Summary
Geoffrey Walsh (born 1884), the Palestine government’s food controller and economic advisor, who chaired the Diamond Control Board and the 1945 diamond inquiry committee, and was killed in the King David Hotel bombing in July 1946 (Diamonds and War — State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine, PDF p.290, p.213).
Details
- Born in Southampton in 1884, he entered the imperial customs service in 1906, was customs controller in Mombasa in 1913 (“Mombassa” as printed), organized the customs system of German East Africa in 1916–1917, and was commissioner of customs in Kenya and Uganda in the 1920s and early 1930s (Diamonds and War — State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine, PDF p.290).
- In 1938 he became economic advisor to the Palestine High Commissioner, in 1939 negotiated the Syria-Palestine Customs Agreement, in 1940 was Palestine delegate to the Eastern Supply Group Council, and in 1940–1944 chaired the Citrus Control Board (Diamonds and War — State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine, PDF p.290).
- Chapter 1 note 45 states that in 1944 he established the Diamond Control Board, and that until his death in the King David Hotel bombing in July 1946 he was a key figure in the diamond industry’s development; the main text dates the Board’s establishment to August 1943, with Walsh as its chairman (Diamonds and War — State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine, PDF p.290, p.144-145).
- He chaired the inquiry committee established on 22 August 1945 whose December 1945 report made the PDMA monopoly’s deregulation irreversible in June 1946 (Diamonds and War — State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine, PDF p.211, p.213).