Abstract
The seemingly intractable problem of Palestine that exercised the British government between 1945 and 1948, has been considered from the diplomatic viewpoint and as a case study in British counterinsurgency.1 British propaganda, the calculated intent on the part of government to persuade target audiences to behave or think in a certain way, in pursuit of policy aims, is the focus of this chapter.2 This is a study of the complexities of propaganda, through the management of information conducted by the British government during the controversial negotiations on the future of the Palestine mandate. It demonstrates that the current fascination with government news management in support of their policy is nothing new. The post-war Labour government appreciated that success in Palestine depended on persuading target audiences to support its policy. This chapter is a case study of failed propaganda, which highlights the themes and challenges faced by the government, over the summer of 1947, in dealing with the illegal immigration ship known to the British government as the President Warfield and to the Zionists as Exodus 1947.3
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Notes
For example, W.R. Louis, The British Empire and the Middle East, 1945–51 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984);
Michael Cohen, Palestine and the Great Powers, 1945–48 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982);
Martin Jones, Failure in Palestine (London: Mansell, 1986);
William Roger Louis and R. Stookey (eds) The End of the Palestine Mandate (London: IB Taurus, 1986);
David Charters, The British Army and Jewish Insurgency in Palestine, 1945–47, (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1989);
David French, The British Way in Counter-Insurgency, 1945–1967 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011);
John Newsinger, British Counterinsurgency: from Palestine to Northern Ireland (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002);
Bruce Hoffman, The Failure of British Military Strategy within Palestine 1939–1947 (Jerusalem: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1983).
Propaganda is used here in a non-pejorative sense as shorthand for information/perception management. This chapter builds on my work (published under the name C.J. Morris) ‘The Labour government’s policy and publicity over Palestine 1945–7’ in Anthony Gorst, Lewis Johnman and Scott Lucas (eds) Contemporary British History 1931–61: Politics and the Limits of Policy (London: Pinter, 1991) and Kate Utting ‘The Strategic Information Campaign: lessons from the British experience in Palestine, 1945–1948’, Contemporary Security Policy, 28/1 (2007).
For details of the voyage see: Aviva Halamish, The Exodus Affair: Holocaust survivors and the Struggle for Palestine, (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 1998);
Ruth Gruber, Exodus 1947: the ship that launched a nation (New York: Union Square Press, 2007);
David C. Holly, Exodus 1947 (Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 1995). The British government always referred to the ship as the President Warfield and, since the focus of this chapter is the British perspective, the name Warfield is used.
Kenneth O. Morgan, Labour People, Leaders and Lieutenants: Hardie to Kinnock (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 158.
Fritz Liebreich, Britain’s Naval and Political Reaction to the Illegal immigration of Jews to Palestine, 1945–1948 (London: Routledge, 2005), pp. 6–7.
Bard E. O’Neill, Insurgency and Terrorism: inside modern revolutionary warfare (New York: Brassey’s, 1990), p. 13.
On the challenge of illegal immigration and Britain’s response, see: Ze’ev Venia Hadari, Second Exodus: The Full Story of Jewish Illegal Immigration to Palestine, 1945–1948 (London: Valentine Mitchell, 1991); Liebreich, Political Reaction ;
Ninian Stewart, The Royal Navy and the Palestine Patrol, (London: Frank Cass, 2002); Arieh J. Kochavi, ‘The Struggle against Jewish Immigration to Palestine’, Middle Eastern Studies, 34/3, July 1998.
Joseph Heller, ‘The Anglo-American Commission of Inquiry on Palestine, 1945–46: the Zionists Reaction Reconsidered’, in Elie Kedourie and Sylvia Haim (eds), Zionism and Arabism in Palestine and Israel (London: Frank Cass, 1982), p. 156. In 1933–36, over 130,000 Jews arrived in Palestine and the Jewish population there increased about 80%. By July 1945, 10,938 immigration certificates of the 75,000 allotted by the White Paper remained: Kochavi, ‘Struggle’, p. 146.
For the relative significance of militancy and illegal immigration in Zionist counterinsurgency against British rule, see Joseph Heller, The Stern Gang: ideology, politics and terror, 1940–1949 (London: Frank Cass, 1995);
Saul Zadka, Blood in Zion: how the Jewish Guerrillas drove the British out of Palestine (London: Brassey’s, 1995)
and Norman Rose, “A Senseless, Squalid War” Voices from Palestine 1945–1948 (London: Bodley Head, 2009).
Richard Crossman, Palestine Mission: a personal record (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1947), p. 27.
Refugees were homeless people who remained within the borders of their native countries; DPs had been forcibly evicted from their homes during the war; ‘infiltrees’ were homeless people who voluntarily moved to Allied zones after VE Day. Jews constituted 20% of all DPs. See, Amikam Nachmani, Great Power Discord in Palestine: the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry into the problems of European Jewry and Palestine, 1945–1946 (London: Frank Cass, 1987), p. 8.
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© 2013 Kate Utting
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Utting, K. (2013). British Propaganda and Countering Illegal Immigration into Palestine: The President Warfield or Exodus 1947 . In: Young, J.W., Pedaliu, E.G.H., Kandiah, M.D. (eds) Britain in Global Politics Volume 2. Security, Conflict and Cooperation in the Contemporary World. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137313584_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137313584_3
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