As
a chancellor for the duchy of Lancaster in 1909-10 and 1915-16 (for the
latter preceded by Winston Churchill), Herbert Samuel (1870-1963)
was one of the first Jewish members of the British cabinet. He put forward the
idea of establishing a British Protectorate over Palestine in 1915 and his
ideas influenced the Balfour Declaration and is arguably most renowned
for being the first British high commissioner for Palestine
(1920–25), when he greatly improved the economy of the region (and therefore
supporting increasing harmony among the religious communities).
Early career
While
at Oxford (Balliol College), Samuel took an active part in
university Liberal activity and joined George Bernard Shaw and others at
weekends on the Oxfordshire countryside to unionize agricultural labourers. During
the 1890s Samuel developed the radical Liberal outlook to which he clung for
the rest of his life. Greatly influenced by the progressive social ideas of Graham
Wallas and Sidney and Beatrice Webb, he wrote some Fabian pamphlets
and joined J. Ramsay MacDonald, J. A. Hobson, Charles Trevelyan
(his closest friend), and others in a radical discussion group, the Rainbow Circle. This sought to define
a ‘new Liberalism’ (the title of a paper read by Samuel to the circle in
November 1895) with a reformist and interventionist social agenda. In 1902,
Samuel produced a comprehensive formulation of his political philosophy, Liberalism: its Principles and Proposals,
in which he provided an intellectual foundation for many of the social reforms
subsequently enacted by the Liberal governments after 1905.
Samuel
had been a social worker in the slums of Whitechapel before he was elected
to the House of Commons as a Liberal in 1902. A moderate supporter of the South
African War, Samuel had visited Uganda in 1902 and developed a special
expertise in African affairs. As a back-bencher over the next three years he
attacked the inhuman regime of Leopold of the Belgians in the Congo,
endorsing the charges of the former British consul there, Roger Casement,
whom he called (to his later embarrassment) ‘a gentleman of the highest
standing and reliability’ (Wasserstein, 1992:73). As Under-Secretary to the
Home Office (1905–09), Samuel was responsible for legislation that established
juvenile courts and the “Borstal” system of detention and
training for youthful offenders.
Twice
Postmaster General (1910–14, 1915–16), he recognized the postal trade unions
and nationalized the telephone services. As Postmaster-General, the
responsible minister, he was mired in the Marconi scandal of 1912-13 (Hilaire
Belloc and G. K. Chesterton accused Samuel, David Lloyd George and Rufus
Isaacs of corruption). Other unfounded accusations, with an anti-Semitic
edge, were also made at this time against Samuel and his cousin, Edwin
Montagu (q.v.), a junior minister at the India Office. In January 1916,
Samuel became Home Secretary in Herbert H. Asquith’s coalition ministry. In the political crisis of December 1916 Samuel was
a consistent supporter of Asquith—and paid the price in self-exclusion from
office under Lloyd George. At the general election of 1918, he was opposed for
the first time by a Labour candidate and as a result lost his seat to a
coalition Unionist.
President of the Local
Government Board
In
February 1914, Samuel was moved to the presidency of the Local Government
Board, a post that afforded little room for legislative radicalism. In the
crisis of July 1914 he was a moderate member of the war party in cabinet and in
this capacity devised the formula on 2 August that became the basis for British
entry to the European war two days later. At the Local Government Board, his
ambitious plans for slum clearance and urban planning, announced in a speech
delivered in Sheffield in May 1914, were frustrated by the outbreak of war (on the peace wing of the party, he nevertheless supported the
war when Germany infringed Belgian neutrality). He did, however, launch
a major expansion of maternity and child welfare centers. His social radicalism
did not extend to women’s suffrage, on which he took a cautious line, although
it was on Samuel's motion that women were given the right to stand for election
to Parliament in 1918.
As
president of the Local Government Board (1914-1915), Samuel was
responsible for overseeing the reception of Belgian refugees and the centrally
organized distress relief efforts that came with the influx in Britain of over
a quarter of million of Belgians. The presidency of the Local Government Board
(LGB), which had taken over supervisory functions from the Board of Trade and
the Home Office, was a ministerial post, often a Cabinet position. The post was
abolished in 1919, with most duties transferred to the Minister of Health.
The
Local Government Board consisted of 11 members. Presided by Samuel, other
members were
-
Augustin Birrell, the Liberal MP who had been the president of the Board of Education
(1905-07, he was succeeded by Reginal McKenna MP) and who was Chief Secretary
for Ireland at that time. Birrell had succeeded James Bryce, notorious
for the Bryce report on German atrocities in Belgium (the ‘weapons of mass destruction’
avant-la-lettre), in that position.
-
Thomas McKinnon Wood, the Liberal MP who was Secretary for Scotland at that time (1912-1916). Prior to
that position, McKinnon Wood was the Financial Secretary of the Treasury. There
he was succeeded by C.F.G. Masterman.
-
Charles Frederick Gurney Masterman – who associated chiefly with members of the
liberal and progressive school of thought while at Cambridge, including
Trevelyan, Samuel’s best friend – was a Liberal MP who lost his seat in 1914. When
the First World War began, he served as head of the British War Propaganda
Bureau (WPB), set up at Wellington House, London. The sole aim of the WPB was to
provide support for Britain through the manipulation of
information about the Central Powers. In this role, he recruited writers (such
as John Buchan, H. G. Wells and Arthur Conan Doyle) and painters
(e.g., Francis Dodd, Paul Nash) to support the war effort. Drawing on an
extensive network of the most important and influential figures in the London arts scene, Masterman devised the
most comprehensive arts patronage schemes ever to be supported in the country. By
June 1915 more than 2 million books and other publications in seventeen
languages had been published, almost entirely without the readers' knowledge
that these were sponsored by the British government. Eventually subsumed into
John Buchan’s Department of Information, and in 1918, Lord Beaverbrook’s
even grander Ministry of Information, it became a template for the war art
scheme in the Second World War. Masterman also played a crucial role in
publicising reports of the Armenian Genocide (Lord Bryce again). For his role
in this, Masterman has been the target of repeated Turkish allegations that he
fabricated, or at least embellished, the events for propaganda purposes.
-
Walter H. Long
was a Conservative MP. He succeeded Herbert Samuel as president of the LGB in
1915 and was succeeded himself in 1916 by William Hayes Fisher, a former
secretary to Arthur Balfour another Conservative MP. In 1916, Walter
Long on his turn succeeded Andrew Bonar Law as the Secretary of State
for the Colonies. In 1919 Long became First Lord of the Admiralty.
-
Ramsay McDonald, the first ever Labour Prime Minister of Britain, was an MP for Leicester at that time and Treasurer of the
Labour Party. Sidney Webb, a member of the first Labour government in 1924, sat
on one of the subcommittees of the LGB.
-
Wedgwood Benn
was a Liberal MP (he became Labour later on) who soon after the war started
left the LGB and served with the Royal Naval Air Service.
The Belgian refugees
From
1902 until 1961, Hansard recorded 10734 contributions by Herbert Samuel. His
first contribution recorded since the First World War had started concerned
relief of distress (28 August 1914), mainly for British people out of
work because of the circumstances. The first speech of the president of the
Local Government Board on Belgian refugees concerned a note on 31 August about
the health of the Belgians arriving in Folkestone, at that time in small
numbers still. Samuel was also instrumental in streamlining the funding for
charities and how these initiatives related to the Prince of Wales Fund and the
Local Government Board (September 1914)
On
14 September 1914 J.D. Rees MP asked Samuel “whether
an index can be made and kept up containing the names of the Belgian guests of
the nation in order that they may be the more easily traced by their
compatriots in this country?”. Herbert Samuel confirmed that a “record as
complete as practicable is being kept of all persons for whom accommodation is
provided”.
However much the war had been going on for six weeks already, the
measures in places for registering the Belgians became inadequate around the
time of Samuel’s statement in Parliament. The influx simply was too big to
comprise, the points of entry too numerous. The inaccuracies in registration
upon arrival must have been what was on Rees’s mind as he continued to ask
Samuel “if a careful scrutiny is made lest enemies might come in under the
guise of Belgians?”, to which Samuel confirmed, albeit briefly. (Hansard, 14
September 1914)
Further
intricacies of the reception of the Belgians burdened the president of the LGB
even more. Mr. Bathurst MP asked “whether male Belgian refugees are available
for employment, either permanently or during the period of the War, as
agricultural workers; whether they include any Protestants; and, if not,
whether Roman Catholics will accept employment in districts where the
services of a Roman Catholic priest are not available?”. Samuel’s answer perhaps
was another proof of not entirely reading the scale of the Belgian immigration
well: “The Government cannot anticipate that none of the Belgian refugees in
this country will obtain agricultural occupation, but, in view of the state of
the labour market in this country, they do not contemplate taking any steps,
unless the circumstances are exceptional, for providing them with employment. I
have not sufficient information to enable me to answer the latter part of the
question.” (Hansard, 17 September 1914)
After
the fall of Antwerp first and of Ostend a few days later (10 and 15 October
respectively), the Belgian refugees no longer came from what had become
occupied Belgium, but via the Netherlands and France. Through the LGB and the War
Refugees Committee hospitality was extended to those Belgians as well,
especially those in the Netherlands. Mr. Goulding MP asked “whether,
in view of the number of offers of hospitality at the disposal of the War
Refugees' Committee, the proper authorities would be prepared to give
facilities for bringing over to this country a further number of the destitute
Belgian refugees at present in Zeeland and Brabant, for whom adequate provision
cannot, in view of their numbers, be made?”, to which Samuel confirmed that
arrangements were being made. (Hansard 23 November 1914).
The
issue of able men among the destitute Belgian did not become a political
problem. Only in early February 1915 did Mr. Thorne MP asked “what the
Government are doing in regard to Belgian refugees of military age?”. Samuel
was rapid in shrugging off the issue which was increasingly causing
discontentment: “The question is not one for the Government, but for the
Belgian military authorities and the Belgian refugees themselves.” (Hansard 8
February 1915) Not soon thereafter, with the Shell Crisis, would the
Belgian able men in Britain be mobilized as labour forces in
the war effort, employed in munitions factories and related industries.
One
of the final contributions by Samuel recorded in Hansard (Samuel Long took over
as president of the LGB in the 1915 Cabinet reshuffle), Samuel was asked by Mr.
Hogge MP about “what progress is being made with further provision for
Belgian refugees; and what is the total number to date in this country?”.
Samuel provided a long and detailed answer:
" The
Registrar-General estimates that the number of Belgian Refugees (excluding
soldiers) now in this country is about 180,000. Of these it may be roughly
estimated that the number of employable men is about 29,000, of whom about 17,000
have already been placed in employment, and efforts are continually being made
to find occupation for the others. Of 17,000 employable women about 3,000 are
employed. Several thousands of refugees, not included in the figures of
employment, have enlisted in the Belgian Army. The number of refugees awaiting
hospitality has so far diminished as to allow of my being able to close the Alexandra Palace as a refuge and to arrange for the
transfer of the buildings to the War Office. About 2,400 refugees remain in
other refuges, and further offers of hospitality would be gladly received by
the War Refugees' Committee at Aldwych. (Hansard 29 April 1915)
Samuel also
acknowledged that at that time already a large number of Belgians were employed
in the armaments industry, something that would soon be overseen by Winston
Churchill as the newly appointed Minister of Munitions.
Post LGB career
When
the coalition government was formed in 1915, Herbert Samuel was temporarily
dropped from the cabinet, returning to his old job at the Post Office, but upon
Churchill's resignation in November he was restored to the cabinet and in
January 1916 became home secretary. Conditions of war, however, were held to
preclude the introduction of any reformist measures: the only notable innovation
was the introduction of daylight saving time and the related unification of
British and Irish time (until then Irish was twenty-five minutes earlier than
British).
As home secretary Samuel was obliged to deal with a number of
delicate civil liberties issues and made several decisions that posterity
judged illiberal. After the Easter rising in Dublin, he was briefly responsible for
Irish affairs and for the heavy-handed repression that followed. In England conscientious objectors were
maltreated, and Bertrand Russell and Fenner Brockway were
imprisoned for anti-war propaganda. Roger Casement was hanged after landing in Ireland from a German submarine—Samuel
declined to recommend mercy for his former ally in the Congo agitation. Other former allies such
as Graham Wallas bitterly criticized what they considered Samuel's betrayal of
his earlier principles.
Before
Samuel moved to Palestine, he had been Special
Commissioner for Belgium for a few
months in 1920. After
his time in Palestine, Herbert Samuel presided (1925–26) over the
royal commission on the coal industry and helped to settle the general strike
of May 1926.
One
of Samuel's early acts as high commissioner for Palestine, in August 1920, was to visit Transjordan (at that time a political vacuum,
owing to the French ejection of the emir Faisal from Damascus). Without authority, and rather
against the spirit of Foreign Office instructions, he effectively annexed the
territory, quadrupling the area under his control. The foreign secretary, Curzon,
initially repudiated Samuel's action. That December, however, the region passed
under the aegis of the Colonial Office and in March 1921 the colonial
secretary, Churchill, visited Jerusalem and confirmed the addition of
Transjordan to the mandatory area—with the proviso that it would be under the
nominal rule of the emir Abdullah and would not form part of the Jewish
national home established west of the River Jordan.
As
the Liberals' chairman early in 1927, Samuel took charge of the arthritic party
machine and succeeded in reviving it as an effective political force. Samuel
faithfully served under Lloyd George's leadership and joined J. M. Keynes,
Walter Runciman, and others in producing the Liberal ‘yellow book’, Britain's Industrial Future (1928).
Reentering
the House of Commons in 1929, Samuel joined Ramsay MacDonald’s national
coalition government in 1931 as Home Secretary. Being a free trader himself, he
soon resigned in protest against import tariffs (1932). Herbert Samuel led the
Liberal Party from 1931 to 1935, but his actions widened the division within
the party. Created viscount in 1937, he led the Liberals in the House of Lords
(1944–55). Later in 1937 Samuel, although Jewish, aligned himself with Prime
Minister Neville Chamberlain's appeasement policy towards Adolf Hitler,
urging that Germany be cleared of its 1914 war guilt and recommending that
Germany's former colonies be returned to her (even after
the war he continued to believe that this was the correct course). He
declined a later offer by Chamberlain to return to government. In 1938 he
supported the Kindertransport
movement for refugee children from Europe with an appeal for homes for them.
From
1931 until 1959 Samuel was president of the British (later Royal) Institute of
Philosophy and in that period he published books such as Practical Ethics
(1935) and Belief and Action (1937; new ed. 1953).
Samuel papers can be found in the Parliamentary
Archives (House of Lords Record Office), the Israel State Archives, Oxford
University, Southampton University, London School of Economics (a.o.
correspondence with E.D. Morel), Cambridge University, Durham
University, National Library of Wales, British Library, Churchill Archives,
Bodleian Library (a.o. correspondence with Lord Lugard), Welwyn Garden City Library,
Newcastle upon Tyne library.
As
he surveyed in old age a career in Liberalism that stretched from the era of Gladstone to that of Jo Grimond, he deeply
regretted the decline of his party: his lasting achievement, none the less, was
the preservation of historic Liberalism as a significant current in British
political life. Samuel died at his London home, 32 Portchester Terrace,
Bayswater, on 5 February 1963, and was buried in Willesden Jewish
cemetery, close to St Mary’s Catholic Cemetery in Kensal Green, where
Belgian refugees are buried.
SOURCES
Wasserstein, B. (2011). ‘Samuel, Herbert Louis, first Viscount Samuel
(1870–1963)’. In: Oxford
Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University
Press, 2004; online edn, May 2011. Retrieved from http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/35928
Wasserstein,
B. (1992). Herbert Samuel: a political
life. Oxford University Press.
Local Government Board. (1915) Report on
the special work of the Local Government Board arising out of the war.
House of Commons Parliamentary Papers.
