A hundred years ago, Britain experienced its own “October Surprise”, a term used in US politics to describe a last minute campaign shocker with potentially consequential impact on any election’s outcome. During the 1924 general elections, the first Labour government in history was vying for another term. Their tenure had been marked by being a minority government for ten months, and they were battling their third election in two years. Their chances of victory were slim, but events took a sour turn when the Daily Mail published the “Zinoviev Letter” four days before the vote.
This letter was allegedly penned by Grigory Zinoviev, the chairman of the Communist International (Comintern), and appeared to be an instruction to the British Communist Party to instigate subversive activities. These activities, when paired with Labour’s intention to normalise UK-Soviet relations, would arguably incite the working class to revolt. The letter, comparable to Richard Pigot’s deceptive work which the Times had published 40 years earlier to smear Parnell, was identified by most experts as a fake.
Regardless, the apparent authenticity of the letter – further endorsed by other right-wing newspapers – was sufficient to shift the tide in favour of the Conservatives. How much impact the letter truly made in the Conservatives’ serious victory is still a topic of debate. Labour still saw substantial support, whereas most Conservative gains seemed to be at the Liberal Party’s expense.
Some critics propose that the scandal served to mask Labour’s potential failures, hindering the correct lessons from being learnt and necessary reforms from being made. The Conservatives reigned supreme with Stanley Baldwin as prime minister for the next five years. Another beneficiary of these elections was Winston Churchill, previously an independent candidate, who rejoined the Conservatives to assume the role of Chancellor of the Exchequer. The scandal also had an Irish aspect to it, as Arthur McManus, a Belfast-born trade unionist who had become the colonial secretary of the Comintern, was touted as another signatory of the letter.
McManus later found himself behind bars due to his part in instigating mutiny. Later, he surfaced again to participate in the inaugural assembly of the League against Imperialism and Colonial Oppression in 1927. However, he passed away that same year at a youthful age of 38. His remains lie in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis, amongst others.
There was also an unmistakable Irish undertone to an ensuing scandal, primarily due to Sidney Reilly, also dubbed as “Reilly Ace of Spies.” He was an espionage agent in reality and went on to inspire the famous fictional character, James Bond.
Despite the Irish undertones, Reilly did not have any Irish origins. Born with the surname Rosenblum, likely in Odessa, he adopted his false identity from one of his many wives, a widow named Margaret Thomas, who was a Reilly before she got married. He would frequently impersonate an Irish clergyman or a sailor’s son, maintaining he was born in Clonmel. His choice of pseudonym stemmed from his belief that in Europe, the British were the only ones to dislike the Irish, while the dislike for Jews was universal.
The plot thickens further as Reilly had a relationship with Ethel Voynich (1864-1960), who despite her name, was actually Irish by birth. Voynich was born as Ethel Boole in Cork, her father being renowned English mathematician George Boole, then professing at a precursor of UCC. Despite being an Irish-born author, Voynich remains largely unknown within Ireland.
Her 1897 novel, The Gadfly, was immensely popular among the Bolsheviks, and it was compulsory reading in USSR, selling millions of copies. Interestingly, the book was partly motivated by her lover, Reilly, who would later be perceived as a threat by the Russians, leading to his execution.
While Reilly was not directly engaged in fabricating the Zinoviev letter, he played a decisive role in smuggling it into Britain. Churchill, who benefited greatly from the letter, was among those who admired Reilly. However, Churchill later deemed it necessary to distance himself from Reilly, while arguing that, even if the letter was fake, it merely echoed the already established communist policy.
Reilly’s involvement did not grant him a long life. Within the span of a year, he was tempted back to Russia to connect with alleged anti-Bolshevik activists. However, it was a set-up. Captured and grilled, he was executed in a woodlands area near Moscow in November 1925.
Regardless of its actual impact, the controversy that sparked off on October 25th, 1924, rapidly morphed into a symbol for all catastrophic surprises revealed in the press.
Many years later, in 1952, its phantom still lingered over a defamation trial in Dublin, instigated by the poet Patrick Kavanagh. An auxiliary plot here was the mutual antagonism that had developed between Kavanagh and Brendan Behan by that point; a topic on which the former was expertly probed by defence lawyer John A Costello.
Following Kavanagh’s consistent and forceful denial of any friendship between the two writers, Costello presented Behan’s version of Kavanagh’s book Tarry Flynn, inscribed by the writer himself: “For Brendan, poet and painter, on the day he decorated my flat, Sunday 12th, 1950.”
A recovery from this was impossible. Years later, Anthony Cronin wrote that Costello had brandished “his hidden weapon, his Zinoviev letter”.