Viscount Herbert Louis Samuel, Britain’s first High Commissioner for Palestine and one of Anglo-Jewry’s leading figures, celebrated his 90th birthday today.
Lord Samuel was lauded by former Socialist Prime Minister Lord Attlee, in an article in the Sunday Observer. The former Prime Minister evaluating Lord Samuel’s role as High Commissioner said that “the lot of the man who tries to hold the scales of justice is not easy.” He recalled that the Arabs regarded Samuel with enmity while “his advocacy of a bi-national state lost him the sympathy of the Zionists.”
Lord Attlee emphasized that since Viscount Samuel’s early days there was “lit in him a steady flame for social justice never to be extinguished” and added that Samuel, still perhaps “the most effective speaker” in the House of Lords, “is heard with great respect. He is honored as a man who has never been self-seeking, a man of high integrity and mature wisdom.”
In a long and distinguished career, Lord Samuel has been a leader of the Liberal party, Parliamentary Undersecretary of the Home Department, Postmaster General, Home Secretary, British Special Commissioner to Belgium, chairman of a Royal Commission on the Coal Industry, and other Governmental posts.
Author of many books on liberalism and a philosopher, Lord Samuel is a member of the Royal Institute of Philosophy and he has been a lecturer at Oxford University. He has served as a Governor of the Hebrew University, and as chairman of the Movement for the Care of Children coming from Germany.
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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.
