The Zinoviev Letter
by Scoop Shachtman, 22 November 2007
Two supporters of the Australian government have taken part in a historical re-enactment, with a contemporary twist, of the UK’s Zinoviev Letter.
Australia’s prime minister has condemned members of his own party for distributing leaflets implying the Labor opposition supports terrorism.
John Howard, who trails Labor’s Kevin Rudd in opinion polls ahead of a Saturday’s general election, said the Liberal Party had not authorised them.
The flyers purported to be from an Islamic group thanking Labor for its sympathy for the Bali bombers.
Two Liberal activists have been expelled from the party.
The leaflets were distributed in the Sydney constituency of Lyndsay - a marginal seat in what will be a keenly fought election.
The Zinoviev Letter was a supposed letter from sent in 1924 written by Grigory Zinoviev, chairman of the Comintern in the Soviet Union. Zinoviev promoted revolution through acts of sedition. It was intercepted by MI5, and then leaked to the Daily Mail with serious consequences for the Labour Party.
The letter was published in these newspapers four days before the 1924 General Election and contributed to the defeat of MacDonald and the Labour Party. After the election it was claimed that two of MI5’s agents, Sidney Reilly and Arthur Maundy Gregory, had forged the letter and that Major Joseph Ball, a MI5 leaked it to the press. In 1927 Ball went to work for the Conservative Central Office where he pioneered the idea of spin-doctoring.
Thursday 22 November 2007 at 17:47
I think the BBC will find the electorate name is spelled Lindsay.
The Libs have a history of this sort of thing just before elections–Pauline Hanson was a Liberal candidate until the party was forced to deselect her following public outrage over her foul racist remarks.
The Libs are running large animated adverts at the SMH accusing various Labor party figures of being ‘extremists’ and ‘fanatics’. John Howard (and that smirking turd Peter Reith) obviously has a short memory as he seems to have forgotten who it was who sent masked thugs armed with attack dogs and baseball bats into Australian workplaces and locked the employees out … oh, it was his fucking government.
Thursday 22 November 2007 at 18:16
It should be noted–for those naughty buggers who are too lazy to read the BBC report–that the expelled Liberal activists are the husbands of the (retiring) incumbent and her prospective replacement.