1. The National Archives [TNA], Colonial Office [CO] 733/457/11, Telegram from George Henry Hall, Secretary of State for the Colonies, to Field Marshal Viscount Gort, British High Commissioner for Palestine, November 3, 1945. For an account of the events of November 1, 1945, see J. Bowyer Bell, Terror out of Zion: Irgun Zvai Leumi, LEHI, and the Palestine Underground, 1929–1949 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1977), 145–6.
2. For an analysis of the 1945 General Election, see Kenneth O. Morgan, Labour in Power, 1945–1951 (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1984), 34–44.
3. This withdrawal occurred on May 21, 1945, on which date Clement Attlee wrote to Churchill explaining his reasons and citing the “party differences” that were held over the “problems of reconstruction of the economic life of the country” as the primary cause. The letter in its entirety is published in Attlee’s memoirs, C. R. Attlee, As It Happened (New York: The Viking Press, 1954), 190–3.
4. The Conservative Member of Parliament Sir Cuthbert Headlam described the election in his diary as a “truly catastrophic election—never was [there] such a crushing disaster.” Sir Cuthbert Headlam, Parliament and Politics in the Age of Churchill and Attlee: The Headlam Diaries, 1935–1951 [Diaries], Thursday, July 26, 1945, edited by Stuart Ball (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 469.
5. Prior to his time in Parliament, Hall had been a coalminer and a trade unionist, and although he had served well in his various wartime roles, he was not known as a specialist in colonial affairs. Indeed, most historians believe that his appointment as colonial secretary had more to do with his personal friendship with Attlee than his political expertise and experience. David Goldsworthy, Colonial Issues in British Politics, 1945–1961: From ‘Colonial Development’ to ‘Wind of Change’ (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1971), 14.