Predestination and Freewill: Augustine and Pelagius
Saint Augustine
The use of Romans in the construction of soteriological concerns has a
long and varied history. Perhaps the most important discourse
concerning the will involved St. Augustine of Hippo and the English monk
Pelagius, both of whom relied upon Pauline thought in their arguments.
In his “Letter to Demetrius,” Pelagius outlines his theology of the
human will, using or inferring from various texts and concepts found in
Paul’s Letter to the Church at Rome. Pelagius argued that the human will
had the inherent capacity to perform both good and evil, that the will
was not forced to do evil necessarily, and that the human will became
habituated into evil.[1] For his understanding, “doing good has
become difficult for us only because of the long custom of sinning,
which begins to infect us even in our childhood. Over the years it
gradually corrupts us, building an addiction and then holding us bound
with what seems like the force of nature itself…. If even before the law
and long before the coming of our Lord and Savior, some people lived
upright and holy lives, as we have said, we should believe all the more
that we can do the same after his coming. Christ’s grace has taught us
and regenerated us as better persons. His blood has purged and cleansed
us, his exampled spurred us to righteousness.”[2] Using Romans
9:20, Pelagius argues that the Pauline Christian perspective indicates
that people are wicked because they work not to improve their loves, but
complain about their nature. “If, then, even apart from God, these
people demonstrate how God made them, we should recognize what can be
accomplished by Christians whose nature has been restored to a better
condition by Christ and who are assisted by divine grace.”[3]
Thus for Pelagius, the human will remains endowed with the freedom of
choice between good and evil even now, and while the humans tend to sin,
they act and choose not because of predetermined necessity but of their
own willing.
St. Augustine of Hippo took a different approach to the Pauline
understanding of the relationship of the human will to salvation.
Augustine understood Pelagius to attribute too little to God in the
salvation process: “It becomes clear that the grace Pelagius
acknowledges is God’s showing and revealing what we ought to do, not his
giving and helping us to do it.”[4] For Augustine, the human
will, empowered and sustained by the grace of God, wills toward
salvation, though only in part. For, “Who does not realize that a person
comes or does not come by his free choice? If he does not come, then
free choice acted alone. If he comes, however, then it must have been
helped, and helped not only to what to do but to do what it knows. Thus
when God teaches through the grace of the Spirit rather than the letter
of the law, the result of his teaching is not simply that a person is
aware of what he has learned by knowing but also that he seeks it by
willing and accomplishes by acting. This divine way of teaching assists
not only the natural capacity for willing and working but also the
actual willing and working itself.”[5] The grace of God held primary importance for Augustine’s soteriology, as without it nothing could be accomplished.[6]
Augustine affirms the understanding of Ambrose of Milan concerning the
relationship between God and human will, that “the Lord also cooperates
with our wills”[7] and that ultimately God remains sovereign over all human action.[8] Thus for Augustine, “Free choice is adequate for evil, but it can manage good only if it is helped by Sovereign Good”[9], and thus the human will on its own remains not able to not sin.[10]
Augustine also gave a number of other considerations concerning the
understanding of the human will and salvation. Of great importance in
understanding Luther’s interpretation of the Romans, Augustine laid the
foundation for a strong dichotomy of law and grace in interpreting Paul.
Quoting Romans 7:7, Augustine writes that, “Thus the law and grace are
so different that the law is not only useless but actually an obstacle
in many ways unless grace assists. This shows, moreover, the function of
the law: it makes people guilty of transgressions and forces them to
take refuge in grace in order to be liberated and helped to overcome
evil desires. It commands more than it helps; it diagnoses illness but
does not cure.”[11] Using his three-part model of capacity, will,
and action to describe the relationship of the human will to salvation,
Augustine writes that “God not only helps the capacity even if a person
neither wills nor acts well, but also helps willing and action itself,
so that a person wills and works well…. Let him [Pelagius] admit that
this is the grace of God in our Lord Jesus Christ, through which he
makes us righteous by his justice rather than our own, that our justice
is that which comes from him.”[12] These understandings will
become important in viewing Luther and Erasmus’ use of Romans and their
constructions concerning the human will, as both Erasmus and,
especially, Luther believe that they are interpreting Augustine’s
interpretation of Paul with regard to soteriology correctly. [1] Pelagius. “Letter to Demetrius.” Translated and Edited by
J. Patout Burns. Sources of Early Christian Though: Theological
Anthropology. Series Editor William G, Rusch. Fortress Press:
Philadelphia, 1981. 49. [2] Ibid., 50. [3] Ibid., 43. [4]
Augustine of Hippo. ”On the Grace of Christ.” Translated and Edited by
J. Patout Burns. Sources of Early Christian Thought: Theological
Anthropology. Series Editor William G. Rusch. Fortress Press:
Minneapolis, 1981. 67. [5] Ibid., 72. [6] Ibid., 82. [7] Ibid., 91. [8] Ibid., 93. [9]
Augustine of Hippo. “On Rebuke and Grace.” Translated and Edited by J.
Patout Burns. Sources of Early Christian Thought: Theological
Anthropology. Series Editor William G. Rusch. Fortress Press:
Minneapolis, 1981. 101. [10] Ibid., 100-101. [11]
Augustine of Hippo. ”On the Grace of Christ.” Translated and Edited by
J. Patout Burns. Sources of Early Christian Thought: Theological
Anthropology. Series Editor William G. Rusch. Fortress Press:
Minneapolis, 1981. 67. [12] Ibid., 94.
The snow falls gradually in Penrhos. I
meet the dog walkers as they pass the T6 bus stop. Some predict that the
snow will fall heavily today and others tomorrow. Mervyn appears and
points out that you cannot see the mountain . He tells me that the T6
failed to appear yesterday. I had caught the X50 from the bus station
but today it appears and as I write we speed across Crynant common. The
sky is full of snow...and I begin to wonder if I will make my therapy session in Penclawdd tomorrow...the wind is stronger today and it won't reach above freezing.
Someone posts on Neath politics the amazing fact that Neil McEvoy is
giving his staff St David's day off. I wonder if they were allegedly
bullied I to it lol. I remove the post...
In Port Talbot debate
and argue they hold a referendum to decide if I should remain or. leave.
The turnout reaches rather less than 1.5%. My crime was to out up a
post about a nasty little Nazi in the group. . The 180 odd characters
who wished me to leave feel that I think they are stupid and don't
understand reality . I notice that none of them notice the fascist and
anti Semitic pics on his FB.. stupid is as stupid does....Fortunately
another 10,000 make no comment or vote. But I would like to thank the 10
heroes who stood with me last night. It seems that you have to avoid
being judged even if you have Nazi propaganda on your FB profile...its
an odd world...lol...Weimar has come to Port Talbot...oh well tomorrow
belongs to me...you see tbey seem to think I am worse than a
Nazi...apparently you can't mention what goes on in the group outside
...but as long as you don't publish Nazi propaganda and just stick to
Britain First it's ok..
Far-right terror threat 'growing' in UK as four plots foiled
The retiring head of counter-terrorism policing in the UK has warned of the growing threat of far-right terrorism.
Assistant
Commissioner Mark Rowley, who will retire from the Met Police next
month, said four extreme-right terror plots were disrupted last year.
Ten Islamist-inspired plots have been foiled since March last year, he added.
In
a speech made at Policy Exchange, the Met Police's Mr Rowley also
warned that far-right extremists are working in similar ways to Islamist
extremists.
He said they create intolerance, exploit grievances, and generate distrust of state institutions.
One of the four alleged far-right plots disrupted was that of white supremacist Ethan Stables. Earlier this month, he was convicted of plotting an axe and machete attack on a gay pride event at a pub in Barrow.
Mr Rowley said: "Islamist and right-wing extremism is reaching
into our communities through sophisticated propaganda and subversive
strategies creating and exploiting vulnerabilities that can ultimately
lead to acts of violence and terrorism.
"Ten conspiracies of an Islamist nature were stopped since the Westminster attack.
"And
I can tell you today that over the same period police have been able to
prevent a further four extreme, right-wing inspired plots in the UK."
He said it was "important we make these figures public in order to illustrate the growth of right-wing extremism".
Referring
to the banned group National Action, he said: "For the first time we
have a home-grown proscribed white supremacist, neo-Nazi terror group,
which seeks to plan attacks and build international networks."
Live investigations
Last year, the security service MI5 joined the fight against the right-wing terrorist threat.
There are currently more than 600 live investigations and more than 3,000 people of interest at any one time.
While
they have not been involved directly in terrorism, he singled out Tommy
Robinson, who founded the English Defence League (EDL), and Jayda
Fransen, the deputy leader of Britain First, as voices from the far
right who stir up tensions.
Mr Rowley told the BBC: "In the noise
and focus on the global threat, and what we've wrestled with with Daesh
[the Islamic State group], I don't think the change and growth in
extreme right-wing terrorist threat has been explained or described well
enough - and that's one of the things I wanted to do."
Aside from
the attempted gay pride attack in Barrow, the other three alleged plots
that were foiled last year are yet to come to trial.
One allegedly involved a neo-Nazi buying a machete with the intention of murdering the Labour MP Rosie Cooper.
Image copyrightGetty ImagesImage caption
Mr Rowley oversaw the response to five terror attacks in the UK last year, including at Westminster
Mr Rowley said the ability of extremists and
terrorists of all kinds to "ply their trade" through the internet was of
great concern.
He urged social media companies to do more to combat extremism.
"Many of them tried to argue for some that they simply provide pipes, they have no editorial responsibilities," he said.
"That
argument was always in my view nonsense. They've stopped using that
argument. They've started to try and take some responsibility.
"I think to be fair to them, they can't exert editorial control over everything that is published on their sites.
"But
they can exert a massive amount of control both on the day-to -ay
management of it, and I think more in the future about how they design
their platforms and their operating systems and their products.
"Their
products shouldn't simply be designed for maximising profit, they
should be designed with a parallel objective around public safety."
'Throw away the key'
Mr
Rowley was also asked what should happen to two Londoners suspected of
being members of an Islamic State cell - dubbed "the Beatles" by Western
media because of their British accents.
The gang was notorious for kidnapping Western hostages and filming their murders - often by beheading.
Alexanda
Kotey and El Shafee Elsheikh were captured in Syria in January and are
accused of links to a string of hostage murders in Iraq and Syria.
Mr
Rowley said: "The people who have done the most ghastly things
overseas, the ones who don't fight to the death, we would all like to
see them never able to do anyone any harm ever again.
"Locking them up and throwing away the key would be a great idea."
Mohammed Emwazi, better known as "Jihadi John", was a suspected member of the cell before his death.
I come across a nasty and vile post from one Kurtis Price. Naturally I
find him on Port Talbot Debate and Argue Facebook page. It shows a. bus
driver beating off an assailant. It's Britain First propaganda and as I
look through the pictures on Kurtis Price profile I find pictures
celebrating the far right . I find one talking about how Hitler made
Germany great again. It mocks liberals condemns gay and trans people and
others.. I find Fascist iconography everywhere and code
words about "international finance" and the condemnation of "Jewry".
There are pictures of Trump and others from the alt right. He will
clearly be a Holacaust denier. Thrre is a pu ture if German soldiers at
the Christmas day truce of 1914. There is even a picture of the idiot
with a Nazi haircut sandwiched between British flags..in a fascist
pose.. There are pictures of SS soldiers and fictional nightmares of
fascist cities and pseudo architecture and art... and I really wonder
what on earth the admins of Port Talbot Debate and Argue are doing
allowing such individuals to join the group. Their rules claim to be
anti racist and against hate speech. WTF are they doing?
Enter Roderigo and Iago. Hopelessly
in love with Desdemona, Roderigo is angry that his supposed friend Iago
didn't do anything about the elopement of Desdemona and Othello, but
Iago convinces him that he hates Othello.
Brabantio appears above. Shouting
vulgarities, Iago and Roderigo announce the elopement to Desdemona's
father, Brabantio, who declares that he will form a posse to chase down
Othello. Iago sneaks off to join Othello so that he can pretend that he
is still his loyal ensign.
Enter Roderigo and Iago:
Being a dramatic genius, Shakespeare is able to begin with a rush, but
still provide -- or imply -- a lot of background information.
As the scene opens, Roderigo is pouting, and exclaims, "Tush!
never tell me; I take it much unkindly / That thou, Iago, who hast had
my purse / As if the strings were thine, shouldst know of this"
(1.1.1-3). The "this" is the elopement of Othello and Desdemona.
Roderigo loves Desdemona, but he's also a twit -- gullible, spoiled, and
stupid. In fact, he's such a twit that Brabantio, Desdemona's father,
has told him to stay away from the house. Roderigo, however, can't
quit, so he has been using Iago as a go-between to deliver gifts and
messages to Desdemona. He's also been giving Iago money for his
trouble, which is what he means when he complains that Iago "hast had my
purse / As if the strings were thine." Iago is Roderigo's opposite --
self-possessed, cynical, and very smart. He's one of Shakespeare's most
frightening villains, because he's the sort who can look you in the
eye, lie through his teeth, and make you believe he's your best friend
on earth. At the moment he is in a little difficulty with Roderigo, who
assumes that Iago must have known about Othello's plans, but Iago
quickly talks his way out of the difficulty and takes command of the
situation.
Iago declares that the elopement was a complete surprise, and Roderigo answers, "Thou told'st me thou didst hold him in thy hate" (1.1.7).
This gives Iago a chance to talk about himself, which he loves to do.
To prove his hatred of Othello, he tells the story of how he was passed
over for promotion to lieutenant. He says that three very important
Venetians very humbly asked Othello to give the job to him: "Three great ones of the city, / In personal suit to make me his lieutenant, / Off-capp'd to him" (1.1.8-10).
Maybe these three "great ones" just happened to take a personal
interest in Iago's career, but it seems more likely that Iago tried to
pull some strings. He declares that "I know my price, I am worth no worse a place" (1.1.11),
so it must have been painful to him to see his hopes dashed.
Sarcastically, he describes Othello as a pompous ass who uses military
jargon to deliver the message that he has already chosen another man.
Brabantio appears above:
The shouting brings out Brabantio "above." "Above" (which is the only
stage direction Shakespeare wrote for Brabantio's appearance) indicates
the second level of the Globe, the same place used for the balcony scene
in Romeo and Juliet. Iago probably stands directly under
this balcony, so that Brabantio can't possibly see him. It's dark out,
but Iago wouldn't want to take any chances, and a little later in the
scene he tells Roderigo that no one must know that he has spoken against
Othello. So here, as throughout the play, Iago is the instigator,
hidden in the shadows, but pulling all the strings.
If we were awakened in the middle of the night by a siren wailing ten
feet from our window, we'd probably ask the same questions Brabantio
does: "What is the reason of this terrible summons? / What is the matter there?" (1.1.82-83).
For a second the two men tease Brabantio a little, asking him if his
family is at home and if his doors are locked, but then Iago gets down
and dirty. Out of the dark comes his voice:
Iago is a genius, of a kind. He puts many kinds of poison into one
nasty package. He makes Brabantio out to be a dupe, so much a fool that
he needs to put on his gown to cover his nakedness. Then he appeals to
Brabantio's love for his dear daughter and makes use of pornography,
shouting "now" three times to make Brabantio see Othello
"tupping" her. (The word "tupping" — or "topping" — is not exactly the
same as our "f" word, but Iago uses it to the same effect, because it is
a word that is normally used only to describe animals.) The image of
the lecherous black man tupping the innocent white girl is meant to
inflame Brabantio's racial prejudice. Finally, Iago does his best to
make Brabantio panic, by showing him a world of uncaring people who will
keep on snoring ("snorting") peacefully unless he rings the alarm bell.
Brabantio again threatens consequences, but Roderigo promises to accept
any consequences after he delivers the news, and Brabantio lets him
speak. Offering a kind of sarcastic self-justification, Roderigo tells
Brabantio that Desdemona has run away in a gondola (a Venetian taxi) to
be in the "gross clasps of a lascivious Moor" (1.1.126),
but that if Brabantio approved of this, then Roderigo owes him an
apology. Then Roderigo tells Brabantio to look for himself, and if he
finds that Desdemona is at home, Roderigo will accept punishment. This
speech has its desired effect. Brabantio rushes back indoors, calling
for help and saying that he had a bad dream of just this sort of thing.
Knowing that Brabantio will find that Desdemona has indeed run away,
Iago decides it's time to go. If he stays, someone will ask him to
testify against Othello, and that will be useless, because Othello is
not about to lose his job. No matter what he has done with Desdemona,
Venice doesn't have anyone besides Othello who is capable of dealing
with the war that's about to begin in Cyprus. Therefore, Iago is going
to return to Othello and pretend loyalty. However, this does not mean
that Iago is going to let the matter drop. To make sure that Othello is
found by Desdemona's angry father, Iago tells Roderigo to lead
Brabantio to the Sagittary, an inn.
As soon as Iago has taken off, Brabantio comes onto stage, accompanied
by servants carrying torches. He has found that his daughter is indeed
gone, and he's preparing to go after her. He's also feeling sorry for
himself. He says, "It is too true an evil: gone she is; / And what's to come of my despised time / Is nought but bitterness" (1.1.160-162).
He asks where Roderigo saw Desdemona and how he knew it was her, but
doesn't give him a chance to answer. Instead he complains that being a
father only means pain, and that no father should trust his daughter.
Then it occurs to him that his daughter is not really at fault, and asks
Roderigo, "Is there not charms / By which the property of youth and maidhood / May be abused?" (1.1.171-173).
"Charms" are magic spells, and "the property of youth and maidhood" is
the natural innocence and vulnerability of a girl. He thinks that
perhaps his daughter didn't betray him after all, that perhaps Othello
used magic on her. By the next scene this idea will have developed into
a certainty in Brabantio's mind, and he will accuse Othello of using
both magic and drugs on Desdemona. At present he is so desperate that
he even expresses the wish that Roderigo had had her. What he never
considers is the possibility that Desdemona could be happily in love
with a good man.
Brabantio sends out search parties and then asks Roderigo if he knows
where Desdemona and Othello might be. Roderigo replies that if
Brabantio will get together a party of armed men, he can probably lead
them to the place. Brabantio, a man of power and influence, is sure he
can do that, and so off they go to hunt down Othello. We're looking
forward to seeing who Othello really is. In this scene, he's been
portrayed as a pompous, oversexed, thieving alien, but the portrayal has
been created by his enemies -- a fool, a hypocrite, and a father who
thinks his daughter is his property.
Citations follow this format: (Act.Scene.Line). Line numbers correspond to the Norton edition.
Quote #1
IAGO Even now, now, very now, an old black ram Is tupping your white ewe. Arise, arise! Awake the snorting citizens with the bell, Or else the devil will make a grandsire of you. Arise, I say! (1.1.97-101)
Iago uses racist slurs when he wakens Brabantio with the
news that his daughter, Desdemona (a white Venetian), has eloped with
Othello (an older, black man). When Iago says an "old black ram"
(Othello) is "tupping" (sleeping with) Brabantio's "white ewe"
(Desdemona), he plays on Elizabethan notions that black men have an
animal-like, hyper-sexuality. This seems geared at manipulating
Brabantio's fears of miscegenation (when a couple "mixes races" through
marriage and/or sex).
History Snack: It's also important to note
that, although Othello is probably a Christian, Iago calls him "the
devil," playing on a sixteenth century idea that black men were evil and
that the devil often took the shape and form of a black man. Check out
what Reginald Scott had to say in his famous 1584 book, The Discovery of Witchcraft:
"Bodin alloweth the divell the shape of a black moore, and as he saith,
he used to appear to Mawd Cruse, Kate Darey, and Jon Harviller."
(Later, it's no surprise that Brabantio will accuse Othello of using
black magic to woo Desdemona.)
Quote #2
BRABANTIO This is Venice. My house is not a grange. […] IAGO Because we come to do you service and you think we are ruffians, you'll have your daughter covered with a Barbary horse, you'll have your nephews neigh to you, you'll have coursers for cousins and jennets for germans. […] I am one, sir, that comes to tell you your daughter and the Moor are now making the beast with two backs. (1.1.119; 123-127; 129-131)
We've seen how Iago uses animal imagery in his racist
diatribe against Othello, which is grounded in the idea that black men
(and women) are inhuman. Here, Brabantio objects to Iago's
middle-of-the-night assertions that Desdemona has eloped by saying his
house isn't a "grange" (a farm or a farmhouse). Iago takes the
opportunity to pun on the term "grange," as he claims that Desdemona is
having sex with a "barbary horse" and, as a result, Brabantio will have
relatives that "neigh to him." Desdemona and Othello, he says, are
"making the beast with two backs" (in other words, humping,
like camels). This isn't the first time Iago has implied that Othello's
animal-like sexuality corrupts Desdemona. Compare this to 1.1.106-113
above.
Quote #3
BRABANTIO She, in spite of nature, Of years, of country, credit, every thing, To fall in love with what she feared to look on! It is a judgment maimed and most imperfect That will confess perfection so could err Against all rules of nature, (1.3.114-119)
Desdemona's father argues that her love for Othello is
unnatural, since, according to him, Desdemona would never fall for a
black man who she "fear'd to look on." Of course, Brabantio couldn't be
more wrong about his daughter – Desdemona is in love Othello.
It seems that Iago has played Brabantio perfectly. Iago knew that
Brabantio was racist and, as previous passages demonstrate, he used
Brabantio's attitude toward the idea of a mixed marriage in order to
rile the man against Othello. Brabantio repeatedly insists that Othello
must have "enchanted" Desdemona with "foul charms" and magic spells.
Otherwise, he insists, Desdemona never would never have run "to the
sooty bosom" of Othello (1.2.70).
Othello, an African prince | Source
The Issue of Race
People
discriminate for many different reasons: fear, envy, the desire for
power, or a need to disassociate themselves from others. They can, thus,
use someone's skin color (an innate trait that cannot be altered) to
express their hatred.
Othello, in Shakespeare’s play Othello, is a happily married
and widely respected general in the Venetian army despite his African
heritage. In the beginning of the story, Othello has not, as yet,
experienced discrimination. However, Iago succeeds in bringing about the
ruin of Othello and his wife Desdemona by revealing to Othello the
existence of racist ideas and convincing him that he must act out
against the individuals supposedly harboring racist-fueled resentment.
Through Iago’s manipulation of Othello and others, his claim comes to
pass. In the end, people use the color of Othello's skin to condemn his
erratic behavior. And by his believing that racism exists, Othello also
creates it.
Othello's Background
Othello
is an African prince, born into privilege and royalty. He claims, “I
fetch my life and being/From men of royal siege.” (III.iii. 21-22). He
left his native homeland and his life of guaranteed luxury to live among
white Europeans and be free of the innate obligations of royalty. In
his new home, his only obligations are to people he himself has chosen
to serve: the Venetian government and his wife Desdemona. Even in this
position as general, Othello still experiences freedom since he can
retire at his leisure, and he tells Iago:
But that I love the gentle Desdemona,
I would not my unhoused free condition
Put into circumscription and confine
For the sea’s worth (I.ii.27-28).
This statement suggests that if he had not met Desdemona, Othello
would have continued to live life in a “free condition” without
matrimonial commitments that “put into circumscription and confine” his
freedom.
Othello delights in and experiences the ultimate freedom to do as he
pleases. He is free to make the choices that ultimately affect his life,
and enjoys his self-made position. The color of his skin has not
prevented him from achieving a high rank in society and exercising the
power and freedom such a position entails.
Othello and Desdemona, husband and wife, in happy times | Source
A Plot Rooted in Jealousy
These
achievements have earned Othello the respect and admiration of those
around him with the exception of a resentful few, including Iago and
Roderigo. Iago hates Othello because he appointed the inexperienced
Cassio as his lieutenant instead of Iago, who instead became his
“ancient.” Iago enacts his revenge upon Othello by manipulating
Roderigo, who desires Othello’s wife Desdemona. Roderigo expresses his
jealousy by calling Othello racial slurs: “What a full fortune does the
thick-lips owe/If he can carry ‘t thus!” (I.i.65-66). Both men plot to
bring an end to Othello’s marriage by telling Desdemona’s father,
Brabantio, that Othello kidnapped her.
They succeed in angering her father when they bring up the subject of
race. Iago says to Brabantio, “An old black ram/Is tupping your white
ewe” (I.i.87-88). With this saying, Iago and Roderigo hint that Othello
and Desdemona’s future children will be half-breeds who will become the
ridicule of society and bring shame upon Brabantio. They continue by
saying, “You’ll have your daughter covered with a Barbary/Horse; you’ll
have your nephews neigh to you; you’ll have coursers for cousins and
gennets for germans” (I.i.110-12).
Is Racism Fabricated?
Afraid
that such events would jeopardize his position as senator, Brabantio
accuses Othello of kidnapping and bewitching his daughter in a desperate
attempt to retain his own power and honor in the eyes of society. In
his defense, Othello points out that in the past Brabantio “lov’d me;
oft invited me” (I.iii.128), showing that Brabantio was not racist and
did not discriminate against Othello until Iago's interference made him
feel it was in his best political interests to do so.
Desdemona acquits Othello of any wrongdoing, and the Duke says to
Brabantio: “If virtue no delighted beauty lack/Your son-in-law is far
more fair than black” (I.iii.288-89). The Duke tells Brabantio that he
should not put importance on Othello’s skin color, but on his virtuous
deeds and nature instead.
The character Iago, who brings about the demise of Desdemona and the ruin of Othello with accusations of racism | Source
Othello Starts to Believe That Racism Exists
Othello,
himself, is unaware of any existing racism or of the power of such
thoughtless hatred. He declares, “My parts, my title and my perfect
soul/Shall manifest me rightly” (I.ii.31-32). He does not believe that
discrimination can determine his guilt. At first, this notion of
universal equality works against Iago’s claims that Desdemona is
cheating on Othello because of his skin color. Othello confidently
declares, “Nor from mine own weak merits will I draw/The smallest fear
or doubt of her revolt/For she had eyes, and chose me” (III.iii.187-89).
However, he goes on to say, “And yet, how nature erring from itself—”
(III.iii.228). This indicates that, perhaps deep down, Othello believes
that it is in Desdemona’s inherent nature to favor men of her own race.
Iago draws upon Othello's doubt and says, “Her will, recoiling to her
better judgment/May fall to match you with her country forms/and happily
repent” (III.iii.226-28). By saying this, Iago implies that Desdemona
compares Othello with other white Venetian men and regrets her marriage.
Persuaded by Iago's words, Othello starts to believe that Desdemona is
cheating on him because he is black.
Left alone with these thoughts, Othello states “I’ld whistle her off
and let her down the wind/To prey at fortune (III.iii.263-64). His words
suggest that if Desdemona was proven false, he would cast her out of
his household. However, after he brings up the issue of his own race and
recognizes how he is different from the rest of society, Othello lashes
out in anger at Desdemona, the scapegoat for his overpowering sense of
self-loathing:
Haply, for I am black
And have not those soft parts of conversation
That chamberers have, or for I am declin’d
Into the vale of years (yet that’s not much)
She’s gone. I am abus’d: and my relief
Must be to loathe her (III.iii.264-69)
Othello does not just criticize Desdemona for her infidelity nor
condemns her for her sins, but he, in a way, justifies her actions by
assuming that his own race-related weaknesses motivated her to have an
affair with another man. This quote shows a change in Othello. He begins
to hate Desdemona because he now believes that she cheated on him
because of his race. He will not be content with just throwing her out,
but is now consumed with loathing because he believes her cheating and
discrimination has caused him to feel pain and inferiority.
Othello's Character Comes Into Question
As
Iago continues to supply Othello with 'proof' of Desdemona’s supposed
infidelity, Othello is further consumed with rage and jealousy. When
Lodovico comes to deliver a letter to Othello, Desdemona makes a comment
which Othello assumes is about her other lover, and he slaps her.
Lodovico is shocked at this rash behavior, which is so out of character,
and tells Othello: “My lord, this would not be believ’d in
Venice/Though I should swear I saw ‘t; ‘til very much” (IV.i.225-26). He
goes on to question Othello’s reputation after such an act, saying:
Is this the noble Moor whom our full senate
Call all in all sufficient? Is this the nature
Whom passion could not shake? Whose solid virtue
The shot of accident, nor dart of chance,
Could neither graze nor pierce? (IV.i.245-49)
Othello becomes even more rash when he calls Desdemona a whore, and
Emilia, Iago’s wife, exclaims: “Here’s a change indeed!” (IV.ii.107).
However, it is not until Othello commits the ultimate crime that his
skin color is held against him. They condemn his race because they
struggle to find a meaning for this sudden and seemingly unprovoked
action.
Death of Desdemona by Othello's hand | Source
Murder
When
Othello murders his wife, it forces those who formerly respected and
admired him, and those who held him to be equal on all levels, to use
his skin color to explain his great misdeeds. For example, Emilia calls
him a “blacker devil!” (IV.ii.132). On the topic of Desdemona’s supposed
infidelity, Emilia states that Desdemona was true and “was too fond of
her most filthy bargain” (IV.iii.157), contemptuously referring to
Othello in racist terms. His race is now recognized and being utilized
by those who Othello alienated through his irrational actions. If he had
not been prompted through jealousy and his own sense of self-loathing,
Othello would continue to have been regarded in high esteem by the rest
of society.
Conclusion
Othello
had previously lived a life free of racial discrimination, except for
those few who envied and resented him, or feared he would sabotage their
powers. These few used his race as a means of bringing about his
destruction. For the rest of society, he was considered a noble and
virtuous general, and his color was of little consequence. However, when
Othello committed atrocious crimes because of his unfounded jealousy,
those who had previously believed him to be admirable and good condemned
him, not by criticing his character, but by criticizing his
distinguishing racial characteristic: his color.
(Aside) O, you are well tuned now!
But I'll set down the pegs that make this music,
As honest as I am. (2.1.191–93)
Setting the scene
In Act 2, Scene 1 of Othello, Iago formulates his plan to drive Othello mad. Shakespeare shifts the action from Venice
to Cyprus. A storm has dispersed the Venetian fleet so that Cassio
arrives first, anxious for Othello's safety. Desdemona arrives later
with Iago and Emilia. The group wait, bantering on the topic of women.
Iago notices Cassio's courteous manner towards Desdemona and resolves,
'with as little a web as this will I / ensnare as great a fly as Cassio'
(2.1.164). Desdemona is relieved by Othello’s arrival and the joyful
party depart, leaving Iago with Roderigo.
In this key passage (2.1.191–254), Iago persuades Roderigo that
Desdemona loves Cassio. His speech plays upon stereotypes, revealing the
dangerous underbelly of his earlier misogynistic ‘jokes’. His language
is heavily ironic, repeatedly calling Cassio a ‘knave’, though we know
this is the role Iago himself gleefully identifies with. As he reminds
us in his following soliloquy, ‘knavery’s plain face is never seen till
used' (2.1.267).
Boydell's Collection of Prints illustrating Shakespeare's works
An illustration of Act Two, Scene 1 of Othello. Iago looks on as Othello and Desdemona greet each other. View images from this item (24)
Iago makes it clear that his object is discord. The metaphor of
Othello and Desdemona as ‘well tuned’ string instruments (2.1.191–92)
portrays their current harmony but also implies their vulnerability: it
is not difficult for Iago to ‘set down the pegs’ – fiddle with the
tuning keys – of their relationship. His control of their heartstrings
mirrors his control of Roderigo’s purse strings (1.1.2–3). The image of
discordant music is a fitting one for his actions, as Iago’s success
lies in his ability to distort and pervert what should be other
characters’ most positive traits: Othello’s passionate honour,
Desdemona’s commitment, Cassio’s courtesy. This aside also encapsulates
his keen sense of irony (‘As honest as I am’, 2.1.193) and the role of
the audience. Iago’s true intentions are never revealed to other
characters – it is only through sneaking asides and hate-filled
soliloquies that we are given access to his plots. In this manner, we
are colluders, silent witnesses of his evil, failing to intervene.
Iago’s co-conspirator, Roderigo, has less access to his diabolical
plans than we do, despite Iago posing as his benefactor with
astonishingly little effort: 'Pish! But sir, you be ruled by me'
(2.1.248). Iago is portrayed, through Roderigo's compliance, as
masterful and persuasive, laying the ground for the ease with which he
later poisons Othello's mind.
Photograph of Conrad Nelson as Iago in Othello at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, 2009
Iago, in a later scene, holding the handkerchief that will become a vital part of his plan. View images from this item (1)
The key theme in the passage is sexual appetite. Iago portrays
Desdemona as lustful, desperate to trade Othello for a more refined
Cassio. Racial and female stereotypes
also dominate. Iago refers to Othello not by his name but as 'the
Moor', calling him 'the devil' (2.1.216) and 'defective' (2.1.220), a
racist portrayal which makes Desdemona's unfaithfulness more believable
to Roderigo. Iago's misogyny has been plain earlier in the scene and
builds here: young women are portrayed as foolish, having an innately
sexualised 'nature' (2.1.222–23) and whorish for touching hands, even
for thinking.
Photograph of Hugh Quarshie and Lucian Msamati in Othello, 2015
In the RSC’s production, both Othello and Iago were played by black actors, altering the impact of Iago’s most racist lines. View images from this item (1)
Iago’s reputation for straightforward honesty is the foundation of
his deceptions. Iago’s crude language is excused as that of a
straightforward soldier, with Cassio allowing, 'He speaks home, madam;
you may relish him more in the soldier than in the scholar'
(2.1.161–62). This conflation of honesty with soldierly bluntness
disadvantages Desdemona, who can never communicate her honesty in this
manner. Later, it will ensnare Othello: 'give thy worst of thoughts /
the worst of words' (3.3.133–34).
But, away from his superiors, Iago’s crudeness becomes obsessively
salacious. In the speech he dwells on body parts – eyes, hands, lips,
blood – and the 'act of sport' (2.1.217), i.e. the supposed sexual
activity of Desdemona and Cassio. Iago portrays desire in low terms,
with reductive language: Desdemona's adoration is 'violence', Othello's
wooing tales are 'bragging ... lies'. Iago's base reduction figures sex
as hunger: 'her eye must be fed' (2.1.215). Like a devouring sexual
animal, Desdemona will need an attractive man 'to give satiety a fresh
appetite' (2.1.217–18). Desdemona is graphically portrayed as rejecting
continued ‘consumption’ of Othello: 'her delicate tenderness will find
itself abused, begin to heave the gorge, disrelish and abhor the Moor'
(2.1.221–22). In this image, Iago suggests gagging and retching, which,
along with the concept of 'abused' 'tenderness', has connotations of
disgust with oral sex. Food imagery abounds. Retorting, 'The wine she
drinks is made of grapes' (2.1.238), Iago implies that Desdemona is just
like all women – women who consume and indulge in gluttonous pleasures.
The image is reversed later in the play, when Emilia comments that men
'are all but stomachs, and we all but food' (3.4.93). Iago's food
imagery contains sexual innuendo: 'Blest fig's end!' (2.1.238). This is a
contemporary obscenity, figs being associated with the female vulva.
But Iago's salacious language is just that – words. There is no
evidence for adultery except that Cassio is 'a slipper and a subtle
knave' (2.1.229), his slipperiness emphasised by the sibilance, and that
Desdemona was seen to 'paddle with the palm of his hand' (2.1.240–41).
Nothing has actually happened. Although Roderigo counters, ‘I cannot
believe that in her. She’s full of most blessed condition’, the sheer
volume – and forcefulness – of Iago’s words obscure the illogical
reasoning and overpower Roderigo. And the trap itself is so subtle as to
be almost hidden: all Iago asks is whether Roderigo saw Desdemona
'paddle' Cassio's hand, a playful word echoing the image of 'sport' and
also Cassio’s supposedly watery nature. Roderigo dismisses it as
'courtesy' but admits he 'did' see it. Yet earlier Iago tells us it is
Cassio who 'takes her by the palm' (2.1.163). Through Iago's language,
Roderigo is duped into mis-seeing – a trick Othello will later fall for.
Dramatic form
Iago's speech is in prose,
like many of his asides. With Roderigo's extended silence, it too feels
like an extended aside. The contrast is stark between Othello's stately
verse (2.1.194–204), and Iago's sneaking prose. The prose also
contrasts with Iago's scene-closing soliloquy (2.1.267–93), where the
constrained verse follows his precise, if delusional, reasoning.
Shakespeare uses prose for many reasons: for comic or intimate
exchanges, for lowly characters, for convention-defying princes such as Hamlet.
Here, Iago's prose feels like a loosening, like a man undoing his belt a
notch. Engaged earlier in complex word-play with Cassio and Desdemona,
he can now relax into an easier deception: false intimacy with Roderigo.
The prose allows Iago to produce a persuasive outpouring and release
repetitious piles of images designed to bury Roderigo's weak objections.
He only manages three (2.1.211, 236, 242) before conceding with an
unconvincing 'Well' (2.1.256), perfectly expressive of his
spinelessness. It also provides a closing irony to the passage – nothing
will be 'well' on Cyprus any more.
Structure
Iago's power over Roderigo is emphasised through his sentence
structure. Repeated imperatives begin the speech: 'Come hither'
(2.1.206), 'Lay thy finger thus', 'let thy soul be instructed', 'Mark
me' (2.1.212). All are instructions to be quiet and listen, which
Roderigo submissively obeys. Having set himself up as Roderigo's
instructor, Iago goes on to lecture him through a series of questions,
mainly rhetorical. He even draws Roderigo's conclusions for him, using
the language of instructive discipline to describe imagined adultery:
'when these mutualities so marshal the way, hard at hand comes the
master and main exercise' (2.1.246–48). Iago closes just as he began,
with a command to follow instructions: 'watch you tonight; for the
command' (2.1.249–50). The circular structure of the speech reinforces
his enclosed grip of Roderigo.
Critical interpretations of Iago
Iago is misogynistic. But a historicist reading could examine his depiction of women as a product of his time and culture. The Jacobean view of Venetian women,
in particular the idea that they were sexually immoral compounds how
credible Roderigo, and Othello, find Iago's portrayal of Desdemona.
Jacobean portrayals often reduce women to saints, mothers or whores.
Indeed, Iago's argument itself is construed in the language of female
reproduction, described as a 'most pregnant and unforced position'
(2.1.224) that reminds us of the Jacobean archetype of the perfect yet
paradoxical woman, the virgin mother. The Jacobean ideal of total
chastity leaves Desdemona vulnerable to an unforgiving male gaze. In
fact, Iago's misogyny pales in comparison to some found in contemporary
dramas, such as Ben Jonson’s Volpone, also set in Venice, and John Ford’s 'Tis Pity She's a Whore.
However, such extreme misogyny is the preserve of villains in
Jacobean drama, suggesting that they, and Iago, overstep the mark.
Iago's envious depiction of Cassio as 'handsome' and 'young', while
assigning him his own character traits – 'a knave', 'the mere form of
... seeming' (2.1.227), 'a finder out of occasions' (2.1.229–30) –
implies he has a jealous nature. Iago's rage against female sexuality
may therefore be just one example of his spiteful attacks on ‘otherness’
to soothe his sense of social impotence. It has even been suggested
that Iago is literally impotent, causing his embittered sexual
jealously. It certainly makes Desdemona's retort to Iago earlier in the
scene – 'Oh, most lame and impotent conclusion!' (2.1.158) – more
telling.
The
myth of "virtue signalling" . Have you noticed the certain
characteristics of those who use this phrase. I have been watching and
observing them over the last few weeks It's a pernicious and vile term
and it says more about those who use it. Every time I have seen it used
it's been by white men . Each time it is used it comes along with terms
like SJW. It's a word that originates from the alt right that dismisses
those who campaign for social justice.. the term ' virtue
signalling ' was used by Neil McEvoy most recently in his rants against
a 'perceived bias' for women. Neil has allegedly claimed that domestic
violence charities bullied men. His ally and blogger Jac o the North is
want to publish on his blog pictures of female activists asking for his
readers to name them and constantly raves against " wimmin, lefties and
greenies". You know what is indeed fascinating is how often I have
witnessed a bully allege that tbey are being bullied. I have even seen
young Jac of the alt right allege tbat poor Neil and others like him
were being bullied by strong women.
Jac has moaned about the Confederate flag being taken down in South Carolina. The list goes on and on..
The truth is that these types of men are suffering from what we could
call "white fragility". They don't grasp their power and their privilege
the problem they face is of their own insecurity. It's common to
project onto others when we can't face our own inner demons. Those who
use the term "Virtue signalling" are inadequate, afraid cannot face up
to the changing nature of identity and meaning that is essential to be a
whole person. These are the frightened broflakes who cannot change
their outlook or even examine themselves. Yes it's frightening to
examine our own hidden motivation but the reality is we must all seek to
do so as the unexamined life is not a whole one. So next time you hear
that phrase remember it will be said by a white middle aged or older
male....
Taffy is a Welshman, Taffy is no thief. UKIP came to Taffy's house and stole all true belief
Taffy made no protest, for he doesn't like a row Hamilton called on him again and stole the bloody cow. UKIP stole his tolerance they stole his conscience too.
They even stole his language and flushed it down the loo. Taffy is a Welshman, Taffy is a fool. Taffy voted UKIP when offered all the truth
And now the hope is closing down and the EU had its day, Taffy still lives upon his knees, for he knows no other way.
We have racists and deniers and Darren Nichols too, who does not grasp the 'problem" between the alt right and the Jew.
And now in far Llanelli The language is attacked by a tweeting Labour Councillor, With Darren at his back..
Now sometimes UKIPs members will start a row or so, but you can bank on Taffy: he still knows not what to do
Taffy is a Welshman who likes to be oppressed. He was proud to tug his forelock to Mark Reckless as a guest.
They give him tinsel royals, and he blames the dispossessed and sings God Bless Farage as they blame the refugee at rest..
He's fought the wide world over, he's given blood and bone. He's fought for every bloody cause except his bloody own.
Phil Knight replied
Taffy was a Welshman Who grew on what was the EEC His name was Mr Kinnock And he smiled on our TV. His family all got very rich And he ingored his people's pain He made himself Chief Engineer Of the European Union Gravy train. He is in the house of Lords A place he used to hate He lives a high old life Or has a drink with a Tory mate.
You too could become a Taffy You don't have to be from Wales Just betray all your principles And then spin a few fairy tales.
So an armed Sheriff's deputy was on guard at the school in Florida.
Well what was that NRA claim that the answer to a bad man with a gun is
Goodman with a gun...
But of course let's arm the Teachers. Let's
have an increased demand for more ammunition for even more guns, for
specialists to train them, let's make more people gun aware and walking
around with guns , more profit for gun manufacturers and the ability to
kill increased....but let's not limit gun production we can't
have it...its holy writ the American Founders knew all about automatic
weapons didn't they? I mean a front loading musket is so like an AK
47...those founding Fathers were prophets and could see the future...i
mean Genesis is a historical account of creation is it not? I mean that
Billy Graham never said anything about guns did he..and he was a
Christian like me...unlike that Commie the Rev Martin Luther King...that
commie spike about them all the time...
Without God and my guns i would not be a Christian.. sure I vote
Republican and am pro life well at least till birth..i mean Moses
Abraham and Jacob were armed all the time and up on Mount Horeb that
Isaac certainly respected his father...and obeyed him as he lay bound on
that altar.. he knew his father knew what he was doing...and he gave
him respect..
Somehow, gun rights become what Christians are more associated with than a man named Jesus.
The stereotype of aa American Christian today is a red-blooded
American who has a lifted truck, likes drinking beer, shooting guns and
voting Republican.
Notice what is absent there? yep… Jesus…
You can love America, truck, beer, guns and vote Republican and have
absolutely nothing to do with Jesus. they should be known for Jesus,
not for the things of this world that we like most.
.I reflect on the
death of Billy Graham. I think if his campaign to convince people that
they need to find a personal saviour. However I would simply wish for
us all to find a saviour that frees us from Saviours. Long ago the
Buddha said "all things decay, work out your own salvation with
diligence". Yep all things decay and I feel that the belief in the one
true gods brings with it the implication tbat if one is true then some
other faiths creeds and philosophies are wrong. This is the path that
leads us to the crusade; the forced conversion and the persecution..all
political philosophies and outlook are faiths. The outlook is driven by
faith and mine is Ecosociaalism . It's always seemed clear to me that
to believe or not to believe is always a matter of faith..
Philosophically only agnosticism can be defended. The old Pagans had
no wish to convert others it is a position I share. I am inclined to
polytheism in many outlooks. Monotheism is Imperialism in religion or
politics or any other theory. There are many dead white bearded men
with large book about which it's followers debate, are sectarian and
persecute . All true faiths are monotheistic they ignore symbolism,
metaphor, allegory and metonoymy . The human view is partial, limited
and psychologically hidden. I am inclined to a sort of nature based
pantbeism. Humanity are stewards and not masters of the world and it's
environment. It is an :I thou' relationship not the " I It' of the
conservative capitalist outlook of the Republican party. In many cases
the bluekippers use religion to describe " white culture." Spirituality
must be used to transcend us and not used to classify, exclude or
condemn us. St Paul created a religion about Christ. Constantine used it
to unify the state. St Augustine gave us guilt and created original
sin. I am sorry Billy you must be stunned to discover the divine feline
wherever you are. Free us from Saviours and seek the divinity within and
in the world around us that gives us our daily breath...long ago
Nietzche asked suppose truth was a woman? He was not being sexist...he
was implying that truth was subjective. He was challenging all one true
faiths and using the "feminine" form in the German language to free us
the hobgoblin of certainty that is the mind of one true believers...I am
sorry Billy in the bardo you inhabit now reflect and free yourself from
both sin and salvation...
There is nothing new under the Sun. In 1924 the Daily Mail published a
fake story alleging that the MacDonald Labour government elected in
1923 had links with the Soviet Union.
The same links were drawn out by the Daily Mail between East European spies and the Wilson government of the 60sNow we have the same sort of allegations about Jeremy Corbyn. If I did
not know history I would be concerned. The allegations are the same, the
Daily Mail is the same the methods are the same. I wonder how many will be aware of history and how many will be fooled. There is of course no mention of Lord +Czech spies, Zinoviev and the daily mail...nothing changes
Rothersmere and his picture with Hitler or the headline "Hurrah for
the Blackshirts". That is different of course..we know that
industrialists wanted to limit the trade unionists and workers power by
using the Nazis. It's no accident that the Right wing press never
mention this. And it's no accident that the Right would do the same
again...
"In
the 1923
General Election,
the Labour
Party won
191 seats. Although the Conservatives had
258,Ramsay
MacDonald agreed
to head a minority government, and therefore became the first member
of the party to become Prime Minister. As MacDonald had to rely on
the support of the Liberal
Party,
he was unable to get any socialist legislation passed by the House
of Commons.
The only significant measure was the Wheatley Housing Act which began
a building programme of 500,000 homes for rent to working-class
families.
Members
of establishment were appalled by the idea of a Prime Minister who
was a socialist.
As Gill
Bennett pointed
out: "It was not just the intelligence community, but more
precisely the community of an elite - senior officials in government
departments, men in "the City", men in politics, men who
controlled the Press - which was narrow, interconnected (sometimes
intermarried) and mutually supportive. Many of these men... had been
to the same schools and universities, and belonged to the same
clubs. Feeling themselves part of a special and closed community,
they exchanged confidences secure in the knowledge, as they thought,
that they were protected by that community from indiscretion."
Two
days after forming the first Labour government Ramsay
MacDonald received
a note from General Borlass Childs of Special
Branch that
said "in accordance with custom" a copy was enclosed of
his weekly report on revolutionary movements in Britain. MacDonald
wrote back that the weekly report would be more useful if it also
contained details of the "political activities... of the
Fascist movement in this country". Childs wrote back that he
had never thought it right to investigate movements which wished to
achieve their aims peacefully. In reality, MI5 was already working
very closely with theBritish
Fascisti,
that had been established in 1923. Maxwell
Knight was
the organization's Director of Intelligence. In this role he had
responsibility for compiling intelligence dossiers on its enemies;
for planning counter-espionage and for establishing and supervising
fascist cells operating in the trade union movement. This
information was then passed onto Vernon
Kell,
Director of the Home Section of the Secret Service Bureau (MI5).
Later Maxwell Knight was placed in charge of B5b, a unit that
conducted the monitoring of political subversion.
In
September 1924 MI5 intercepted
a letter signed by Grigory
Zinoviev,
chairman of the Comintern in
the Soviet Union, and Arthur
McManus,
the British representative on the committee. In the letter British
communists were urged to promote revolution through acts of
sedition. Hugh
Sinclair,
head ofMI6,
provided "five very good reasons" why he believed the
letter was genuine. However, one of these reasons, that the letter
came "direct from an agent in Moscow for a long time in our
service, and of proved reliability" was incorrect.
Vernon
Kell,
the head of MI5 and Sir
Basil Thomson the
head of Special Branch, were also convinced that the letter was
genuine. Kell showed the letter to Ramsay
MacDonald,
the Labour Prime
Minister. It was agreed that the letter should be kept secret but
someone leaked news of the letter to the Timesand
the Daily
Mail.
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.
In a speech he made on 24th October, Ramsay MacDonald suggested he
had been a victim of a political conspiracy: "I am also
informed that the Conservative Headquarters had been spreading
abroad for some days that... a mine was going to be sprung under our
feet, and that the name of Zinoviev was to be associated with mine.
Another Guy Fawkes - a new Gunpowder Plot... The letter might have
originated anywhere. The staff of the Foreign Office up to the end
of the week thought it was authentic... I have not seen the evidence
yet. All I say is this, that it is a most suspicious circumstance
that a certain newspaper and the headquarters of the Conservative
Association seem to have had copies of it at the same time as the
Foreign Office, and if that is true how can I avoid the suspicion -
I will not say the conclusion - that the whole thing is a political
plot?"
After
the election it was claimed that two of MI5's agents, Sidney
Reilly and Arthur
Maundy Gregory,
had forged the letter. According to Christopher
Andrew,
the author of Secret
Service: The Making of the British Intelligence Community (1985):
"Reilly played an active part in ensuring that the letter was
publicised. A copy of the Russian version of the letter has been
discovered in what appears to be Reilly's handwriting, and there can
scarcely have been another past or present SIS agent with so few
scruples about exploiting it in the anti-Bolshevik cause."
In
his book, The
Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of
MI5 (2009), Christopher
Andrew argues
that on 9th October 1924 SIS forwarded the Zinoviev letter to
the Foreign
Office, MI5 and Scotland
Yard with
the assurance that “the authenticity is undoubted” when they
knew it had been forged by anti-Bolshevik White Russians. Desmond
Morton,
the head of SIS, provided extra information about the letter being
confirmed as being genuine by an agent, Jim
Finney,
who had penetrated Cominternand
the Communist
Party of Great Britain.
Andrew claims this was untrue as the so-called Finney report does
not make any reference to the Zinoviev letter. Finney was also
employed by George
Makgill,
the head of the Industrial Intelligence Bureau (IIB).
Stanley
Baldwin,
the head of the new Conservative
Party government,
set up a Cabinet committee to look into the Zinoviev Letter. On 19th
November, 1924, the Foreign Secretary, Austin
Chamberlain,
reported that members of the committee were "unanimously of
opinion that there was no doubt as to the authenticity of the
Letter". However, eight days later, Desmond
Morton admitted
in a letter to MI5 that "we are firmly convinced this actual
thing (the Zinoviev letter) is a forgery."
Morton
also wrote a report for Chamberlain's Cabinet Committee explaining
why the SIS originally considered the Zinoviev letter was genuine.
According to Gill
Bennett,
the author of Churchill's
Man of Mystery (2009),
Morton came up with "five very good reasons" why he
thought the letter was genuine. These were: its source, an agent in
Moscow "of proved reliability"; "direct independent
confirmation" from CPGB and ARCOS sources in London;
"subsidiary confirmation" in the form of supposed "frantic
activity" in Moscow; because the possibility of SIS being taken
in by White Russians was "entirely excluded"; and because
the subject matter of the Letter was "entirely consistent with
all that the Communists have been enunciating and putting into
effect". Bennett goes onto argue: "All five of these
reasons can be shown to be misleading, if not downright false."
Georgi
Dimitrov,
made a speech on 16th December, 1933, where he claimed that
the Conservative
Party was
behind the the forged Zinoviev letter. "I should like also for
a moment to refer to the question of forged documents. Numbers of
such forgeries have been made use of against the working class.
Their name is legion. There was, for example, the notorious Zinoviev
letter, a letter which never emanated from Zinoviev, and which was a
deliberate forgery. The British Conservative Party made effective
use of the forgery against the working class."
A
settlement of relations between the two countries will assist in the
revolutionizing of the international and British proletariat not less
than a successful rising in any of the working districts of England,
as the establishment of close contact between the British and Russian
proletariat, the exchange of delegations and workers, etc. will make
it possible for us to extend and develop the propaganda of ideas of
Leninism in England and the Colonies.
(2) Charles
Trevelyan believed
that the Zinoviev letter was responsible for Labour's defeat in
the 1924
General Election.
His friend, Francis Hirst, wrote about the matter to him on 3rd
November 1924.
I
will be utterly disgusted if the Labour Cabinet timidly resign with
probing the mystery (of the Zinoviev letter) and explaining it to
Parliament. It's the biggest electoral swindle. I personally believe
you were right in denouncing it boldly as a forgery.
(3)
Series of headlines in the Daily
Mail (25th
October, 1924)
Civil
War Plot by Socialists' Masters
Moscow
Order to Our Reds
Great
Plot Disclosed Yesterday
Paralyse
the Army and Navy
And
Mr. MacDonald Would Lend Russia Our Money
(4)
Ramsay MacDonald, speech in the House of Commons (24th October, 1924)
On
the 21st the draft - the trial draft - was sent to me at Aberavon...
I did not receive it until the 23rd. On the morning of the 24th I
looked at the draft. I altered it, and sent it back in an altered
form, expecting it to come back to me again with proofs of
authenticity, but that night it was published.
I
make no complaints... The Foreign Office and every official in it
know my views about propaganda ... On account of my known
determination to stand firm by agreements and to treat them as Holy
Writ when my signature has been attached to them, they assumed that
they were carrying out my wishes in taking immediate steps to publish
the whole affair. They honestly believed that the document was
authentic, and upon that belief they acted.
If
they acted too precipitately, what is the accusation against us? Why
don't these newspapers say we are in too great haste? Ah, that won't
catch votes against you... Therefore, they have to put up the story
that we shilly-shally... Only nine days have elapsed from the first
registering of the letter and the publication of the dispatch last
Friday.
But
that is not the whole story... It came to my knowledge on Saturday...
that a certain London morning newspaper... had a copy of this
Zinoviev letter and was going to spring it upon us...
How
did it come to have a copy of that letter? I am also informed that
the Conservative Headquarters had been spreading abroad for some days
that... a mine was going to be sprung under our feet, and that the
name of Zinoviev was to be associated with mine. Another Guy Fawkes -
a new Gunpowder Plot...
The
letter might have originated anywhere. The staff of the Foreign
Office up to the end of the week thought it was authentic... I have
not seen the evidence yet. All I say is this, that it is a most
suspicious circumstance that a certain newspaper and the headquarters
of the Conservative Association seem to have had copies of it at the
same time as the Foreign Office, and if that is true how can I avoid
the suspicion - I will not say the conclusion - that the whole thing
is a political plot?
The
story of I suspect to be a forgery is as follows: Amongst the papers
I dealt with before leaving my Manchester host's house oil the
morning of the 16th was the copy of a letter purporting to have been
sent by Zinoviev to the British Communists. I did not treat it as a
proved document but as I was on the outlook for such documents and
meant to deal with them firmly, I asked that care should be taken to
ascertain if it was genuine, and that in the meantime a draft of a
dispatch might be made to Rakovsky. I said that the dispatch would
have to carry conviction and that it should be drafted with a view to
being published. I was in the storm of an election and it never
crossed my mind that this letter had any special part to play in the
fight. Diplomatically, it was being handled with energy and
precision, circulated to the Service Departments concerned and sent
to Scotland Yard. The trial draft waited for me at Aberavon as I had
gone to Bassetlaw to help Malcolm, Bristol etc. I found it on my
return to the hotel on the 23rd, substantially rewrote it, was not
satisfied with it, but being pressed to go to meetings then waiting
me, I decided to send it up for copying and to make sure it would
come back, did not initial it. This reached London on the 24th.
In
my absence, the anti-Russian mentality of Sir Eyre Crowe was
uncontrolled. He was apparently hot. He had no intention of being
disloyal, indeed quite the opposite, but his own mind destroyed his
discretion and blinded him to the obvious care he should have
exercised. I favoured publication; he decided that I meant at once
and before Rakovsky replied. I asked for care in establishing
authenticity; he was satisfied and that was enough. Still, nothing
untoward would have happened had not the Daily
Mail and
other agencies including Conservative leaders had the letter and were
preparing a political bomb from it. When Sir Eyre Crowe and Mr.
Gregory were actually considering the moment when the dispatch should
be published, they were informed that the Daily
Mail was
to publish next morning and without further consideration they
decided to send off the dispatch at once and give it out for
publication that night.
Labour
Ministers hardly had time to get measured for their gold-braided
Court suits when they were out again. Their innocuous sojourn ended
after a general election which I distinguish from other elections
as The Disgraceful Election. Elections have never been
completely free from chicanery, of course, but this one was
exceptional. There were issues - unemployment, for instance, and
trade. There were legitimate secondary issues - whether or not Russia
should be afforded an export loan to stimulate trade. In the event
these issues were distorted, pulped, and attached as appendix to a
mysterious document subsequently held by many creditable persons to
be a forgery, and the election was fought on 'red' panic (The
Zinoviev Letter).
The Daily
Mail carried the story of the Zinoviev letter. The whole
thing was neatly timed to catch the Sunday papers and with polling
day following hard on the weekend there was no chance of an effective
rebuttal, unless some word came from MacDonald himself, and he was
down in his constituency in Wales. Without hesitation I went on the
platform and denounced the whole thing as a forgery, deliberately
planted on, or by, the Foreign Office to discredit the Prime
Minister.
The
outstanding feature of the general election of 1924 in the country as
a whole was the Zinoviev letter. This purported to be a document
written by a prominent member of the Communist Party in Russia, and,
if authentic, certainly did not make pleasant reading for the friends
of the Soviet Government in this country. A copy of it was printed in
one of the Conservative newspapers at the eve of the poll. The
publication was a bombshell for Labour candidates everywhere. Many
were defeated, and only 151 secured re-election to the House of
Commons.
The
people accepted the letter as genuine, just as Ramsay MacDonald had
accepted it as genuine. The reply of Ramsay MacDonald only had the
effect of making it seem more serious. If it had been printed by a
newspaper, the people would have said: "Oh, this is a newspaper
stunt." But when they saw that Ramsay MacDonald accepted it as
genuine, they said : " Then why is he talking about a loan of
£40,000,000 to Russia ? " To them there was something sinister
about it all.
Posters
appeared in which Socialist candidates were portrayed with long hair,
bulging eyes, squat noses, bristling moustaches, and beards like
kitchen scrubbing-brushes. It was a picture of a ' stage ' Cossack'.
The
letter presumably existed a month before the press reproduced its
text on the Saturday before polling day, which was a Wednesday.
Ramsay MacDonald, who was Foreign Minister as well as Prime Minister,
must have been aware of the letter at least ten days prior to the
press revelations. He had said nothing at his election meetings nor
to his colleagues in the cabinet.
With
reason Jimmy Thomas commented to Philip Snowden after they had read
the scare headlines: "We're sunk!" MacDonald may have
thought so too, but he effectively disguised the feeling. On that
Saturday afternoon he was due to address a mass meeting at Swansea.
The public packed the hall to hear what he had to say about the
letter, and the press were there in droves. We candidates anxiously
awaited the evening papers so that we could study what we expected
would be a clear lead on what to say at our meetings that Saturday
evening.
There
was not a single word in the MacDonald speech about it. Not until he
spoke at Cardiffon Monday did he refer to it, and then he merely
recited the known facts. He did not take a clear hue.
Forty-eight
hours later the nation went to the polls. The Tories achieved a big
victory with 419 seats. Labour members dropped from 191 to 151, and I
was among the defeated.
We
all know about the Zinoviev letter, which led to the downfall of the
first Labour Government in 1924. It is now believed to have been
produced by two Russian emigres who were working in Berlin. They
passed the forgery to an MI5 officer, Donald Thurn. Once in the hands
of MI5, senior officials realised that its details of an alleged
communist plot would be a devastating blow to the Labour Government
in the closing days of the election campaign. MI5 leaked the letter
to a Tory Member of Parliament and former intelligence officer, Sir
Reginald Hall. It also leaked it to Tory central office and the Daily
Mail, which obligingly ran it on its front page.
In
the run-up to the 1929 election, the links between MI5 and the Tory
party were renewed. The head of MI5's investigation branch, Major
Joseph Ball, was employed by Conservative central office to run
agents inside the Labour party. After the election, Ball was rewarded
with the directorship of the Tories' research department.
The
Zinoviev letter - one of the greatest British political scandals of
this century - was forged by a MI6 agent's source and almost
certainly leaked by MI6 or MI5 officers to the Conservative Party,
according to an official report published today.
New
light on the scandal which triggered the fall of the first Labour
government in 1924 is shed in a study by Gill Bennett, chief
historian at the Foreign Office, commissioned by Robin Cook.
It
points the finger at Desmond Morton, an MI6 officer and close friend
of Churchill who appointed him personal assistant during the second
world war, and at Major Joseph Ball, an MI5 officer who joined
Conservative Central Office in 1926.
The
exact route of the forged letter to the Daily
Mail will
never be known, Ms Bennett said yesterday. There were other possible
conduits, including Stewart Menzies, a future head of MI6 who,
according to MI6 files, admitted sending a copy to the Daily
Mail.
The
letter, purported to be from Grigori Zinoviev, president of the
Comintern, the internal communist organisation, called on British
communists to mobilise "sympathetic forces" in the Labour
Party to support an Anglo-Soviet treaty (including a loan to the
Bolshevik government) and to encourage "agitation-propaganda"
in the armed forces.
On
October 25, 1924, four days before the election, the Mail splashed
headlines across its front page claiming: Civil War Plot by
Socialists' Masters: Moscow Orders To Our Reds; Great Plot Disclosed.
Labour lost by a landslide.
Ms
Bennett said the letter "probably was leaked from SIS [the
Secret Intelligence Service, commonly known as MI6] by somebody to
the Conservative Party Central Office". She named Major Ball and
Mr Morton, who was responsible for assessing agents' reports.
"I
have my doubts as to whether he thought it was genuine but [Morton]
treated it as if it was," she said. She described MI6 as being
at the centre of the scandal, although it was impossible to say
whether the head of MI6, Admiral Hugh Sinclair, was involved.
She
said there was no evidence of a conspiracy in what she called "the
institutional sense". The security and intelligence community at
the time consisted of a "very, very incestuous circle, an elite
network" who went to school together. Their allegiances, she
says in her report, "lay firmly in the Conservative camp".
Ms
Bennett had full access to secret files held by MI6 (some have been
destroyed) and MI5. She also saw Soviet archives in Moscow before
writing her 128-page study. The files show the forged Zinoviev letter
was widely circulated, including to senior army officers, to inflict
maximum damage on the Labour government.
She
found no evidence to identify the name of the forger. She said the
letter - sent to MI6 from one of its agents in the Latvian capital,
Riga - was written as a result of a campaign orchestrated by White
Russians who had good contacts in London who were strongly opposed to
the Anglo-Soviet treaty.
The
report says there is no hard evidence that MI6 agents in Riga were
directly responsible - though it is known they had close contacts
with White Russians - or that the letter was commissioned in response
to British intelligence services' "uneasiness about its
prospects under a re-elected Labour government".
However,
if Ms Bennett is right in her suggestion that MI6 chiefs did not set
up the forgery, her report makes clear that MI6 deceived the Foreign
Office by asserting it did know who the source was - a deception it
used to insist, wrongly, that the Zinoviev letter was genuine.
Allegedly
despatched by Zinoviev and two other members of the Comintern
Executive Committee on 15 September 1924, the letter instructed the
CPGB leadership to put pressure on their sympathizers in the Labour
Party, to "strain every nerve" for the ratification of the
recent treaty concluded by MacDonald's government with the Soviet
Union, to intensify "agitation-propaganda work in the armed
forces", and generally to prepare for the coming of the British
revolution. On 9 October SIS forwarded copies to the Foreign Office,
MIS, Scotland Yard and the service ministries, together with an
ill-founded assurance that "the authenticity is undoubted".
The unauthorized publication of the letter in the Conservative Daily
Mail on 25 October in the final week of the election campaign turned
it into what MacDonald called a "political bomb", which
those responsible intended to sabotage Labour's prospects of victory
by suggesting that it was susceptible to Communist pressure.
The
call in the Zinoviev letter for the CPGB to engage in
'agitation-propaganda work in the armed forces" placed it
squarely within MI5's sphere of action. Like others familiar with
Comintern communications and Soviet intercepts, Kell was not
surprised by the letter's contents, believing it "contained
nothing new or different from the (known) intentions and propaganda
of the USSR." He had seen similar statements in authentic
intercepted correspondence from Comintern to the CPGB and the
National Minority Movement (the Communist-led trade union
organization), and is likely - at least initially - to have had no
difficulty in accepting SIS's assurance that the Zinoviev letter was
genuine. The assurance, however, should never have been given.
Outrageously, Desmond Morton of SIS told Sir Eyre Crowe, PUS at the
Foreign Office, that one of Sir George Mahgill's agents, "Jim
Finney", who had penetrated the CPGB, had reported that a recent
meeting of the Party Central Committee had considered a letter from
Moscow whose instructions corresponded to those in the Zinoviev
letter. On the basis of that information, Crowe had told MacDonald
that he had heard on "absolutely reliable authority" that
the letter had been discussed by the Party leadership. In reality,
Finney's report of a discussion by the CPGB Executive made no mention
of any letter from Moscow. MI5's own sources failed to corroborate
SIS's claim that the letter had been received and discussed by the
CPGB leadership - unsurprisingly, since the letter had never in fact
been sent.
MI5
had little to do with the official handling of the Zinoviev letter,
apart from distributing copies to army commands on 22 October 1924,
no doubt to alert them to its call for subversion in the armed
forces. The possible unofficial role of a few MI5 officers past and
present in publicizing the Zinoviev letter with the aim of ensuring
Labour's defeat at the polls remains a murky area on which surviving
Security Service archives shed little light. Other sources, however,
provide some clues. A wartime MI5 officer, Donald Im Thurn
("recreations: golf, football, cricket, hockey, fencing"),
who had served in MI5 from December 1917 to June 1919, made strenuous
attempts to ensure the publication of the Zinoviev letter and may
well have alerted the Mail and Conservative Central Office to its
existence. Im Thurn later claimed implausibly to have obtained a copy
of the letter from a business friend with Communist contacts who
subsequently had to flee to "a place of safety" because his
life was in danger. This unlikely tale was probably invented to avoid
compromising his intelligence contacts. After Im Thurn left the
Service for the City in 1919, he continued to lunch regularly in the
grill-room of the Hyde Park Hotel with Major William Alexander of B
Branch (an Oxford graduate who had qualified as a barrister before
the First World War). Im Thurn was also well acquainted with the
Chief of SIS, Admiral Quex Sinclair. Though he was not shown the
actual text of the Zinoviev letter before publication, one or more of
his intelligence contacts briefed him on its contents. Alexander
appears to have informed Im Thurn on 21 October that the text was
about to be circulated to army commands. Suspicion also attaches to
the role of the head of B Branch, Joseph Ball. Conservative Central
Office, with which Ball had close contacts, probably had a copy of
the Zinoviev letter by 22 October, three days before publication.
Ball's subsequent lack of scruples in using intelligence for
party-political advantage while at Central Office in the later 1920's
strongly suggests, but does not prove, that he was willing to do so
during the election campaign of October 1924. But Ball was not alone.
Others involved in the publication of the Zinoviev letter probably
included the former DNI, Admiral Blinker Hall, and Lieutenant Colonel
Freddie Browning, Cumming's former deputy and a friend of both Hall
and the editor of the Mail. Hall and Browning, like Im Thurn,
Alexander, Sinclair and Ball, were part of a deeply conservative,
strongly patriotic establishment network who were accustomed to
sharing state secrets between themselves: "Feeling themselves
part of a special and closed community, they exchanged confidences
secure in the knowledge, as they thought, that they were protected by
that community from indiscretion."
Those
who conspired together in October 1924 convinced themselves that they
were acting in the national interest - to remove from power a
government whose susceptibility to Soviet and pro-Soviet pressure
made it a threat to national security. Though the Zinoviev letter was
not the main cause of the Tory election landslide on 29 October, many
politicians on both left and right believed that it was. Lord
Beaverbrook, owner of the Daily Express and Evening Standard, told
his rival Lord Rothermere, proprietor of the Daily Mail, that the
Mail's "Red Letter" campaign had won the election for the
Conservatives. Rothermere immodestly agreed that he had won a hundred
seats. Labour leaders were inclined to agree. They felt they had been
tricked out of office. And their suspicions seemed to be confirmed
when they discovered the part played by Conservative Central Office
in the publication of the letter.
Morton's
own explanation, that Finney "elaborated" on his written
report, is therefore invalidated. It is possible that Morton
conflated, accidentally or deliberately, Finney's report with the
report from Latvia received the day before. If accidentally, it
implies a casualness that does not sit well with Morton's known modus
operandi; if deliberately, the reason may not necessarily be
sinister. Morton received a great many such reports across his desk,
the majority of which were genuine. He may have believed, sincerely,
in the authenticity of the letter at that point. On the other hand,
it might be that since he, like many of his colleagues and contacts
(including his own Chief), detested the Bolsheviks and disliked the
Labour Government, he welcomed the chance to throw a spanner in the
works of Anglo-Soviet rapprochement. He may have been influenced, or
even instructed, to do so.
The
propagation of conspiracy theories is always unprofitable, as it is
impossible to prove a negative. There is no hard evidence to explain
Morton's actions or motives, and he never revealed them (adding extra
fuel to the conspiratorial fire in an interview in 1969, when he
claimed that Menzies had posted a copy of the letter to the Daily
Mail because
he disliked Labour). The surviving documentation is, as so often with
Morton, contradictory. By the beginning of November 1924 SIS had
begun to receive reports from SIS stations that the letter was a
forgery, probably originating in the Baltic States; Morton wrote to
M15 on 27 November that "we are firmly convinced this actual
thing is a forgery". Meanwhile, however, two Cabinet Committees
had been convened to consider the question of the Letter's
authenticity: the first, chaired by MacDonald, reported to the
Cabinet on 4 November that they "found it impossible on the
evidence before them to come to a conclusion on the subject"; it
was the last act of his ill-fated Government. The second, however,
chaired by the new Foreign Secretary Sir Austen Chamberlain, reported
on 19 November that its members were "unanimously of opinion
that there was no doubt as to the authenticity of the Letter".
Meanwhile,
on 17 November Sinclair submitted to Crowe, for consideration by the
Chamberlain Committee, a document, apparently drafted by Morton,
containing "five very good reasons" why SIS considered the
Letter genuine. These were: its source, an agent in Moscow "of
proved reliability"; "direct independent confirmation"
from CPGB and ARCOS sources in London; "subsidiary confirmation"
in the form of supposed "frantic activity" in Moscow;
because the possibility of SIS being taken in by White Russians was
"entirely excluded"; and because the subject matter of the
Letter was "entirely consistent with all that the Communists
have been enunciating and putting into effect". All five of
these reasons can be shown to be misleading, if not downright false.
SIS did not know, for example, the identity of the agent in Moscow
said to have provided the letter, and were certainly not, as the
document claimed, "aware of the identity of every person who
handled the document on its journey from Zinoviev's files to our
hands".
The
"independent and spontaneous confirmation" that the CPGB
had received the letter was, as has been seen, of decidedly suspect
provenance, while reports of arrests in Moscow were no more than
circumstantial. The claim that SIS was incapable of being taken in by
White Russian forgers was more aspirational than accurate, while the
final reason, that the letter was consonant with Communist policy and
"If it was a forgery, by this time we should have proof of it",
may have been unanswerable, but was disingenuous in the light of
reports received in the previous month.
This
documentary sophistry, not to say prevarication, cannot fail to
arouse the suspicion that Morton, and indeed SIS, had something to
hide, not just about how the letter came to be given to the Press,
but also about its origin. Orlov's Berlin organisation, with whom
Morton remained in touch and about which he received regular
information, was identified quickly as a likely potential source of
the forgery, and although the account published by the Sunday Times
"Insight" team in 1967, alleging that one of Orlov's
colleagues, Alexis Bellegarde, forged the letter begs more questions
than it answers, there is no doubt that Orlov had the opportunity and
contacts required. It would, as one SIS account noted, have been easy
enough for him to put in touch with a foreign intelligence service,
e.g. in Riga, some well-trained agent of his own who would thereafter
produce material purporting to be obtained from Moscow or elsewhere,
but which was, in fact, prepared by himself. It was part of Morton's
job to pay close attention to "expert" forgeries emanating
from sources such as Orlov's service...
The
way the letter was handled once it reached SIS, and its communication
to the press, also arouses suspicion, heightened by what is now known
about the activities of some of Morton's contacts: the Makgill
organisation; White Russian groups at home and abroad; the head of
the FO's Northern Department, J.D. Gregory, an old "Russia hand"
later shown to have been engaging in decidedly unethical (if inept)
currency trading at this time in company with his mistress Mrs Aminta
Bradley Dyne - whose husband was another old "Russia hand".
Although a Treasury Committee of Enquiry held in 1928 was unable to
establish any direct connection between Gregory's activities and the
Zino,viev Letter, suspicions remained." Similarly, doubts have
been raised as to whether Morton's contacts with Ball at MIS were
politically as well as professionally motivated: and the involvement
of former M15 officer Donald im Thurn, who tried to sell a copy of
the letter (which he did not possess), adds another mysterious
dimension to the story; the names of the former DNI, Admiral Blinker
Hall, and former Deputy Chief of SIS, Frederick Browning, have also
been implicated.
It
(the Zinoviev Letter) took about a week to reach London and, having
been evaluated by Desmond Morton, was circulated by SIS on 9 October
to the Foreign Office and other departments. A covering note said
that the document contained "strong incitement to armed
revolution" and "evidence of intention to contaminate the
Armed Forces", and was "a flagrant violation" of "the
Anglo-Russian Treaty signed on the 8th August". Though,
apparently, no systematic checks had been made, SIS also
categorically vouched that "the authenticity of the document is
undoubted".
The
Foreign Office, nevertheless, carefully sought further corroboration
from SIS. This was provided by Desmond Morton on 11 October based (he
maintained) on information received from "Jim Finney"
(code-named "Furniture Dealer"), one of the agents jointly
run with Makgill's organisation, who had been infiltrated into the
Communist Party of Great Britain. According to Morton, Finney
reported that the Party Central Committee had recently received a
letter of instruction from Moscow concerning "action which the
C.P.G.B. was to take with regard to making the proletariat force
Parliament to ratify the Anglo-Soviet Treaty" and that
"particular efforts were to be made to permeate the Armed Forces
of the Crown with Communist agents". This, concluded Morton,
"seems undoubtedly confirmation of the receipt by the C.P.G.B.
of Zinoviev's letter". But the original report contained no
reference to any particular communication from Moscow, and Morton
said he had ascertained details of a specific letter only during a
subsequent meeting with the agent. Reflecting how curious it was that
the agent had not mentioned so apparently significant a directive
from Moscow in the original report, Milicent Bagot, a retired
M15
officer who spent three years in the late 1960s exhaustively
investigating the affair, suggested that the agent had been asked
"loaded" questions by Morton, who is known to have been
working on the Riga report and had no doubt put the two together in
his mind.
On
13 October SIS assured Sir Eyre Crowe that Morton's information
provided "strong confirmation of the genuineness of our document
(the Zinoviev Letter)". This was interpreted by Crowe as
"absolutely reliable authority that the Russian letter was
received and discussed at a recent meeting of the Central Committee
of the Communist Party of Great Britain", and on this basis he
recommended to MacDonald that a formal note of protest be submitted
and full information be given to the press.
Morton's
"strong confirmation", therefore, already perhaps more than
the evidence supported, became "absolutely reliable authority",
and the basis for explicit government action. It was only after the
Soviet charge, Christian Rakovsky, had dismissed the letter as "a
gross forgery" (which it almost certainly was) that on 27
October Crowe asked Malcolm Woollcombe for further information. Had,
for example, the text been received in English or Russian and could
an SIS officer explain things personally to the Prime Minister, who
in the meantime had himself begun to wonder if the letter were bogus?
Riga told Head Office that their original version had been in
Russian, which had been translated by a secretary in the station
before transmission to London, thus revealing that the English text
was not quite as "authentic" as had at first been claimed."
