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The Tories have been added to a Wikipedia list of 'right-wing dictatorships' - and the culprit appears to have done it on a government computer.

The disgruntled activist has put David Cameron in the company of autocrats ranging from Spanish fascist Franco to the leader of WW2 occupied France.

According to a computer 'bot' run through Twitter by Channel 4 News, the edit came from a computer inside Whitehall.

But the culprit's likely to remain anonymous unless there's a time-consuming staff internet history search.

Users are allowed to edit Wikipedia without disclosing their names, but the website still publishes every contributor's IP (Internet Protocol) address.

Sometimes IP addresses apply to a single computer, but sometimes one address can apply to hundreds of computers.

That's likely to be true in this case, where the IP address is linked to locations opposite the House of Commons, in the City of London and in Leeds.

The anonymous edit was made at 3.25pm today, and it took Wikipedia's eagle-eyed moderators just 9 minutes to reverse it.

The page still contains genuine dictators including Francisco Franco, who ruled for more than three decades after the Spanish Civil War.

It also names French leader Philippe Pétain as a dictator because his French administration operated under Nazi occupation in the Second World War.

(Image: PA)

Other nations whose histories show up on the page include Albania, Romania, Greece, Hungary, Azerbaijan and Georgia.

The complex nature of IP technology means the page hijacker could potentially be outside Whitehall - and trying to 'frame' civil servants.

But it would be far from the first time Wikipedia's been edited from behind government lines.

Last year a Whitehall computer was used to censor Tory Minister Kris Hopkins' Wikipedia page by editing out all reference to “victims” of the bedroom tax.

And a civil servant was sacked after prompting an outcry by making sick changes to Wikipedia pages about the Hillsborough disaster.

Writing while working as an administrative officer, the man edited the phrase ‘you’ll never walk alone’, to read: “You’ll never walk again”.

He also wrote “This is a s***hole” to the Anfield Wikipedia page and “nothing for the victims of the Heysel disaster” to a section of the site dedicated to the stadium’s Hillsborough memorial.