Finest Hour (Martin Gilbert) p910-1
At the end of November, Churchill was in dispute with Wavell over Palestine. Earlier that month, 1,771 Jewish refugees reached Palestine from Europe on two ships the Milos and the Pacific. As ‘illegal’ immigrants they were at once transferred by the British authorities to a French liner, the Patria, for deportation to the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius. While the Patria was still in Haifa Bay, explosives, by which the Haganah hoped to immobilize the ship, blew it up more forcefully than intended, and within fifteen minutes of the explosion the Patria had sunk. More than two hundred and fifty of the refugees on board were drowned.
In the view of the scale of the tragedy, the British Government announced that the surviving ‘illegals’ on board the Patria would not be deported, but allowed to stay in Palestine. Wavell at once protested, in a telegram to Eden, that such a decision would be disastrous ‘from the military point of view’, particularly, Wavell warned, on Arab opinion in Syria, Egypt and Iraq; so much so that he did not feel he could now open the strategically vital Basral-Baghdad-Haifa road, as he had earlier recommended. It was Churchill himself who replied to Wavell:
Secretary of State has shown me your telegram about Patria. Cabinet feel that, in view of the suffering of the immigrants, and perils to which they had been subjected through the sinking of their ship, that it would be necessary on compassionate grounds not to subject them again immediately to the hazards of the sea.
Personally, I hold it would be an act of inhumanity unworthy of British name to force them to re-embark. On the other hand Cabinet agreed that future consignments of illegal immigrants should be sent to Mauritius provided that tolerable conditions can be arranged for them there.
Churchill’s telegram continued:
I wonder whether the effect on the Arab world will be as bad as you suggest. If their attachment to our cause is so slender as to be determined by a mere act of charity of this kind it is clear that our policy of conciliating them has not borne much fruit so far. What I think would influence them much more would be any kind of British military success. I therefore suggest that you should reconsider your statement about Basra-Baghdad-Haifa road when we see which way the compass points.
I am sorry you should be worrying yourself with such matters at this particular time and I hope at least you will believe that the views I have just expressed are not dictated by fear of violence.
Churchill’s telegram was decisive, and Wavell withdrew his protest. The Patria deportees were allowed to remain in Palestine, first in an internment camp, and within a year at liberty. Nor was Churchill’s judgement of the effect of this decision at fault; on December 14. a military Intelligence report concluded that the effect on Arab opinion of letting the Patria refugees remain in Palestine had been ‘remarkably small’.
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