‘Keep Left for Israel’: Tribune, Zionism and the Middle East, 1937–1967

Abstract

This article provides the first detailed analysis of Tribune's approach to Zionism and the Arab-Israeli conflict from the year of the socialist weekly newspaper's establishment in 1937 through to the period of the 1967 ‘Six Day’ war. It analyses the nature of Tribune's enthusiasm for Zionism in this period, locating it within a contested pro-Israel tradition in the British Labour movement. The article argues that the debate inspired by Tribune's Middle Eastern coverage provides a valuable insight into the dilemmas faced by left-wing journalists and intellectuals bidding to shape Labour Party policy towards the Middle East, and casts fascinating light on the development of the anti-Zionist positions which became increasingly influential among left-wing activists later in the twentieth century.

Keywords:

• Tribune
• Zionism
• Israel
• Middle East
• Arab-Israel Dispute
• Labour Party
• Socialism
• Foreign Policy
• Journalism
• Left-WingPress

Notes

James R. Vaughan is the author of Unconquerable Minds: The Failure of American and British Propaganda in the Arab Middle East, 1945–1957 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). He is currently working on a history of British politics and the Arab–Israel conflict.

  [1] Mark Seddon, ‘Israel must be Sanctioned’, Tribune, 20 October 2000.

  [2] Labour History Archive and Study Centre, Manchester (LHASC), Tribune, 8 April 1955.

  [3] Julius, Trials of the Diaspora, 441.

  [4] Pimlott, Labour and the Left in the 1930s, 107.

  [5] Gorny, The British Labour, 12–24, 221–6.

  [6] Kelemen, ‘Zionism and the British Labour Party’.

  [7] Khalid Kishtainy, The New Statesman and the Middle East. See also, Hyams, The New Statesman; Smith, The New Statesman.

  [8] Baram, Disenchantment, 236.

  [9] Shindler, ‘Reading The Guardian’.

 [10] Shindler, Israel and the European Left.

 [11] Wistrich, From Ambivalence to Betrayal.

 [12] Edmonds, The Left and Israel; Shindler, Israel and the European Left.

 [13] Hill, Tribune 40; Edwards, Goodbye Fleet Street.

 [14] Weizmann, Trial and Error, 410–11; Gorny, The British Labour, 91–2.

 [15] Cited by Berl Locker in ‘Should Socialists Support Zionism’, Socialist Commentary, November 1947.

 [16] Jewish Chronicle, 25 April 1952. Cripps's thinking on Palestine, it should be noted, moved more in the direction of support for a bi-national state during the Second World War period.

 [17] Morgan, Labour People, 204.

 [18] Gorny, The British Labour, 205.

 [19] The National Archive, Kew (TNA), FO 371/111066/VR1052/2, Aneurin Bevan, ‘Arab versus Jew: The Way Out’, Daily Herald, 22 January 1954.

 [20] Jewish Chronicle, 3 March 2010.

 [21] Jones, Michael Foot, 33.

 [22] Kelemen, ‘Zionism and the British Labour Party’, 81.

 [23] Crossman and Foot, A Palestine Munich?.

 [24] Jones, Michael Foot, 33.

 [25] Mikardo, Back-Bencher, 174–5.

 [26] Jewish Chronicle, 29 March 1974.

 [27] Watkins, The Exceptional Conflict, 31. See also Mayhew, Time to Explain, 199; and Mayhew and Adams, Publish it Not, 29–30.

 [28] Crossman, Palestine Mission, 61.

 [29] Crossman, Palestine Mission, p. 62. Despite his close association with the ‘Keep Left’ group, Crossman rarely wrote for Tribune on the question of Zionism or Palestine and his most notable contributions on these subjects appeared in the pages of the New Statesman and the Sunday Pictorial.

 [30] The loss of Mayhew and other right-wingers was treated with ill-concealed disdain by Tribune in a September 1974 article headlined ‘Defectors: Who Cares?’.

 [31] British Library of Political and Economic Science, LSE (BLPES), Andrew Faulds papers, Faulds 3/2/2/7, ‘CAABU: The First 25 Years 1967–92’ (1992).

 [32] LHASC, Tribune, No. 622, 10 December 1948.

 [33] LHASC, Tribune, No. 682, 3 February 1950.

 [34] Marquand, The Progressive Dilemma, 122.

 [35] LHASC, Tribune, 8 January 1954.

 [36] LHASC, Tribune, No. 661, 9 September 1949.

 [37] LHASC, Tribune, 4 November 1955.

 [38] LHASC, Tribune, 4 November 1955.

 [39] LHASC, Tribune, 14 October 1955.

 [40] LHASC, Tribune, No. 459, 12 October 1945.

 [41] Weizmann, Trial and Error, 535.

 [42] LHASC, Tribune, No. 501, 2 August 1946.

 [43] LHASC, Tribune, No. 504, 23 August 1946.

 [44] LHASC, Tribune, No. 537, 25 April 1947.

 [45] LHASC, Tribune, No. 509, 27 September 1946.

 [46] LHASC, Tribune, No. 530, 7 March 1947.

 [47] LHASC, Tribune, No. 552, 8 August 1947.

 [48] LHASC, Tribune, No. 593, 21 May 1948.

 [49] LHASC, Tribune, No. 626, 7 January 1949.

 [50] LHASC, Tribune, 14 November 1952.

 [51] LHASC, Tribune, 8 April 1955.

 [52] LHASC, Tribune, 7 October 1955.

 [53] LHASC, Tribune, 9 December 1955.

 [54] LHASC, Tribune, 3 August 1956.

 [55] LHASC, Tribune, 10 August 1956.

 [56] LHASC, International Department, LP/ID/Suez/02, Suez Crisis: Foreign Opinion, Poale Zion press release, 2 November 1956.

 [57] LHASC, Tribune, 2 November 1956.

 [58] LHASC, Tribune, 14 December 1956.

 [59] LHASC, Tribune, 21 December 1956.

 [60] The best account can be found in Epstein, British Politics in the Suez Crisis, 173–98.

 [61] Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem (CZA), Z6, Nahum Goldmann's Offices in New York and Geneva, 1936–82, Z6/1600, L. Bakstansky to Moshe Kol, 21 November 1956.

 [62] TNA, FO 371/121706/VR1052/39, Nicholls to Rose, 18 December 1956.

 [63] TNA, FO 371/142305/VR1052/28, Chancery, Tel Aviv, to Levant Department, 16 October 1959. Moshe Sharett's analysis of Labour's position in British domestic politics was more positive, arguing that in the face of future problems ‘Conservatism will lack vision, audacity and will-power’ and that ‘Labour's turn will then come to effect a bold leap into the future’ (CZA, A245, Moshe Sharett Papers, A245/16/7, Statement by Moshe Sharett on the results of the General Election in Britain, 10 October 1959).

 [64] Vickers, The Labour Party, 17.

 [65] LHASC, Tribune, 1 February 1957.

 [66] LHASC, Labour Party International Department, uncatalogued material, Box 70, LPID Middle East 1957, Press release issued by the Labour Party Press and Publicity Department, 15 February 1957.

 [67] BLPES, Hugh Dalton papers, Dalton 9/28, Speech by Hugh Dalton at Woburn House, 4 February 1957.

 [68] TNA, FO 371/121706/VR1052/39, Nicholls to Rose, 18 December 1956.

 [69] LHASC, International Department, LP/ID/Suez/01-07, ‘Suez Crisis: Labour's Fight for Peace’, 30 September 1956.

 [70] LHASC, Tribune, No. 33, 13 August 1937.

 [71] LHASC, Tribune, No. 41, 8 October 1937.

 [72] LHASC, Tribune, No. 494, 14 June 1946.

 [73] LHASC, Tribune, No. 494, 14 June 1946.

 [74] LHASC, Tribune, No. 596, Friday 11 June 1948.

 [75] LHASC, Tribune, No. 626, 7 January 1949.

 [76] LHASC, Tribune, 25 November 1955.

 [77] LHASC, Tribune, 16 November 1956.

 [78] LHASC, Tribune, 15 February 1957.

 [79] Shindler, Israel and the European Left, 213.

 [80] Baram, Disenchantment, 96.

 [81] LHASC, Labour Party International Department, Uncatalogued Material, Box 70, Folder: LPID Middle East Delegation, June/July 1963, Report by Denis Healey, ‘Visit of Labour Party Delegation to the Middle East, 27th June to 11th July 1963’, 23 July 1963; LHASC, Labour Party International Department, Uncatalogued Material, Box 70, Folder: LPID Middle East Correspondence 1958–59, Anthony Wedgewood Benn to John Clark (Administrative Officer, International Department, 4 November 1957.

 [82] LHASC, Tribune, 31 May 1957.

 [83] LHASC, Tribune, 31 May 1957.

 [84] LHASC, Tribune, 2 June 1957.

 [85] LHASC, Labour Party International Department, Uncatalogued Material, Box 70, LPID Middle East Correspondence 1960–1963, David Ennals to Harold Wilson, 23 April 1963.

 [86] LHASC, Tribune, 25 July 1958.

 [87] Segev, 1967. Israel; Oren, Six Days of War; Bowen, Six Days.

 [88] Edmunds, ‘The Evolution of British Labour Party’, 30.

 [89] Among the earliest examples I have found of high-profile Labour Party spokesmen deploying the South Africa analogy came in an article by Christopher Mayhew in the June 1971 edition of Venture, the magazine of the Fabian Society (Liddell Hart Archive, King's College London (LHA), Mayhew Papers, Mayhew 9/5/1, Christopher Mayhew, ‘Israel, Arabs and the Labour Party’, Venture, June 1971).

 [90] LHASC, Tribune, 9 April 1965.

 [91] LHASC, Tribune, 2 June 1967.

 [92] LHASC, Labour Party International Department, uncatalogued material, Box 71, LPID Middle East 1967 Six-Day War, Socialist International circular No. 36/67, 9 June 1967.

 [93] LHASC, Tribune, 9 June 1967.

 [94] LHASC, Tribune, 9 June 1967.

 [95] LHASC, Tribune, 16 June 1967.

 [96] LHASC, Tribune, 9 June 1967.

 [97] LHASC, Tribune, 30 June 1967.

 [98] LHASC, Tribune, 23 June 1967.

 [99] LHASC, Tribune, 21 July 1967.

[100] LHASC, Tribune, 4 August 1967.

[101] LHA, Mayhew 9/1, Christopher Mayhew to Immanuel Jakobovits, 15 December 1967.

[102] BLPES, Andrew Faulds papers, Faulds 1/25, Wilson to Faulds, 10 December 1973. More recently, in December 2011, the British press covered the case of a Labour MP reported to have expressed opposition to the Foreign Office's appointment of a Jewish Ambassador to Israel on the grounds that the individual in question had ‘divided loyalties’ (Jewish Chronicle, 2 December 2011).

[103] Jewish Chronicle, 25 June 1976.

[104] Wheatcroft, The Controversy of Zion, 304.

[105] LHASC, Tribune, 25 April 1958.

[106] For more detailed analysis of such questions, see: Shindler, Israel and the European Left, Ch. 15. ‘The Changing Face of the British Left’, pp. 243–58; Edmunds, ‘The Evolution of British Labour Party’; Edmunds, ‘The British Labour Party’, 111–18.

[107] Gordon, Conflict and Consensus, 13–43.

[108] See, for example: Callaghan, The Labour Party; Cole, Labour's Foreign Policy; Gordon, Conflict and Consensus; Miller, Socialism and Foreign Policy; Phythian, The Labour Party; Vickers, The Labour Party; Vickers, The Labour Party.

[109] Shindler, Israel and the European Left, 243–256; Cesarani, ‘Anti-Zionism in Britain’, 115–44; Julius, Trials of the Diaspora, 447–74; Wistrich, From Ambivalence to Betrayal, 535–62.

[110] Morgan, Labour People, 204.

[111] LHASC, Labour Herald, 30 July 1982.

[112] Cesarani, The Left and the Jews, 80.

[113] Crossman, Palestine Mission, 209.

[114] LHASC, Michael Foot Papers, MF/T2, Folder: Tribune Correspondence N-P, George Orwell, ‘In Defence of Comrade Zilliacus’, undated [c. 1947].

[115] Shindler, Israel and the European Left, 275.

[116] Vickers, The Labour Party, 23.

[117] LHASC, Tribune, No. 623, 17 December 1948.