i read the news today—oh boy—four thousand holes in blackburn-lancashire

Four days ahead of the General Election on this day in 1924, the conservatively-aligned tabloid, The Daily Mail (previously plus see also), published a letter, purportedly a directive from Grigory Zinoviev, revolutionary and head of the Cominterm, to the Communist Party of Great Britain urging revolution and subversion of parliamentary politics.
The reaction in the ballots prompted the collapse of the Liberty Party, significantly forstalled the development of the then fledgling Labour Party and precipitated a Tory landslide. Zinoviev vehemently denied having anything to do with the supposed correspondence and pointed out how the forger had not done his homework when constructing the letterhead and committees by naming them incorrectly and that the Communist International would not meddle in the elections of foreign states. Historians and current scholarship agree with this stance, not penning the fabrication of the missive to the newspaper directly (while blaming them for citing dodgy and incendiary sources, we’ve another name for it, in their page nine story) and rather source the idea of encouraging sedition abroad to the messenging of the White Russian (czarist) intelligence to try to discredit the Bolsheviks internationally.