political system and poison the very springs of our public life, and until they are removed the Labour Party is prejudiced in its task of uniting the workers of the world in the rebuilding of Europe, while the present Government is no less seriously prejudiced in the eyes of Europe as being held to owe its term of power to a secret service coup d'état. Wherefore, the Trades Union Congress General Council, whose position gives it peculiar advantages for gauging the opinion of the electorates both in this country and on the Continent, consider that it would be most regrettable if any considerations of party interest were to prevent Parliament and the two parties concerned from clearing the air by an official and public inquiry.

The Trades Union delegation in Moscow have investigated fully the authenticity of the "Red Letter" in so far as the Russians are concerned. But authenticity is really a minor matter compared to the question as to how this document came to get its authority. For, as the present Home Secretary pointed out to the House, it was the official action on and publication of the letter that made a crucial general election turn on this affair. This responsibility is shared between the Labour Party and the Foreign Office. The latter cannot demand a hearing in its own defence. This can only be done for it by the Labour Party.

The objections advanced against a public inquiry do not carry conviction. The safety of secret agents can be secured by their withdrawal, and has in any case been guaranteed by the Russian Government. If the Russian authorities can expose the officials and archives of the Foreign Office and Comintern to a foreign inspection, a refusal on our part to subject those of the Foreign Office and Scotland Yard to parliamentary investigation cannot but be held highly sus picious abroad. At home a persistence in opposing this public demand cannot but create growing contempt for and an ever-decreasing confidence in Parliament and public life.

The General Council, therefore, urge that the Government permit representatives of the Labour Party to carry out an investigation on this point in association with officials of the Foreign Office and the Home Office.

18th May, 1925.

Questions and Speeches
in Parliament

December 10, 1924.

Mr. N. MACLEAN asked the Prime Minister whether the original of the letter alleged to be signed by Zinoviev has been before the Cabinet or a Sub-Committee of the Cabinet; and whether he can state the grounds that led the Cabinet to publish their belief that the letter was not

a forgery, and whether he will place the full particulars of the documents or statements upon which that belief was based before the House.

The PRIME MINISTER (Mr. Baldwin): A SubCommittee of the Cabinet was appointed to consider the authenticity of the document, a copy of which had come into the possession of the Foreign Office, and after examination of the evidence put before them they came to the conclusion that there was no doubt that the letter was authentic. The answer to the last two parts of the question is in the negative.

(Evasive replies were returned to all further questions on this day.)

The Full-Dress Debate

December 10, 1924.

Mr. CLYNES: We have been assured by statements in the public Press that the Cabinet is convinced of the authenticity of the letter. To-day we learn from the Prime Minister that the Cabinet had before it a copy of that letter.

Our allegation is that no original letter has been seen, that this Committee of Inquiry, like its predecessor, could discover no original letter, that there is no original letter, and that only a copy has been before those who have had to consider this matter.

We are, therefore, entitled to ask, upon what evidence does the sub-Committee of the Cabinet base its conclusion that this copy of a letter is a copy of a genuine original?

My right hon. Friend yesterday, in a succession of questions to the Prime Minister, asker whether we could be assured of some independent form of inquiry into the reality or otherwise of this rather important document, and one of the silences of the Prime Minister's speech of yesterday afternoon was that in which no answer whatever was given to the question of the Leader of the Opposition, just as to-day no answer, at any rate, so far as to-day is concerned, has been volunteered to the question as it has now been repeated.

It is not enough to ask us to be satisfied with the assurance that the Government are convinced that this document is authentic without having revealed in any way whatever to us any of the evidence upon which they rely.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: There is another matter about this letter. It was not only signed by Zinoviev; it was also signed by a British subject, a not unknown man; I refer to Mr. McManus.

I understood in the election that if hon. Members opposite were returned there was going to be no tampering with

the loyalty of the forces. If this letter was genuine it was a direct incitement to disaffection amongst the troops and the men of the Navy.

This man is a British subject. Why has this man McManus not been arrested? If this letter is genuine, as the Government say they believe it is, they must have believed that this man McManus has committed a very terrible crime.

There we have a clear case where this man according to hon. Members opposite, ought to be brought to trial. Why is he not put on trial?

Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS: Perhaps it is as well that I should explain to the House exactly the position we take in regard to the Zinoviev letter. If the Zinoviev letter had merely appeared in the "Daily Mail" as an ordinary item of news, and had not appeared with the full sanction of the Prime Minister of the late Government, I do not think that any very great attention would have been paid to it. It would have been an ordinary letter carrying out exactly the statements which have from time to time been made by Zinoviev and other feaders of the Bolshevist party in Moscow.

The real reason why the Zinoviev letter attained such, from the opposite party's point of view, unenviable notoriety during the Election, was not because we did something, not because the "Daily Mail" did anything,, but because the right hon. Gentleman, as Foreign Secretary, thought it of such importance-it was quite impossible for him to have thought it a forgery-that he wrote a letter to M. Rakovsky complaining in such stern terms to the representative of a friendly nation.

I have been asked what we have done in regard to it. It was referred to a Cabinet Committee consisting of the Lord Chancellor, an ex-Lord Chancellor-Lord Birkenhead— the Foreign Secretary, the ex-Foreign Secretary-Lord Curzon-and Lord Cecil. Those five members of the Cabinet went thoroughly into it. They had placed before them at the Foreign Office the whole of the evidence that was placed before the late Government, the whole of the evidence which caused the late Prime Minister to write that letter and say to all the world, in effect, that the Zinoviev letter was a genuine one.

In addition to that, they had further evidence placed before them from the sources which this country has in foreign lands.

We who were not on the Committee were prepared to accept the statement which they made to us that they, as men of business, were convinced that the letter was a genuine letter and not a forgery.

We are not prepared and do not propose to give to the

House or the country the evidence upon which that opinion was based. It would be impossible, for reasons of safety to individual life, that the names of the people who produced this evidence should be given.

We cannot enter into a treaty with Russia, and there will be no treaty with Russia. But the late Prime Minister knows how to deal with Russia. I do not know whether anybody has read-it is almost as useful reading as the "Workers' Weekly"-one of those publications of the Labour Government on foreign policy, foreign policy, in which the right hon. Gentleman the late Prime Minister laid it down, quite definitely, that

"That Labour Government will stand no nonsense and no monkey-tricks from the Russian diplomatic representatives."

That is not my language; it is the language of the late Foreign Secretary (Mr. J. R. MacDonald).

The debate was re-opened on December 15th, 1924, when

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN said (after remarks exonerating J. R. MacDonald from any blame for delay in dealing with the "Letter"): The matter of the actual Zinoviev letter was left in a very unsatisfactory condition. The late Government held an inquiry by a Cabinet Committee, and they left office, the Committee having been unable to come to a decision as to whether the letter was in fact authentic or not.

Obviously, there are, and there always will be, strict limits imposed upon any Minister who is speaking of information that comes under the head of Secret Service. It is of the essence of a Secret Service that it must be secret, and if you once begin disclosure, there is no longer any Secret Service and you must do without it.

But I can say this: The letter was first received by the Government from one source. We know its whole course from its origin until it reached our hands. The next thing that happended was, that information was received by the Government of the existence of this letter from another source wholly independent of, and wholly unconnected with, the first source, and which did not know that we had any prior indication that there was such a letter at all.

The next stage was that from a third source, independent of both the others, not knowing either of the others and unknown to them, we got further evidence confirmatory of the authenticity of the document; and the last stage was that from a fourth source, independent of the three first, we got further confirmatory evidence.

I would add that the sources from which we obtained this evidence were not casual visitors to the Foreign Office who

arrived with a document to sell, but were people who were known to us and whose trustworthiness we have been in a position to prove over a space of time longer or shorter in the different cases. The evidence presented to our Committee was conclusive in the mind of all of us. It left not a shade of a shadow of a doubt as to the authenticity of the document, and we accordingly despatched the Note which bore my signature.

I am not going to argue the thing.

Henceforth I shall take the same attitude which I believe the Secretary of State in Washington took when he published a document which he declared to be authentic, when he was challenged in exactly this way by the Soviet authorities. I decline to discuss it any further.

I state that the decument is authentic, and I do not believe that any responsible person who had before him the evidence and the witnesses whom we had would not have come to the same conclusion.

Mr. RAMSAY MACDONALD: The right hon. Gentleman about the Zinoviev letter, began by making two statements regarding my own position and for those, if he will accept my most profound thanks, I offer them to him now.

He said, first of all, there was no delay in dealing with the matter. He said there was misunderstanding about the issue of the letter to M. Rakovsky. I am very much obliged and I am very gratified that that should be stated publicly at last.

For anyone to suggest that that misunderstanding was caused by anything which could be regarded as even amounting to a shadow of disloyalty, is unfair to a body of men with whom I have worked for eight or nine months, who are not only officials but friends, whom I hold in profound respect, than whom, so far as loyalty is concerned, no chief could desire a finer body of supporters.

My position is: "Authenticity not proved." I gather from what the right hon. Gentleman said that whereas we had two sources which seemed to suggest authenticity, he had four. First, he had the letter.

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: No, of course, I have not had the letter. The right hon. Gentleman himself knows that the original letter was not in the office and there would be no opportunity of seeing it after the Note which was sent, in his time, to the public.

Mr. MACDONALD: There must have been a letter if there was a copy of a letter, and the right hon. Gentleman has told us he has two other sources of information which we have not got. I wanted to ask the right hon. Gentleman if, from either of these other two sources, there was any better chance of getting the letter.