The first mention of Column 88 in the press appears to have been an article published in the Sunday Telegraph in April 1975, (93) although the very first mention (literally a mention) appeared in the first issue of Searchlight magazine, ie February 1975. This Telegraph article was followed by a lengthy exposé in the May 1975 issue of Searchlight. Most if not all the media’s “information” on Column 88 then and since appears to have come from Searchlight “asset” Dave Roberts. It was in fact Roberts who supplied the “information” for this first exposé, and although questions were asked in high places (94) nothing seems to have come of it. The purpose of this supposedly so-sinister meeting was to celebrate Adolf Hitler’s birthday, which may be off-beat, some persons of a certain ethnic origin may even find it offensive – Gerry Gable for instance – but it’s hardly subversive. Doubtless most Palestinians find the celebrations in Israel on Independence Day offensive, or “Native Americans” the fourth of July for that matter, but so what?

Philosophising aside, who was Dave Roberts? Roberts, as stated, was a Searchlight “asset”. He was a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, but was expelled from that august organisation in the early seventies. For extremism! According to a National Front publication, (95) Dave Roberts joined the editorial board of Searchlight in 1974 and worked as an infiltrator in various right wing groups through the mid-seventies. Like many “Nazi” infiltrators, Roberts proved to be more enthusiastic than genuine “Nazis”, and was convicted of conspiring to assault the staff of an Indian restaurant in Birmingham. (96) After the death of then current editor Maurice Ludmer, the Searchlight team disowned him. (97)

The May 1975 Searchlight article on Column 88 was followed by the May 1976 and May 1978 exposés. The third Searchlight article appeared after an article in the Times which also mentioned this quasi-mythical group. The Times is – to put it mildly – a much more respected (and infinitely more reliable) source of information than Gable’s Fable’s. However, there is a twist in the tale here. The April 6 issue carried a story about a number of parcel bombs which were sent to left wing organisations. (98) Four claims for responsibility were made: three from a man who rang two national newspapers and a radio station (allegedly) on behalf of Column 88; another on behalf of the Eleventh-Hour Brigade (whoever they are).

Column 88 was said to have a membership nucleus of about 30. How did the Times know? Because, apparently, it was informed by a Mr Richard David Roberts, “a communist who infiltrated the extreme right three years ago.” (99)

The membership of Column 88 was said to be two hundred at most. It was said to have had members in the Army Cadet Corps in 1975. The Ministry of Defence denied all knowledge.

The name Column 88 was said to be taken from an Austrian students’ Nazi group of the 1930s. “It is also said to refer to Hitler’s birthday as the eighth day of the eighth month of the year.” (100) It is difficult to imagine even Gable making a mistake of this magnitude: surely every dedicated “anti-fascist” realises that AH was born on April 20, 1889, especially as there was the little matter of the birthday celebration! However, it is more than likely that this was indeed yet another of Gable’s blunders, or a blunder of someone associated with him.

The May 1976 issue (page 4) claims that this “information” surfaced “as a result of two years of undercover work by a man who decided to devote himself to finding out about the extreme right from the inside.” In other words, Dave Roberts.

Just how much credibility are we to attach to anything a man like Roberts says, whether he is quoted by Searchlight, by the Sunday Telegraph or by the Times?

There have been other articles on Column 88 in the “quality press”. In February 1981, the Times reported on alleged paramilitary training. (101) Here, Column 88 was said to have organised a weekend training course for mercenaries. In April 1979! An arms cache complete with Nazi regalia allegedly recovered by West Midlands police was displayed. Although the armoury seized was impressive (or frightening), this was totally irrelevant. (102)

What was not irrelevant though was the report in the same article that there had been over 1,000 racially motivated attacks over the previous eighteen months. And this is something which, unlike the Searchlight team’s massive (and totally non-existent) neo-Nazi conspiracy, does give genuine cause for concern.

Racially motivated crime is a reality. People are harassed, spat at in the street, assaulted, even murdered for no better reason than their being non-white and in the wrong place at the wrong time. Searchlight’s phony campaign against the heirs of the Third Reich does not just attack civil liberties, it demeans a real problem. In 1991, CARF, a mostly black group which had been working with the Searchlight team, split from them because they considered that Gable and co were increasingly prioritising the struggle against eternal anti-Semitism over the (equally phony) struggle against racism. (103)

In short, the problems of racially motivated violence and racial intolerance, racial bigotry, etc., are very real problems. Blacks and Asians are abused, attacked, even murdered, simply because of what they are. Without wishing to infer that anti-Semitism is unreal and less still that it can ever be justified, it is a demonstrable fact that nowadays and to some extent historically, anti-Semitism is not a problem which affects Jews just because of what they are, it is a problem which is caused largely by the attitudes of Jewish “anti-fascists” like Gerry Gable and the fascistic Zionist Imperialists of the Anglo-Jewish and American-Jewish establishments. In particular their ideas that the Jews have special privileges, and thereby a God-given right to ride roughshod over the rest of mankind. True, they are a tiny minority; such antipathy to the rest of mankind is not a trait of the Jewish people as a whole, but while the Gables and their fellow travellers control the Jewish establishments and “anti-fascist” movements of the Western world, the Jewish people will do well to worry less about the supposed resurgence of Nazism and to look instead to the traitors and enemies of freedom in their own midst.