One elector in the rural Derbyshire village of Great Hucklow during the 1924 general
election, an election dominated by the fake Daily Mail "Zinoviev letter" recalled the
following events a number of years later in the Daily Worker 13th February 1940
"One
night" he recalled "The Duchess of Devonshire and Mrs Berry, who I always
understood was connected with the newspaper Berrys (Kemsley &
Camrose) came to the village classroom to speak on behalf of Lord
Hartington of Chatsworth House and Conservative MP
"They
worked the Red letter good and hard. Mrs Berry said if she had her way
she would drive all "these foreigners" out of the country at the point
of the sword"
"She
stabbed the air with an imaginary sword, and stamped her foot p but a
local farmer punctured her with the remark. "peace and retrenchment all
round, weve had enough bloodshed"
Note: - Click to enlarge sections of the M16/Tory forged Zinoviev letter
In the run-up to the 1929 election, the links between MI5 and the Tory party were renewed. The head of MI5's investigation branch, Major Joseph Ball, was employed by Conservative central office to run agents inside the Labour party. After the election, Ball was rewarded with the directorship of the Tories' research department.
The Zinoviev letter - Another Daily Mail conspired Tory Lie
The Zinoviev letter was
one of the greatest British political scandals of the last century - it
was forged by a MI6 agent's source and almost certainly leaked by MI6
or MI5 officers to the Conservative Party, It was then sold to the
newspapers.
The
Daily Mail printed the forged letter allegedly from the newly
established Soviet Russian Government on 25th November, in order to
cause maximum embarrassment and electoral damage to the first Labour
government, days prior to the 1924 General election (Which Labour duly
lost).
The
extent of the Intelligence Services, Foreign office, and Conservative
Party involvement in perpetrating the forgery was not fully known until
the late Robin Cook Foreign Secretary ordered a report by chief
historian Gill Bennett into the events.
Ken Livingston House of Commons 10th January 1996
We
all know about the Zinoviev letter, which led to the downfall of the
first Labour Government in 1924. It is now believed to have been
produced by two Russian emigres who were working in Berlin. They passed
the forgery to an MI5 officer, Donald Thurn. Once in the hands of MI5,
senior officials realised that its details of an alleged communist plot
would be a devastating blow to the Labour Government in the closing days
of the election campaign. MI5 leaked the letter to a Tory Member of
Parliament and former intelligence officer, Sir Reginald Hall. It also
leaked it to Tory central office and the Daily Mail, which obligingly ran it on its front page. In the run-up to the 1929 election, the links between MI5 and the Tory party were renewed. The head of MI5's investigation branch, Major Joseph Ball, was employed by Conservative central office to run agents inside the Labour party. After the election, Ball was rewarded with the directorship of the Tories' research department.
