The subject upon which I have been invited to address you is a gloomy one. There is little pleasure to the speaker in recounting a catalogue of failures. The hope is that you may be able at the end to say “Thank goodness we have done better than the British”, or even, perhaps, “The British have made that mistake, we can avoid it”. In other words, a free and candid exchange of views never does any harm.

Thirty-five years ago were stirring times for Israel. For us too, in Great Britain, in a more mundane way. Some of us were exchanging flying helmets for barristers wigs. There was new hope in the air. Social injustice would be a thing of the past. No one would go hungry. No one would go short of medical attention through lack of money, involuntary unemployment would no longer mean that a man's family would go short of food and the other necessities of life.