Dear readers — in 1906 Chaim Weizmann walked into a hotel room in Manchester for a meeting with Arthur Balfour, who had only just stood down as Prime Minister. Weizmann, an academic working at the University of Manchester, had one thing on his mind: the establishment of a state for the Jewish people in Palestine.
Balfour was uncertain. He preferred the idea of a Jewish state in East Africa, known back then as the Ugandan option. The two men spoke for an hour. Their meeting changed the course of history.
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How a meeting in Manchester changed the world
In the opening days of 1906, Arthur Balfour looked out of the window of the Queen's Hotel across to the infirmary in Piccadilly Gardens and the statue of Queen Victoria, whose funeral he had attended five years earlier. According to contemporary reports the weather was of an “exceedingly unsettled and boisterous character”.
It looked, to all intents and purposes, like Balfour’s political career was over. He had served as Conservative Prime Minister from 1902 until December 1905 but stood down amid infighting in his party. Rich and well-connected, he came from the Cecil family political dynasty that stretched as far back as Lord Burghley, adviser to Queen Elizabeth I.
He was best known for his indecision, though, once described by a friend as a man who could be relied upon to nail his colours to the fence. The only time during his political career he was absolutely resolute about an issue was in his violent put down of the Irish Nationalists. It earned him the nickname Bloody Balfour, at least an improvement on the nickname his effete, bookish demeanour once earned at Cambridge University: Pretty Fanny.
Balfour had reserved a suite at the Queen's to meet with constituents and donors. One of the men scheduled for a meeting was a heavily-accented Russian Jew called Chaim Weizmann. Weizmann carried no briefcase or papers. With his bald head and Van Dyke beard, he bore a resemblance to his Russian contemporary, Vladimir Lenin. The points he wanted to make to Balfour were all in his head. He had rehearsed them a thousand times.
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