speculation undertaken by J.D. Gregory and other FO officials, MacDonald voiced his suspicions forcefully: we knew afterwards that the headquarters of the Conservative Association had the Zinovieff letter for days before it was published, and presumably the Daily Mail had it for weeks before it was published. I think it will be found that the Daily Mail had it before the Foreign Office had it.42 Nothing has been found in Intelligence or other archives to suggest that the lett r was in circulation before the Foreign Office received it from SIS on 9 October.43 It is certainly possible, however, that following its initial circulation a copy was passed to Conservative Central Office and/or the press, but ther is no conclusive evidence of this. If MacDonald's political opponents were in early pos ssion of this useful pi ce of ammunition against the Labour government, they chos carefully the best time to deploy it through publicity: the week b for the Gen ral Election. Whether or not such politicallymotivated manipulation took place, it is clear that there were a number of p opl , offi ial and unofficial, who may have thought it their duty to ensure that a opy of what was considered a seditious document r c ived proper publicity through the pr ss; equally cl arly, th y felt that they could not rely upon its bing mad public by th govemm nt through official channels that i , through the Prime Minister and Foreign ecretary, or the Foreign Offic it If. It i to th Foreign Office that we need to turn for the n xt link in th hain which mu t b forged b fore attempting to answer the question 'who wrot the Zinovi v I tt r?'
The Zinoviev Letter and the Foreign Office: protest and publication Th draft 1 tt r of prot t to th ovi t Charge d'Affaires which the Prime Mini t r had commission d on 16 October44 did not reach MacDonald until Thur day, th 23rd. A draft pr pared in orthern Department, unsigned but appar ntly ubmitt d by trang and initialled by Gregory, was amended xt n iv ly by r w who minuted on 21 0 tob r that the revised text 'puts th a quar ly. It an b puhli h d 0 oon as it has reached M. Rakovsky's hands. '45 h draft wa duly nt off to Ab ravon, but MacDonald had gone d wn t Ba claw to h lp hi son Malcolm in his parliamentary campaign and f Th Rt. Hon 28, 281/13.
J.
Ram ay MacDonald to the Treasury Board of Enquiry, 15
n ug ted by number of commentator that there were variant copies of the letter th in Lond n and overs a . It is impossible to disprove this, but the eviden e in m ts th t the variant were in fact tran lation and retranslations of th
f the d partmental draft i in N 8105/108/38, FO 371110478. Sir E. 7838, i r pr du ed in DBFP, Fir t eries, Volume XXV, p. 435.
47