Sixty Jewish Candidates Running in Today’s Parliamentary Elections in England

Jews throughout England are watching with unprecedented interest the final hours of the election campaign which ends tomorrow, when the country will go to the polls to choose a new Parliament in the first general elections in ten years.

Sixty Jewish candidates, the majority of whom are members of the Labor Party, are standing for office. The Board of Deputies of British Jews discouraged any attempts to create a “Jewish bloc,” and the Anglo-Jewish community as such is not involved in the political issues of the elections. It is expected that the majority of the former Jewish members of parliament will be re-elected.

The main question of specific Jewish interest which has been discussed in the campaign is that of the refugees. This question cropped up in connection with securing dwellings for returning soldiers and for people who have been bombed out. However, anti-Jewish propaganda in this connection fell flat after experts proved that the approximately 40,000 refugees who are still in Britain do not occupy more than 10,000 apartments, which is a mere drop in the bucket compared to the millions of destroyed houses which must be rebuilt in order to solve the housing problem.

The Zionist Revisionist party approached a number of leading candidates to ascertain their attitude toward the White Paper. The answer of many of the prominent leaders of all parties was that their groups are ready to support Jewish aspirations for Palestine. Replying to a specific question as to whether they would favor creation of a Jewish State in Palestine as a dominion of the British Empire, most of the candidates said that they would, according to the Revisionists. Laborites and Liberals, they said, were more emphatic than Conservatives in voicing support for Jewish aspirations in Palestine, although many of the latter agreed that the government’s promises to the Jews should be carried out.