A speaker before the Labor Party’s annual conference today denounced the Palestine administration’s “harsh and unfair policy towards the Jews” and asserted that “the fate of the Jewish people and the solution of the Jewish problem are of the highest importance in a new, truly democratic world order.”
The speaker, N. D. Jackson, a trade union leader, complained that the eagerness of the Jews to assume their role as Britain’s natural allies had been met only with embarrassed silence on the other side.
The speech followed the reading, amid cheers, of a cablegram from the Palestine Histadruth urging the Government to authorize formation of a Jewish army. “It is essential that the Jews be allowed to participate to the maximum of their ability in repelling the enemy and his agents, who now try to do Hitler’s bidding in Palestine,” the message said.
The Jewish people was mentioned as one of Britain’s allies by Camille Huysmans, president of the Labor International, in an address. Thanking Britain for her hospitality to aliens, he said: “Some of us had inevitable difficulties which aliens have to meet in a country which is at war. When I say ‘we’ I mean not only the Belgians, but the Dutch, Czechs, Poles, etc., and the Jewish people, who are persecuted everywhere.”
The Labor Party’s policy regarding technical enemy aliens was criticized by three delegates. Goldstone of the Tailors’ Union wanted assurance that the party did not approve the policy of general internment in case of invasion. George Latham replied for the party’s executive committee that “the problem bristles with difficulties” and gave assurance that everything possible would be done to improve the aliens’ position.
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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.
