10 Members of London Chamber Back Manoroft for Presidency

While the British press, as a whole, continued today to assail the decision of the London Chamber of Commerce to cancel the candidacy of Lord Mancroft for the Chamber’s presidency, due to Arab pressures, 10 members of the Chamber announced here today that they are ready officially to sponsor Lord Mancroft as president.

W.S. Sharp, a member of the Chamber, pointed out that, under the organization’s by-laws, only six bona fide sponsors are needed to make the nomination official. He denounced “senior officials” of the Chamber for forcing the withdrawal of Lord Mancroft’s candidacy, saying their step “discredits the Chamber as a whole.”

Meanwhile, the Board of Deputies of British Jews declared it was dissatisfied with a statement issued by the Earl of Verulam, the Chamber’s current president, who had denied that Arab pressure brought about the decision to withdraw Lord Mancroft’s candidacy. “If Arab pressure was not the cause,” the Board asked, “what was?” “The implications of the entire affair,” the Board declared, “are too ominous for us to leave it at that.”

The Sunday Citizen today denounced the effort to cancel Lord Mancroft’s candidacy as an illustration of the British Government’s “craven acceptance of the Arab boycott,” The Sunday Times, reporting that the Earl of Verulam is to meet tomorrow with seven Kuwait businessmen who said they have come here “to prepare the ground for more informal commercial relations between the two countries,” said this move “illustrates just why Mancroft is no longer the heir apparent to the Chamber’s presidency.”

The Sunday Express said the leaders of the Chamber of Commerce are “a frightened bunch of men, ashamed of themselves–and so they should be.”