Herbert Samuel, 1st Viscount Samuel
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Herbert Louis Samuel, 1st Viscount Samuel GCB OM GBE PC (November 6, 1870 - February 2, 1963) was an Anglo-Jewish politician and diplomat.
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[edit] Life
He was born at Claremont No. 11 Belvidere Road, Toxteth. The building now contains part of The Belvedere School. He was educated at University College School in Hampstead, London and Oxford University and was the great-uncle of the British scientist Rosalind Franklin.
Samuel had been a Member of Parliament representing the Liberal Party and was appointed to Cabinet in 1910 by Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith, as Postmaster General and later Home Secretary, the first practising Jew appointed to the British cabinet. He put forward the idea of establishing a British Protectorate over Palestine in 1915 and his ideas influenced the Balfour Declaration.
When the Liberal Party split into Asquith and Lloyd George factions in 1916, Samuel sided with Asquith and was left out of cabinet when Lloyd George became Prime Minister.
Britain conquered Palestine (which had been part of the Ottoman Empire) in 1917 during the course of the First World War. Samuel lost his seat in the election of 1918 and became a candidate to represent British interests in the territory . He was appointed to the position of High Commissioner in 1920 once the British Mandate was granted by the League of Nations. He was the first High Commissioner (essentially the governor) of Palestine and served in that office until 1925 . As such, Samuel was the first Jew to govern the historic land of Israel in 2,000 years.
As High Commissioner, Samuel was at pains to demonstrate his neutrality and attempted to mediate between Zionist and Arab interests acting to slow Jewish immigration and win the confidence of the Arab population. Islamic custom at the time was that the chief Islamic spiritual leader, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, was to be chosen by the temporal ruler, the Ottoman Sultan in Constantinople, from a group of clerics that were nominated by the indigenous clerics. After the British conquered Palestine, the Sultan was no longer the secular ruler. This led to the bizarre situation where a Jew, Herbert Samuel, was to appoint the Islamic leader, in this case Hajj Amin Al Husseini, who later proved a thorn in the side of the British administration in Palestine and spent World War II in Germany as a personal friend of Hitler.
On his return to Britain in 1925, Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin asked Samuel to look into the problems of the mining industry. The Samuel Commission published its report in March 1926 recommending that the industry be reorganised but rejecting the suggestion of nationalization. The report also recommended that the Government subsidy should be withdrawn and the miners' wages should be reduced. The report was one of the leading factors that led to the 1926 General Strike.
Herbert Samuel returned to the House of Commons following the 1929 General Election. Two years later he became leader of the Liberal Party (the first practising Jew to lead a major British political party) as well as Home Secretary in the National Governments of Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald. He led the Liberals (except the small National Liberal faction of Sir John Simon) out of the government in 1932. He remained leader of the Liberal Party until he again lost his seat in 1935.
In 1937 he was granted the title Viscount Samuel and later became the leader of the Liberal Party in the House of Lords (1944-55).
His son Edwin Herbert Samuel, 2nd Viscount Samuel served in the Jewish Legion.
[edit] References
ISBN 0316648590 One Palestine, Complete: Segev, Tom
[edit] Further reading
- John Bowle, Viscount Samuel: A Biography (Victor Gollancz, 1957)
- Viscount Samuel, Memoirs 1945
- Bernard Wasserstein, Herbert Samuel: A Political Life (Clarendon Press, 1992)
[edit] External links
- Spartacus Educational: Herbert Samuel
- Family History of Margaret Macculloch and David Hall covering dates c1150-2004 Person Page 134
- Herbert Samuel (Viscount Samuel) 1870-1963 biography from the Liberal Democrat History Group
- Herbert Samuel Photo Collection made by American Colony in Jerusalem
[edit] Succession
| Leaders of the Liberal Party | ||
| 1859-1916 | House of Lords: Granville | Russell | Granville | Kimberley | Rosebery | Kimberley | Ripon | Crewe House of Commons: Palmerston | Gladstone | Hartington | Gladstone | Harcourt | Campbell-Bannerman | Asquith |
|
| 1916-1988 | Asquith | Maclean | Asquith | Lloyd George | Samuel | Sinclair | Davies | Grimond | Thorpe | Grimond | Steel | |
Categories: Secretaries of State for the Home Department | Chancellors of the Duchy of Lancaster | United Kingdom Postmasters General | Leaders of the British Liberal Party | Members of the United Kingdom Parliament from English constituencies | Liberal MPs (UK) | Members of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom | British colonial governors and administrators | History of Israel | Palestinian history | Jews in Ottoman and British Palestine | People from Liverpool | Members of the Order of Merit | Viscounts in the Peerage of the United Kingdom | Knights Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath | Knights Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire | English Jews | 1870 births | 1963 deaths | Presidents of the Royal Statistical Society | UK MPs 1900-1906 | UK MPs 1906-1910 | UK MPs 1910 | UK MPs 1910-1918 | UK MPs 1918-1922 | UK MPs 1929-1931 | UK MPs 1931-1935
