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.

[edit] Early years

He was born at Claremont No. 11 Belvidere Road, Toxteth, Liverpool in 1870. The building now contains part of The Belvedere School. He was educated at University College School in Hampstead, London and Oxford University. He had a religious upbringing but in Oxford his beliefs underwent a radical change and he went to the extreme length of renouncing all religious belief, declaring he would no longer adhere to any outward practice of religion and in 1892 wrote to his mother he would never be able to attend a synagogue.^[1] His dearly beloved mother could not dissuade him on this, but he did agree to remain a member of the Jewish community, and kept kosher and the Sabbath "for hygienic reasons".

Samuel had been a Member of Parliament representing the Liberal Party and was appointed to Cabinet in 1909 by Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith, first as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and then later as Postmaster General, President of the Local Government Board, and eventually Home Secretary, the first practising^{[citation needed]} 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.^{[citation needed]}

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.

[edit] High Commissioner of Palestine

Britain occupied 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 ^[1]. As such, Samuel was the first Jew to govern the historic land of Israel in 2,000 years.^[2] He was appointed Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire (GBE) on 11 June 1920.

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. Herbert Samuel was to appoint the Islamic leader. He chose Hajj Amin Al Husseini, who later proved a thorn in the side of the British administration in Palestine.

[edit] Return to Britain

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; later that year Samuel, although Jewish, aligned himself with Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's appeasement policy towards Adolf Hitler, urging that Germany be cleared of their 1914 war guilt and recommending that Germany's former colonies be returned to her.

Samuel 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] Literary endeavours

In his later years he remained concerned over the future of humanity and of science, writing three remarkable books: "Essays in Phyics" (1951), "In Search of Reality" (1957) and a collaborative work, "A Threefold Cord: Philosophy, Science, Religion" (1961). The three works tended to conflict with the beliefs of the scientific establishment, especially as his collaborator and friend in the last work was Herbert Dingle.

[edit] References

ISBN 0316648590 One Palestine, Complete: Segev, Tom

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/samuel.html

[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

• National Register of Archives: Herbert Samuel
• National Portrait Gallery: Herbert Samuel
• Royal Historical Society Bibliography: Herbert Samuel
• 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

fa:هربرت ساموئل fr:Herbert Samuel he:הרברט סמואל ja:ハーバート・サミュエル pt:Herbert Louis Samuel