From
David Irving: "Churchill's War", vol. i: "Struggle for
Power"
ON the day after the Horsham speech [i.e. July 24,
1936] the ten top members of the Anti-Nazi Council
trooped into Morpeth Mansions, his London
pied-à-terre, for a second conspiratorial
luncheon. In response to Churchill's wishes for a
less negative title, they now called themselves The Focus
but, cat-like, this was a name known only to themselves,
The main decisions this day were to set up a research
section under Wickham Steed and to draft a
manifesto. (According to Steed it was seen by 'one
American visitor' who insisted it be shown privately to
certain associations, which he did not identify, in the
United States.[23])
There were embarrassed coughs when the organising
secretary of ANC, A.H. Richards inquired where the
money for all this was to come from; Mr Churchill
appeared angry at the question. Richards was taken aside
and asked to announce simply that all their requirements
had already been met.[24]
Funds had been arranged two days earlier at a private
dinner in North London, hosted by the Board
of Deputies of British Jews. Its vice-president
Sir Robert Waley-Cohen, chairman of British Shell,
was a charismatic Zionist extrovert who would become, in
the words of his authorised biographer Robert
Henriques, the 'veritable dynamic force of Focus,' At
a dinner on July 22 at his home, Caen Wood Towers, he
launched the initial secret £50,000 fund for The
Focus. His associates signed immediate cheques for
£25,000 and pledged the
rest.[25]
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