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The Marconi scandal was a British political scandal that broke in the summer of 1912, and ran on for about a year. It centred on allegations that highly-placed members of the British government of the time, under H. H. Asquith as Prime Minister, had profited by improper use of information about the Government's intentions with respect to the Marconi Company.
Allegations and rumours centred on insider trading in Marconi's shares, and singled out Rufus Isaacs and associates. This was run as an anti-Semitic publicity campaign by some periodicals, such as was quite rare in British public life at that era. Particularly active was the New Witness edited by Cecil Chesterton, a distributist publication founded in 1911 by Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc as Eye-Witness.
The substantive matters were resolved by a parliamentary investigation, that found that Isaacs and Lloyd George had purchased shares in the American subsidiary of Marconi. Godfrey Isaacs, brother of Rufus, brought a successful action against Cecil Chesterton for criminal libel; Chesterton was fined £100.
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