Balfour Declaration Centenary

Lord Bew Excerpts

Wednesday 5th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bew (CB)]

My Lords, I first declare my interest as chairman of the Anglo-Israel Association. In Isaiah Berlin’s diaries, there is an interesting letter from Alistair Cooke, the famous journalist and author of “Letters from America”, on the subject of the Balfour Declaration. Cooke says to him, “You know, Balfour really wasn’t a very nice man. He had many illiberal views, particularly with respect to Ireland”. Berlin is for a moment troubled by this and replies somewhat nervously, “Yes, he wasn’t a particularly liberal man. Nor was my great hero, Churchill, who I dined with once and was shocked by some of his conversation. Churchill is still my hero”. Berlin says, “Like the leaders of the British Labour movement in 1917, I still support the Balfour Declaration and the idea that the Jewish people should have a home”.

I will pick up that theme about Ireland, just for one second. Both Churchill, whose work in 1922 supported the principles of the Balfour Declaration, and Balfour himself were educated in the decades of turmoil of Irish politics in this Parliament. They learned that when you have two nations and two religious identities in politics, you are—in the phrase of the great commentator of this period, WF Moneypenny—dealing with a clash of two great rights. That was not a clash between right and wrong, and nor is the clash between Jew and Arab. You can see Balfour struggling with this in the declaration, and Churchill struggling with it later, and not in a satisfactory way. Many people would say that what they did with respect to Ireland was not satisfactory, either.

However, there is one test here: the actual consequences. The consequence of the Balfour Declaration was the survival of hundreds of thousands of Jews who would otherwise have died in Europe. That is a crucial point and the absolute reason why we must celebrate the Balfour Declaration at this moment. It does not mean that the State of Israel’s policies are perfect. In many respects they are highly imperfect. Many Israelis make this same point. We should respond to the situation by celebrating the Balfour Declaration but work even harder for the two-state solution. I accept that that is not imminent but it is the only solution.