The Zinoviev letter : the conspiracy that never dies / Gill Bennett.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

This is the story of one of the most enduring conspiracy theories in British politics, an intrigue that still has resonance nearly a century after it was written: the Zinoviev Letter of 1924. Almost certainly a forgery, no original has ever been traced, and even if genuine it was probably Soviet fake news. Despite this, the Letter still haunts British politics nearly a century after it was written, the subject of major Whitehall investigations in the 1960s and 1990s, and cropping up in the media as recently as during the Referendum campaign and the 2017 general election. The Letter, encouraging the British proletariat to greater revolutionary fervor, was apparently sent by Grigori Zinoviev, head of the Bolshevik propaganda organization, to the British Communist Party in September 1924. Sent to London through British Secret Intelligence Service channels, it arrived during the general election campaign and was leaked to the press. The Letter's publication by the Daily Mail on October 25th 1924 just before the General Election humiliated the first ever British Labour government, headed by Ramsay MacDonald, when its political opponents used it to create a "Red Scare" in the media. Labour blamed the Letter for its defeat, insisting there had been a right-wing establishment conspiracy, and many in the Labour Party have never forgotten it. The Zinoviev Letter has long been a symbol of political dirty tricks and what we would now call "fake news." But it is also a gripping historical detective story of spies and secrets, fraud and forgery, international subversion and the nascent global conflict between communism and capitalism.

Cover; THE ZINOVIEV LETTER: THE CONSPIRACY THAT NEVER DIES; Copyright; Dedication; Acknowledgements; Contents; List of Illustrations; List of Abbreviations; Introduction: The Impact of the Zinoviev Letter on British Politics; 1: One Version of the Truth; Wednesday, 8 July 1998: Moscow; 1924: the first British Labour government; 1924: a significant year in Soviet politics; The conspiratorial context; 2: In Search of the Red Letter; Dispatch, arrival, and distribution; Leaks, rumours, and dirty tricks; What happened on 'Zinoviev Friday'?; Publication and protest: London and Moscow

'Come into the plot'3: Enquiries and Investigations, 1924-1925; Cabinets, communists, and trade unions; Soviets and spooks; The Secret Service Committee, 1925; 4: The Plot Thickens, 1928-1929; 'We are at a new kind of war with Russia': Anglo-Soviet relations, 1926-1927; The Francs Scandal, 1928; Red Letter Day: revelations in Parliament; Arrests in Berlin; Besedovsky jumps the wall; 5: The Philby Effect, 1960-1970; Three elections and two curious Foreign Secretaries: 1930-1960; 'Quite a pocketful of trouble': spies and suspicion, 1960-1964; The hole in the archive: 1965-1967

Insights from The Sunday TimesThe Bagot Enquiry and Report, 1967-1970; 6: New Labour, New Investigation, 1998-1999; In Search of the Missing Dimension, 1975-1987; Storks and gooseberry bushes, 1985-1996; A most extraordinary and mysterious business: looking for the Zinoviev Letter, 1998-1999; 7: So Who Wrote the Zinoviev Letter, and Does it Matter?; Reds; Whites; Blues; Conclusion: Good Conspiracy Theories Never Die; Appendix: The Zinoviev Letter: facsimile of message L/3900 from Riga, as received by the Secret Intelligence Service on 9 October 1924; Notes; Introduction; Chapter 1; Chapter 2

Chapter 3Chapter 4; Chapter 5; Chapter 6; Chapter 7; Conclusion; Note on Archival Sources and Bibliography; Documentary collections; books; articles; Picture Acknowledgements; Index