Chris Beetles Gallery

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The Stumbling Block

Leslie Illingworth (1902-1979)

Price

SOLD

Signed

Signed
Inscribed with title and '"The first thing to do is get rid of that"' below mount
Inscribed with title on reverse

Medium

Ink

Dimensions

14 x 11 inches

Illustrated

Punch, 26 June 1946, page 541

Exhibited

'The Illustrators: The British Art of Illustration 1806-2025', Chris Beetles Gallery, London, November 2025-January 2026, no 103

The present cartoon, featuring British Prime Minister Clement Attlee and US President Harry S Truman, highlights the struggles the nations had in dealing with ‘the Palestine Puzzle’.

Since 1920, Palestine had been an administrative territory of Britain, and in 1922 Britain had obtain a mandate for the region from the League of Nations. The Balfour Declaration in 1917 had promised British support for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in the region, resulting in a series of waves of Jewish migration. The British mandate for Palestine resulted in a rise of nationalist movements in both the Jewish and Arab communities. An Arab revolt in Palestine which lasted from 1936 to 1939 had sought independence from British colonial rule and an end to British support for Zionism. A result of this revolt was the ‘White Paper’, ratified by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in May 1939, which put limitations on Jewish immigration into Palestine. These limits were partially responsible from growing Jewish insurgency against British rule, which intensified from 1944, led by groups such as Haganah and Irgun.

Following the end of the Second World War, US President Harry S Truman pressed Britain to admit 100,000 Jewish refugees into Palestine. However, Britain resisted, maintaining the limitations set out in the White Paper. The growing threat of Jewish insurgency and pressure on Britain from the United States resulted in the establishment of the Anglo-American Inquiry in January 1946. Its report in April 1946 recommended allowing increased Jewish immigration and rejecting both an Arab and Jewish state in Palestine, but its implementation was stalled.

Around the time of Leslie Illingworth’s cartoon, Jewish attacks in Palestine were escalating. On 16 June 1946, 10 days before the cartoon was published, the Jewish paramilitary group Palmach had blown up eight road and rail bridges connecting Palestine to neighbouring countries. The following day, railway workshops were attacked and two days after that, six British officers were kidnapped by the Irgun group.

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