The Life of Prime Minister Arthur Balfour
Arthur James Balfour was born in 1848 and died in 1930 at the age of 81. He served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom for 3 and a half years from 1902-1905. He is perhaps best known for issuing the Balfour Declaration which created the state of Israel, a nation for Jewish people to live.
He was born in East Lothian in Whittinghame House. His father James Maitland Balfour was also an MP, however he died at the age of 36 from tuberculosis in Funchal on the island of Madeira. His mother was part of the Cecil family and his uncle was the 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, Robert Gascoyne-Cecil.
The Duke of Wellington was his godfather and he was named after him, the Duke’s real name being Arthur Wellesley. He attended Eton and went to university at Cambridge and studied moral sciences at Trinity College.
Balfour declared his love for his cousin May Lyttleton in 1870 when she was 19. However she died of typhus in 1875 and apparently their engagement was imminent before she died.
The future Prime Minister never married and was a bachelor his entire life. He wanted to lead a solitary life and focus on his career, fearing that a romantic relationship may get in the way of his ambitions.
He was a leader of a social and intellectual group called The Souls.
(The Souls was formed during the debate on the first Irish Home Rule Bill in 1886, it was established where politicians could be free to socialise without having to debate political matters. The Wyndham and Balfour families were prominent members along with the Custs and Grenfells.)
His parliamentary career began in 1874 as the MP for Hertford which he held until 1885. He was the MP for Manchester East from 1885 to 1906. He accompanied his uncle Lord Salisbury to the Congress of Berlin and gained experience of international diplomacy with the settlement of the Russo-Turkish conflict.
The Chief Secretary for Ireland Michael Hicks-Beach resigned in 1887 which led to Balfour assuming the role. He argued against Irish nationalism and promoted the interests of the unionist community. Balfour believed the main grievances in Ireland were economic rather than a desire for national independence. His policy was to kill Home Rule with kindness and make staying in the United Kingdom seem like an attractive option for nationalists.
After the death of W.H Smith, whom the shops are named after, Balfour became First Lord of the Treasury.
He succeeded his uncle as Prime Minister following his resignation in 1902. When he assumed his role as Prime Minister it roughly coincided with the coronation of Edward VII. He helped improve foreign relations with France along with his Foreign Secretary Lord Lansdowne.
Balfour was a friend of Chaim Weizmann, the Russian born Zionist leader, and they united in opposition to Russian treatment of Jews. However, despite his public support for Jews, Balfour also backed the Aliens Act of 1905. One of the main aims of the Aliens Act was limiting Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe. There was a public backlash in the UK about the number of Jews arriving in the country from Russia. Tens of thousands of Jews were settling in the East End of London.
The backlash led to the formation of the British Brother’s League (BBL) which was an anti-immigration pressure group. They could be described as a proto-fascist organisation and Conservative MP William Evans-Gordon was one of their leaders.
He was elected as the MP for Stepney on an anti-immigration platform in 1900 and he held the seat until 1907. He was one of the first UK MPs to become popular due to anti-immigration rhetoric.
Gordon feared that a storm was brewing that would eventually have catastrophic results. He stated, “not a day passes but English families are ruthlessly turned out to make room for foreign invaders. The rates are burdened with the education of thousands of foreign children.”
Winston Churchill was one of the most vocal opponents of the Aliens Act and did not fall into the anti-semitic trend of the period. Churchill was a committed Zionist who quoted Lord Rothschild in his speech to the floor in opposition to the bill.
(The Lord Rothschild in question was Nathan Meyer Rothschild, the former Lord Lieutenant of Buckinghamshire. He was the son of Baron Lionel de Rothschild)
Sir Charles Trevelyan said that there was an anti-semitic movement in England that he found deplorable. He thought that the act was evil and made Britain similar to Russia and Romania in its treatment of Jews.
Gordon insisted that he was not ant-semitic and sympathised with the plight of Jews in Russia. He stated that he did not believe the solution would be solved by bringing them to London.
Evans Gordon was an opponent of the Sinti, a group of German travellers. He ran on the slogan “England for the English and Major Gordon for Stepney.”
It has been debated whether or not it was fair to label Gordon as an anti-semite as he had regular correspondence with Chaim Weizmann.