Leon Trotsky: A Letter to the Daily Herald

July 15, 1929

[Writings of Leon Trotsky. Vol 1, 1929, New York 1975, p. 195]

Just as I received a note from the British Consul here stating that he has yet no answer to my request, I saw in the local Press a short paragraph, saying that the Home Office Secretary, Mr. Clynes, said during a sitting of the House of Commons that the Government, after having carefully examined the circumstances of the case, has decided not to give to Mr. Trotsky the permission to visit England.

Now I wonder what the British Government has examined “carefully.” Surely not the reasons advanced by me when I asked for the British visa.

Do they esteem that I and my wife are not ill or not ill enough to get the permission to visit England? Do they believe that I am here in the better conditions to pursue my literary work?

But, as far as I know, there was no examine at all, “careful” or not, of these points.

What, then, was examined “carefully”?

The stupid fancies which are sent one day from Constantinople, another from Riga, and are running through the most reactionary Press in every country, those fancies I have exposed several times in letters you kindly publish, and which are so ludicrous that they can only make laughing every man who has a knowledge of the international Labour movement?

To speak frankly, I shall say that such fancies are not the fact of newspaper correspondents, but that they are invented and thrown into the circulation by secret police agencies, whose work is now well known, and was revealed in a famous circumstance by the false Zinoviev’s letter, a forgery of which British Labour was the victim.

But it seems as if those agencies were still able to influence Governments and public opinion. Governments change, but that secret police remains, and finally, leads.

Leon Trotsky