With only weeks to go before a general election, and with a Labour victory expected, I am reminded of events of a century ago. In 1924, the minority Labour government headed by Ramsay MacDonald was forced out of power following a snap general election. One of the factors that led to Labour\u2019s defeat was the notorious \u201cZinoviev Letter.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whether the Letter was decisive in bringing an end to Labour\u2019s short-lived first government is contested by historians. But the story of the Letter remains of interest and may have some relevance to this year\u2019s general election, and Labour\u2019s effort to return to government after 14 long years of Tory rule.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ramsay MacDonald was in some ways the Tony Blair of his time. The first Labour leader to become prime minister, he was later branded a traitor by his own party. He was no friend of the Soviet Union and had visited independent Georgia in 1920, returning to Britain more convinced than ever that the Bolsheviks were a disaster for Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But during his short term as Prime Minister, MacDonald took steps toward recognising the Soviet state and opening trade relations with it. He did this not because he had suddenly become a Bolshevik sympathiser, but purely for pragmatic reasons. That pragmatism \u2014 one might call it lack of principle \u2014 was revealed just weeks before the general election. When the Red Army and Cheka bloodily suppressed a Georgian uprising in August 1924, MacDonald\u2019s government initially showed some sympathy for the Georgians \u2014 but swiftly embraced a more practical approach, eventually denying that the Soviets had massacred the Georgians (which they had).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And yet the Tories saw him as pro-Bolshevik and his Labour Party needed to be ousted from office. If the usual methods of electoral politics were not enough, the Conservatives didn\u2019t hesitate to employ dirty tricks against a leader they saw as dangerously left-wing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Just days before the election, the Daily Mail published an extraordinary document. It was a letter from Grigory Zinoviev, leader of the Communist International, to the British Communist Party. The letter called on the comrades in Britain to prepare for armed insurrection, including creating cells of a future Red Army inside the ranks of the British military. According to the Letter, the Labour government\u2019s decision to open trade with the Soviet Union created the conditions for a successful proletarian revolution in Britain and elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Zinoviev publicly denounced the document as a fake. He pointed out a number of flaws, among them the fact that the letterhead referred to the \u201cThird Communist International\u201d which was, of course, not the name of the organisation he headed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the British intelligence services came down on the side of the Daily Mail, insisting that the letter was genuine. Labour, which had been on course to lose the election, then lost it decisively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Decades later, historians and archivists came to the conclusion that the document was forged by White Russians. Other forgeries were to follow, including the \u201cEremin Letter\u201d published in 1956, which offered \u201cproof\u201d that Stalin had once been a tsarist police spy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A century on and Zinoviev is long forgotten. But some things remain \u2014 disinformation, including forgery, is still a factor in politics. Indeed, social media has given new life to \u201cfake news\u201d in a way that White Russian forgers in 1924 could only have dreamed of. And there is a still a Russian angle to the story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to some analysts, Labour\u2019s greatest weakness today, as in 1924, is its perceived lack of willingness to counter a growing Russian threat. For today\u2019s Tories, plans to spend billions more on defence, including a military draft, is really all they have to offer after 14 years in power. It is unlikely to help them much on election day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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For Tories with a sense of history, they must look back 100 years ago to the days when a mediocre forgery could help win them an election. Alas, Keir Starmer, who is as pragmatic as Ramsay MacDonald, seems on course to deliver a Labour government, with no 21st century version of the Zinoviev Letter likely to emerge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n