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.
The following thumbnail sketch of Column 88 was given to the current writer by someone still active in the extreme right. I cannot vouch for the authenticity of this information except to say that it was given to me in good faith, and is given here in good faith also.
Column 88 did exist; it was a short-lived enterprise with a membership of at most fifty, probably nearer thirty. It developed out of the National Socialist Group in the late 60s, early 70s. It contained a handful of “genuine people”, many subsequent “actors/clowns” claimed to belong to it.
Brian Baldwin and Don Mudie were key players in the TV documentary which was screened on ITV on May 20, 1976. (104) A genuine figure in Column 88 was Les ‘Lutz’ Vaughan. Both Baldwin and Mudie are ex-British Movement members; Mudie was expelled from the party in 1974.
The former M.I.5. operative Gary Murray mentions Column 88 in his recently published book, Enemies of the State. (105) How much credence can be afforded this gentleman is doubtful as a) “information” from former spies is notoriously unreliable, and b) on page 256, Murray refers to Gable’s “expert research”. That one phrase should be enough to put anyone off.
According to Murray, Gable supposedly revealed that several paramilitary bodies of a right wing nature were created with the official or unofficial blessing of the Secret State. In preparation for the next Holocaust no doubt. In the early eighties, the “Major” was said to have safe-housed key West German terrorists. Although he is not named, this could only have been Major Ian Souter-Clarence, (106) who, my source informs me, was most definitely not a part of Column 88. As my source has no axe to grind, and as he, unlike Gable, is neither a fantasist, nor an unreliable researcher nor a pathological liar, I have no doubt whatsoever that on this subject his information is spot on.
According to my source, Lutz, like Gable, was a right dodgy character. It is a moot point whether he was a “Nazi” who had infiltrated the TA or a Secret State operative who had infiltrated (ie set up) a right wing group. (107)
The name Column 88 was chosen for its fright value, but nothing ever came of it; it may still be around in one form or another, although there is no mention of it in the Times Index for the years 1982-92. While it was around it never did anything meaningful; all it did was talk and celebrate the birthday of its glorious Führer. Anyone - “Nazi” or “anti-Nazi” - who claims anything to the contrary is full of bullshit. Just like Gerry Gable.
Gable has made a lot of money out of peddling paranoia for the past thirty years; he has led a lot of people - Jew and Gentile - up the garden path, and he has wasted a lot of media, and more importantly, public time, including police time. While the police were running around investigating the non-existent Column 88 conspiracy, the fictitious Notting Hill carnival bomb plot and the plot to kidnap and murder everybody’s favourite Jewish “anti-fascist”, (108) they could have been solving, or preventing, real crimes. We will be mailing out this publication to selected police forces as well as to academics and key media men, including those of Jewish origin who have also been led up the garden path by an evil little bastard like Gable on the spurious pretexts that blood is thicker than water, that all evil is Aryan, and that the struggle against eternal anti-Semitism begins with the struggle to destroy individual rights.
To Appendix B: A Selected, Dissenting Bibliography On “Searchlight”
To Appendix C: Colin Jordan, Afterword
To Appendix D: Searchlight Associates: The Official Company History
To Appendix E: Gable’s Contribution To The 2nd Edition
To Notes And References
Back To Gerry Gable’s Contribution To “Neo-Fascism In Europe”
Back To Gable’s Fables
Back To Acknowledgments
Back To Security Alert! and Author/Publisher Credits
Back To Front Cover And Credits
Back To Baron Pamphlets Index
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