The Zinoviev letter
Verified: Documented in primary records or confirmed by reputable inquiry/reporting.
Four days before the 1924 general election the Daily Mail splashed a letter attributed to Grigory Zinoviev of the Comintern, urging British communists to mobilise “sympathetic forces” in the Labour Party. Labour lost the election. A 1999 Foreign Office study by chief historian Gill Bennett concluded that the letter was almost certainly a forgery.
Documented
Bennett’s study is public. It concluded the letter was probably leaked from SIS to Conservative Central Office, and found no conspiracy “in the institutional sense”. She believed White Russian émigrés wrote it.
Claimed, disputed or not established
Long-running claims that British intelligence plotted to bring down Labour were not upheld in the institutional sense; who exactly forged the letter is described by the Guardian and Independent coverage as mysterious, not settled.
Sources (opened in a new tab)
- The Guardian: Zinoviev letter report (4 Feb 1999) ↗https://www.theguardian.com/politics/1999/feb/04/uk.politicalnews6
- The Independent: Official Zinoviev letter was forged ↗https://www.independent.co.uk/news/official-zinoviev-letter-was-forged-1068600.html
Connected
- Section: United Kingdom
- Agencies: SIS / MI6, MI5
- Case board · Timeline (1924) · Document vault