Sir Herbert Samuel and Lord Reading are included in the new national Government formed to-day with Mr. Ramsay MacDonald as Prime Minister. Lord Reading is the new Foreign Minister, in which capacity he will represent Britain at the next session of the League of Nations Council which is opening in Geneva on Monday, September 7th., when the report of the Permanent Mandates Commission on the Palestine situation will be presented.
Sir Herbert Samuel has been appointed Home Secretary, a post which he has held before, under the late Mr. Asquith (Lord Oxford). In this position, Sir Herbert is responsible, among other things, for the administration of the alien laws, in which the Board of Jewish Deputies (of which his brother, the late Sir Stuart Samuel was at one time President) is specially interested, and in regard to which it has made repeated interventions with his predecessors, Mr. Clynes and Sir William Joynson-Hicks.
Lord Passfield is not included in the new Government. He was at first expected to remain, but this morning the Labour “Daily Herald” stated that he had joined the Labour Opposition headed by Mr. Henderson. To a Press representative Lord Passfield said before the composition of the new Government was announced: “You can say that I want to retire. I think you can say quite definitely that I shall retire, and certainly you can say that I shall not be in the new Government”.
The Colonial Office has again been merged with the Dominions Office, and the Secretary of State for the Dominions, Mr. J.H.Thomas, who remains in the Government, takes over both Ministries. Mr. Thomas was the first Labour Colonial Secretary, in the 1924 Labour Cabinet. In January, when Lord Melchett died, Mr. Thomas spoke at the Melchett memorial meeting held in the Queen’s Hall, recalling how Lord Melchett had brought to him a deputation in 1924, when he was Colonial Secretary, to ask that the Labour Government should reaff the Balfour Declaration. If I were asked to say to this audience, he said, how can you, the Jewish people best perpetuate his memory, what is the real tribute to pay him, I would say without hesitation – go and justify in Palestine all he claimed and hoped for it.
The leaders of the three parties, are broadcasting messages to the nation, Mr. MacDonald to-night, and Mr. Baldwin and Sir Herbert Samuel (Sir Herbert is acting head of the Liberal Party during Mr. Lloyd George’s illness) to-morrow. Mr. MacDonald, Mr. Baldwin and Sir Herbert Samuel were in conference all day to-day at 10 Downing Street, drawing up the list of the new Government, to which the King gave his approval to-night.
Mr. Emanuel Shinwell, the Minister for Mines, who was the only Jewish member of the Labour Government, has refused an invitation to retain his post in the new Government, it is stated, and has joined the Labour Opposition.
Sir Henry Betterton, who was one of the members of the Shaw Commission into the 1929 outbreak in Palestine, has joined the Government as Minister of Labour, in which capacity he is responsible for the cutting of the dole, the question which caused the fall of the Labour Government.
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