Colonial Secretary Lord Lloyd, who died early today at the age of 61 after a three weeks’ illness, was known as a friend of the Arabs, although also sympathetic to the Jews. His tenues in the Colonial Office was marked by continuation of the White Paper policy of restricting growth of the Jewish homeland and the recent omission of a Palestine immigration schedule for the current six months.
When he was named to the Colonial Office post last May, The Zionist Review, organ of the British Zionist Federation, said his appointment opened the possibility of a Palestine solution which would “achieve the most cherished ideals of the Jewish and Arab peoples.” Mrs. Emma Dugdale, niece of the late Lord Balfour, said: “It was statesmanlike to appoint a Colonial Secretary whom the Arabs will recognize to be their friend and whom the Jews have no reason to regard as their enemy.”
In 1938 he proposed a solution of the Palestine problem by assuring the Arabs a majority in Palestine and opening Transjordan to Jewish immigration.
“It seems generally assumed, ” he wrote in The Sunday Chronicle, “that a solution of justice to the Arabs necessarily involves injustice to the Jews, and vice versa. I do not believe that to be the case. I believe that the assurance to the Arabs of a permanent majority in their own country, on the one hand, and compensation to the Jews in wider immigration into Transjordanian, on the other, would provide an equitable settlement and one that is administratively as well as politically feasible.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
