Searchlight

Searchlight

About

"Anti-fascist magazine marked its 50th anniversary with a two-day conference April 2014 hosted by Northampton University and attended by a wide range of anti-fascist activists, intellectuals, journalists, teachers, lawyers, photographers and retired “moles”.

Northampton University is now the home of Searchlight’s archives, covering the history of fascist and racist activity in Britain and most of the rest of the world and the anti-fascist and anti-racist movement that arose to oppose the violent and extremist right-wing.

Archivist Dan Jones is now working through several thousand archive boxes, sorting and cataloguing the material and preparing to make it available to researchers.

Searchlight arose from within a group of progressive Jews, ex-servicemen, and former International Brigaders in the post-war years who were horrified to see fascism raising its ugly head again among the followers of Oswald Mosley, Colin Jordan and others.

They decided that to be effective anti-fascist and progressive forces needed a reliable source of accurate information about the various fascist and racist organisations and set about creating an anti-fascist intelligence network, delivering high quality information for anti-fascist activists to use – turning a searchlight on the activities of the fascists.

The leaks from among the fascist organisations that it has published have proved a serious embarrassment to the fascists over the years and led to many splits and divisions among the fascists.

The first editor was Maurice Ludmer and the magazine was based in Birmingham. Ludmer had been a member of the Young Communist League of Great Britain in his youth in the 1930s. During the Second World War he served in the British Army. He witnessed the relief of the Belsen concentration camp and it changed his life; he became a dedicated anti-fascist.

He died at the age of 54 and the editorship passed to Gerry Gable and Searchlight moved its base to London.

Throughout its existence Searchlight has informed not only the anti-fascist movement but also the mainstream media and became the authoritative source of reference on extreme right-wing activity in Britain.

On occasions it has also supplied information to the police, for example passing on a warning that a group of fascist terrorists was planning to explode a bomb during the Notting Hill Carnival and helping the trace the youthful nail-bomber David Copeland who planted bombs in Brixton, Brick lane and the Admiral Duncan pub in Soho's Old Compton Street, the heart of London's gay community.

Speakers at the first day of the conference included Gerry Gable, playwright David Edgar, human rights expert Ciaran O Maolin, photographer David Hoffman, Gavin Millar QC.

International speakers included Alfio Bernabei, Searchlight’s Italian correspondent, Professor Maria Nikolakaki from the University of Peloponnese, Leonard Zeskind and David Burghardt from the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights.

Speakers on the second day included Andy Bell – deputy editor at [Panorama] and producer at World in Action, Ray Hill former British Movement organiser and Searchlight mole and Sonia Gable – Gerry Gable’s partner and a former Inland Revenue tax inspector with specialist research skills on the financing of fascist groups.

Cathy Pound from Trade Union Friends of Searchlight and NUT member Bob Archer spoke on working with the trade unions.

David Rosenberg from the Jewish Socialist Group and Daphne Liddle from the New Communist Party of Britain spoke on working together and overcoming sectarianism.

In the final session historian Dr Paul Jackson of the University of Northampton, archivist Dan Jones and Gerry Gable spoke on the future of anti-fascism and the challenges ahead.

Battling the English Defence League

From the New Communist Party of Britain website by Anton Johnson dated November 05, 2012:

More 1,000 anti-fascists gathered in the centre of Waltham Forest November 2012 to celebrate the non-appearance of the "violent thugs of the Islamophobic English Defence League".

The EDL had been banned from holding a second march in Walthamstow after the first, on 1st September, was blocked from completing its course by thousands of local residents representing all sections of the very diverse local community.

The EDL referred to the second attempt to march as a “rematch” but 53 EDL supporters, including their leader Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, also known as Tommy Robinson, were arrested a week before the event.

The Metropolitan Police and Waltham Forest council also secured a ban, under the Public Order Act, on all marches in the area and told the EDL they could hold a static demonstration in Westminster or none at all.

But that ban was used as a pretext to halt the anti-fascist rally. When the protesters started to turn up at the open green area for the victory rally organised by We Are Waltham Forest and Unite Against Fascism, council officers told them there was to be no rally and that the area was occupied by a travelling fairground. But the anti-fascists continued to arrive and police were forced to allow them to use a side street for their rally. Eventually it was so full police had to close the road to traffic.

A long line of speakers included Labour & Co-op MP Stella Creasy, Gerry Gable, editor of Searchlight, Tony Kearns CWU deputy general secretary, Hugh Lanning PCS deputy general secretary, Green Party MEP Jean Lambert and Father Steven Saxby, a local Catholic priest. Other speakers included local student activists, Varinder Singh from Sikhs Against the EDL, UAF joint general secretaries Weyman Bennett and Sabby Dhalu, and Jo Cardwell and Sophie Bolt from We Are Waltham Forest.