WEIZMANN, Chaim Azriel (1874-1952) -- Papers relating to the acrivities of the Zionist Executive Committe over the period of the Passfield White Paper and the MacDonald letter.

'The Jewish people will go on working for Palestine with or without the British'

A collection of letters and manuscripts from the papers of the historian Sir Lewis Namier (1888-1960), political secretary of the Zionist Organisation from 1929 to 1931, relating chiefly to negotiations around the Passfield While Paper of October 1930 and the MacDonald Letter of February 1931, comprising:

Chaim WEIZMANN (1874-1952). Typed letter signed (‘Ch. Weizmann’) to Lewis Namier (secretary of the Zionist Executive Committee), Geneva, 4 June 1930. Four pages, 270 x 215 mm. (stapled at left margin, punch holes, traces of old staples, minor creasing and soiling); [and]:
Lewis NAMIER. Annotated carbon typescript of ‘discussions leading up to the Prime Minister’s letter of February 13th, 1931 to Dr. Weizmann’ [i.e. the MacDonald Letter], 27 April 1931. 52 pages, 330 x 205 mm. (some rust-staining from paperclips, leading to small lost on cover sheet); [with]:
Papers relating to the activities of the Zionist Executive Committee over the period of the Passfield White Paper and the MacDonald letter, comprising two autograph letters signed by Weizmann to Namier, Paris and London, 31 July 1930 and 8 June 1931 (window-mounted); retained carbon typescripts of letters (?by Namier) to Lord Passfield, 19 September 1930 and to Edgar Dugdale, 11 January 1931 and (by Weizmann) to William Ormsby-Gore [later 4th Baron Harlech], 15 June 1937; a letter signed by Selig Brodetsky to Namier, 26 September 1930, enclosing copies of a letter from Passfield to Weizmann and two related texts; typed or carbon accounts by Hillel Rogoff of an interview with Passfield, 7 November 1930, and by Namier of interviews with prime minister (Ramsay MacDonald) on 24 December 1930, and Malcolm MacDonald on 31 December 1930; and six other letters and papers.
Provenance:
The papers derive from the archive of Orde Wingate (Sotheby's, 11 July 1996).

Weizmann’s typed letter is a detailed account of a meeting with the British under-secretary of state for the colonies, Drummond Shiels, focusing on Weizmann’s indignation at the recommendations of the Shaw Report (characterised by the prime minister Ramsay MacDonald himself, in Weizmann’s account, as ‘a bad Report, an unfair Report’), and the consequent restrictions on Jewish immigration to Palestine which were to be embodied in the Passfield White Paper: he vigorously rebuts Shiels’ implication that Jews were themselves responsible for the 1929 riots in Palestine because ‘our young men coming to Palestine are not sufficiently prudent’, and represents the potentially dramatic consequences of the current situation, in that the British Government ‘will not gain the sympathy of the Arabs, they will lose the sympathy of the Jews, Palestine will become a desert again…’. Weizmann by contrast feels that it has now been proved that ‘with a little goodwill the Arabs and Jews could get along together, that we together could build up the country… I concluded by saying that the Jewish people will go on working for Palestine with or without the British’.

Namier’s typescript provides a significant and detailed account of the negotiations between the Zionist Committee and the British Government between November 1930 and February 1931, resulting in Ramsay MacDonald’s letter to Weizmann on 13 February (known as the MacDonald Letter or the Black Letter), which essentially negated the Passfield White Paper, opening the path to renewed Jewish immigration in Palestine. The typescript includes a paragraph-by-paragraph account of the drafting process of the letter, as well as a summary of ‘Points raised by us but not included in the letter’.