Join the Centre for Eurasian, Russian, and East European Studies (CEREES) and the Mile End Institute (MEI) to mark the centenary of the most famous dirty trick in British political history, the ‘Zinoviev Letter’, and explore how how disinformation, ‘Fake News’ and smearing shape our politics today.

When: Tuesday, October 29, 2024, 6:30 PM – 8:00 PM
Where: Skeel Lecture Theatre, The People’s Palace, Mile End

Book here

One hundred years ago this month, as voters prepared to go to the polls for the third time in two years, British politics was rocked by what would become the most famous ‘dirty trick’ in its long history: the ‘Zinoviev Letter’.

The Letter, encouraging the British proletariat to revolutionary fervour, was apparently sent by Grigori Zinoviev, head of Comintern, to the British Communist Party in September 1924. Its publication by the Daily Mail just before the General Election humiliated the first ever Labour government, headed by Ramsay MacDonald, when its political opponents used it to create a ‘Red Scare’ in the media. It was widely blamed for the Party’s defeat. Since it was first written a century ago, the Letter has been the subject of major Whitehall investigations in the 1960s and 1990s, and continues to crop up in the media, including during the Brexit referendum campaign and the 2017 general election.

With growing concerns about the impact of AI-driven disinformation on elections around the world, the Mile End Institute and the Centre for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies are marking the centenary of the Letter’s publication by exploring how disinformation, ‘Fake News’ and smearing have affected, and continue to shape, British politics today. We will be joined by Dr Gill Bennett, Professor Ciaran Martin, Professor Jean Seaton and Dr Robert Saunders.

About the Speakers:

Gill Bennett was the Chief Historian of the Foreign Office from 1995 to 2005, and Senior Editor of its official history of British foreign policy, Documents on British Policy Overseas. She has worked as a historian in Whitehall for over forty years and is an expert on the history of secret intelligence. She is the author of Six Moments of Crisis: Inside British Foreign Policy and The Zinoviev Letter: The Conspiracy That Never Dies.

Ciaran Martin is Professor of Practice in the Management of Public Organisations at the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford. He was the founding Chief Executive of the National Cyber Security Centre (part of GCHQ) and over 23 years in the Civil Service, Ciaran held senior roles within the Cabinet Office and served as the Principal Private Secretary to the Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Civil Service between 2002 and 2008.

Jean Seaton is Professor of Media History at the University of Westminster, the Official Historian of the BBC, and the Director of the Orwell Foundation. She helped to found ‘Full Fact’ and is the author of a number of books on the history and role of the media in politics, including Power without Responsibility: Press, Broadcasting and the Internet in Britain and Pinkoes and Traitors: The BBC and the Nation, 1974-1987.

Robert Saunders is Reader in British History at Queen Mary University of London and Deputy Director of the Mile End Institute. He is a regular commentator on British politics and author of Democracy and the Vote in British Politics and Yes to Europe: The 1975 Referendum and Seventies Britain.