Yet the result is very different from that anticipated by political students, "It was imagined thatthe poll would be small and that Labour would go: back to Parliament with bout the same number of members, The anticipated Congervative gains were to, have been made at the expense of the Liberals. The basis of this assumption was the growing tendency of lower middle and work ing class women to vote Labour, After the 1918 general election it was imaged that this section of the! Alectorate would always be an cealeulable element in election forecasts. But in the four succeeding years there was noticed a steady move towards Labour resulting. in many Labour victories at both the 1922) and' 1928. general: elections During those intervening years the women had awakened to the value! of the vote as a possible weapon to reduce the price of food, get better The Zinoviett Bombshell Into the midst of these pleasant hopes and dreams the Red" letter fell like a bombshell. Its genuine-hess was supposed to be unquestionable as MacDonald had drafted an answer to it, and he was reputed to be exceptionally cautious in his dealings with' foreign Powers. Without this imprimatur every intelligent individual would have! summed it up as a forgery, for it is well-known that several "hoaxes have lately been successfully played on our trusting British communist: Bolshevik atrocity stories are still served up daily by the Rothermere press but the most credulous readers now take them with a pinch of salt. The leaders of the left wing of the Labour Party stigmatised the letter as a forgery in all their election speeches. The leaders of the right wing professed to have doubts on the point. The Party was spi from top to bottom but everyone i it hesitated directly to attack Mac-Donald for his threatening letter to valuable an asset. the Soviet as his prestige was so.
But when MacDonald tried to! shuffle the blame on to the Foreign Office public opinion ruined against him' immediately. The true. explanation "of MacDénald's' nctiow is
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.