Talk:Leslie Hore-Belisha, 1st Baron Hore-Belisha

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[edit] 1950 candidacy in Croydon

"He fought unsuccessfully in Croydon South in 1950"

I don't think this is right. For the 1950 and 1951 elections there was no Croydon South seat and Hore-Belisha does not feature in the election records for any Croydon seat or indeed for Surrey East at that time. The Conservatives won all four seats anyway, so he would not have lost. Perhaps this refers to an internal selection, rather than the election itself. Mtiedemann 12:13, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The DNB claims it was Coventry South but I haven't got any results to hand to check if he was a candidate or not. Timrollpickering 14:16, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Sacking

This article strikes me as rather POV and there's quite some controversy about the circumstances of his downfall. I don't think the blame for his downfall lies with the King and anti-semitism, rather than with Hore-Belisha's very poor relations with the Chief of the General Staff (they mutually lost confidence in each other) and abrasive personality (meetings of the War Cabinet were often tense) which made him enemies. The impetus to make changes originated with Downing Street not the Palace - had the Palace really been against him over the abdication he would never have been considered for Minister of Information and, when it was argued that appointing a Jew to that post would make it hard to fight an anti-semitic regime, the President of the Board of Trade.

At the time the country anmd many MPs were left confused - many saw Hore-Belisha as a radical popularising army reformer in the mould of Haldane and saw him as the victim of the Colonel Blimps but they were left further confused by his resignation statement.

Does anyone have much of the case to the contrary as I don't want to start rewriting the article and risk a revert war on a disputed matter. Timrollpickering 12:39, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] "Belisha"

I was always told that the family's name was originally "Horeb Elisha" and it was changed in response anti-semitic attitudes to that name. (c.f. Benjamin Disraeli.) However, that is only hearsay, and I see that the tale is told the other way round (Horeb Elisha used as anti-semitic pun) in the article, so it may have been that the name change story was in itself a slur. Rachel Pearce (talk) 12:11, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Thoughts for the future direction of this article

A few things on reading it - first, the charming little ditty included should have a cited source, and perhaps calling it 'popular' needs to be qualified/cited.

Second - there is scholarly work concerning the dismissal that could make the explanation of it a bit more authoritative. The 'ambient' antisemitism on the part of H-B's caucus colleagues in the Conservative Party should certainly be noted, but it was a very specific intrigue by Gort and Ironside that saw him removed, the "Bill-box" affair. Gort, as this article mentions already, had disliked Hore-Belisha immensely, in spite of owing his (unlikely) promotion to CIGS to him. This continued when Gort was (again, improbably) made C in C of the BEF, with Ironside promoted to replace him as CIGS.

When Hore-Belisha went on an inspection tour and later complained about the construction rate of pillboxes Gort took it in the worst way possible and Pownall (his chief of staff) and Ironside were both convinced of Gorts' (rather dubious) notion that Hore-Belisha was out to get him and an unacceptable meddler. (Both Gort and Ironside had antisemitism issues.) Gort was well connected with the King, which was probably more significant than Hore-Belisha's being associated with Edward in the abdication crisis. Gort, Ironside and the King successfully got Hore-Belisha sacked, for all that there were other political explanations offered. Ironside, who had seen him as not being all bad, expressed some regret, but not so Gort.

I've been doing some 1940 research for a paper and culled this from a lot of sources, but particularly Brian Bond's two chapters on Ironside and Gort from "Churchill's Generals." I'm not -quite- sure yet if there is a historical consensus on Hore-Belisha's effectiveness. Many of the failings of British military preparation were well out of his hands and he had something of an impossible task; on the other hand, just 'doubling' the territorial army at the last minute has been interpreted as an overly ambitious attempt to be a new Kitchener.

Certainly, Gort and Ironside were quite unreasonable (and influenced by prejudices) in their intrigue against him; and neither Gort nor Ironside were very well suited for the jobs they were doing at the time. Hope this is helpful to anyone taking a look at altering this article 142.167.162.83 21:27, 12 January 2007 (UTC)