Britain, the shameful memory of ‘appeasement’ engendered a brief (and rare) episode of interrogation in Britain of how the country was governed and by whom. The vacuous and mystifying concept of ‘the Establishment’ was coined, and whilst some people clearly knew who was being referred to, the rest of the population were fed the usual vague clichés about ‘aristocratic’ hegemony, public schools, old boy networks and gentlemen’s clubs. The question of how a specific group of self-appointed ‘leaders’ were able to bring the country to the brink of catastrophe was dissolved.

A. L. Rowse, All Souls and Appeasement, (London: Macmillan 1961)

This was an insider’s account of the dramatis personae, frank but excessively respectful of the decency of their motives.

Margaret George, The Hollow Men, (London: Leslie Frewin, 1965)

Was a more detached but damning indictment, and she names the guilty names.

But by this time, the Profumo scandal (not coincidentally at Cliveden) and Wilson’s Labour election victory in 1963 had displaced concern with raking over the past. ‘Appeasement’ became just another topic of debate among historians, and the central question of who was actually making foreign policy in Britain was lost sight of. From the 1950s onwards, distraction was provided with the revelations of a rival group of traitors (from Oxford’s rival university) namely the ‘Cambridge Spies’, which led the hounds on the hunt for fourth and fifth men working for Moscow, and away from those now working, in effect, for Washington. By 1979, Andrew Boyle’s The Climate of Treason presented Thatcher with a gift by blowing Anthony Blunt’s cover, and heaping further obloquy on Keynes’ former alma mater.

When the ‘Empire’ was finally wound up in the sixties, the UK had effectively ceased to have any independent foreign policy. The delusion of imperial grandeur that had inspired the ruling elite for half a century culminated in a state of virtually psychotic denial. They imagined that they could still play a leading role in the world (sitting at the ‘Big Table’) by insinuating themselves up the arse of the White House,(2) oblivious to the shameful spectacle this made of the country in the eyes of the rest of the world. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Notes

1. Historical Research, Vol. 73, no. 181 (June 2000).
2. Blair’s ambassador to the US says he was instructed by Jonathan Powell, Blair’s Chief of Staff, to ‘to get up the arse of the White House and stay there.’