Searchlight Critical Bibliography
1984

 


Anti-Jewish Themes and the British Far Left – I by Michael Billig, published in Patterns of Prejudice, Volume 18, Number 1, January 1984, pages 3-15.


1997 by David Edgar, published in Marxism Today, January 1984, VOLUME 28, NUMBER 1, pages 24-9.


January 30, 1984: Maggie’s Militant Tendency was a BBC TV programme screened on this date.

The entry in the relevant issue of the Radio Times, (page 37), reads as follows:

8.10 Panorama

Maggie’s Militant Tendency

The programme was produced by James Hogan and edited by Peter Ibbotson. Michael Cockerell was said to have been investigating the far right. With a little help from Gerry Gable, no doubt.


Panorama talks published in the Sunday Times, February 12, 1984, page 1.


Young Tories video nazis by Roger Ratcliffe, published in the Sunday Times, February 12, 1984, page 2.


Le discours d’exclusion: Les mises à distance, le non-droit, Mots, (8), 5-16, (March 1984). *

[Not seen by compiler.]

* HANDBOOK of DISCOURSE ANALYSIS, Volume 4 Discourse Analysis in Society, Edited by Teun A. Van Dijk, published by Academic Press, London, (1985), page 60.


A debate on Maggie’s Militant Tendency, among other things.


Lies, damn lies...and Panorama by Robin Oakley, published in the Daily Mail, March 16, 1984, pages 22-3.

A timely exposé of a Gable exposé! The smear programme Maggie’s Militant Tendency which was broadcast on January 30, 1984 is exposed as a tissue of lies, half-truths and innuendo. Itemises the distortions one by one. To take but one example, Conservative MP Gerald Howarth was smeared as an “extremist” on the basis of his mother’s membership of the National Front. Mrs Howarth was said to have been a member from 1967 to 1970. In reality she had been a member for a few months in 1967, and at that time the NF was a perfectly respectable political party; it was the hate campaign of the organised “anti-fascist” movement and Organised Jewry which drove all the decent people out of the Front.

This is not to say that there are not decent people in the NF still; there are even decent people who support Searchlight. They too are misguided.


WE EXPOSE NAZI TERROR: Top fascist quits to uncover the threat to Britain, by Andrew Drummond, published in the News of the World, March 25, 1984, pages 4-5.

Another supposed exposé. This was Hill’s coming-out article which he and his co-conspirators fed to the Sunday tabloid. The reader is invited to compare the account he gives here about the attack on two innocent Jews in Paris (from the bottom of column 2) with the account given in The Other Face Of Terror, which differs significantly, and to Liars Ought To Have Good Memories for a detailed analysis.

One point which came to light only after the publication of Liars Ought To Have Good Memories, at the bottom of the first column of the above scan from the News Of The World, Hill claims to have been invited for a weekend at the home of Tony Hancock, which he refers to as “Madeira Close, Brighton”. In May 2009, Mr Hancock confirmed in an E-Mail what he had told the current writer many years earlier: “He never stayed with or was invited to stay [with] us he in fact stayed with Harold Jones the local NF organiser.” Alas, Hill couldn’t even get the address right! In a later E-Mail, Mr Hancock added “It was 19a Madeira Place, [t]here [were] 5 flats I owned it until 2000”.

Here, Hill claims to have changed his views after falling on hard times in South Africa, it is far more likely that he approached Organised Jewry and offered to stir up trouble for them for some unspecified reason; certainly after he arrived in the country he kept his head down and did his best to provide for his young family, but the temptation of easy money together with a bit of race-baiting was obviously too much for him. Or it may have been that he was approached by his newfound Jewish “friends” and asked to work for them. Who knows?

He also admits freely to attacking “Pakis” and to desecrating a synagogue; it is difficult to know how much credence to give these claims but interestingly he admits the café owner he attacked before fleeing the country was Jewish, although here this assault has become a fight. It was most certainly not.


The Other Face of Terror, the Channel 4 documentary screened on March 29, 1984. Networked throughout Europe. “Researched” by – among others – Gerry Gable.

It is significant that no one was ever charged with, much less convicted of, any offence on account of Hill’s “revelations” here and in his and Gable’s lie-ridden book and documentary.

Click here to watch the film.

Click here for a full review.

Here is an alternative link for the film.


Short letter from Dr T.S. Morley re Ray Hill, published in Spearhead, April 1984, issue 186, page 16.


IMPRESSIONS OF A TURNCOAT, by John Tyndall, published in Spearhead, April 1984, No 186, pages 17 & 20.

Tyndall says Hill was welcomed, even liked, but never completely trusted. It is also denied that Hill was ever his deputy: “no such position exists in the Constitution of the BNP.”


INTERVIEW WITH LIZZIE BORDEN, by Vron Ware and Mandy Rose, published in EMERGENCY, issue 2, pages 45-7. (Issue undated but published circa Spring 1984).

This was published from Room 265, 27 Clerkenwell Close, London EC1. Ware is said to be a member of the Editorial Collective. So was Tony Benn, who appears not to be the well-known Labour MP.

Page 46: “VW: As a white woman, did you feel justified in making a scenario where Black and white women work together quite happily?

Note that Black is spelt with a capital B and white with a lower case w. This bitch was obviously obsessed with the innate evil of the white race.

Lizzie Borden appears to be a film maker. The name is obviously purloined from the infamous acquitted murderess.

Page 64: Ware is said to be “a London housewife”.


Anti-Jewish Themes and the British Far Left – II, by Michael Billig, published in Patterns of Prejudice, April 1984, Volume 18, Number 2, 1984, pages 28-34.


OPEN LETTER TO RAY HILL, from John G. Wood, published in Spearhead, May 1984, issue 187, page 18.


I’M NOT NATIONAL FRONT MYSELF, BUT...Disturbing new research into social attitudes among young whites, by Raymond Cochrane and Michael Billig, published in New Society, May 17, 1984, pages 255-8.


Letter from Ray Hill published in Spearhead, June 1984, No 188, page 16.

Protesting against allegations of treason! There follows some lengthy comment by Tyndall.


MOLE HILL, by Paul Charman, published in Time Out, June 7-13, 1984, No. 720, page 7.

An uncritical half page covering Hill’s exposure of the fictitious Notting Hill Carnival bomb plot and his other activities. The article claims that Hill was “until a month ago a trusted leader of the British Movement”. Actually, Hill was booted out of the British Movement in January 1981.


Racism rides again, by Vron Ware, published in the New Statesman, August 3, 1984, pages 17-8.

Report on the Greensboro incident.


NF funding, published in the Jewish Chronicle, August 10, 1984, page 6.

Reports Iranians in discussion with the National Front in order to discuss funding of anti-Semitica, including, yes, you guessed it, the Protocols. Attributed to Searchlight.


H. Bidney, by Martin Savitt, published in the Jewish Chronicle, August 17, 1984, page 20.

This is the obituary for Harry Bidney, who died age 62. He was said to have been a founder member of the 43 Group.

According to Savitt, he “was thanked by a judge at the Old Bailey for his part in bringing to justice a gang of synagogue arsonists.”

And: “Since 1975 he had been associated with the anti-fascist magazine, ‘Searchlight.’” The first claim is untrue. As to the second, what does associated with mean?

There is no mention here of the 62 Group.


Private Eye, 592, 24 Aug ’84, page 12.

A letter entitled Mystery Tory, from Gerry Cable [sic] regarding a Searchlight smear on Piers Merchant.


The socialism of fools, by Michael Billig, published in Patterns of Prejudice, Volume 18, Number 4, October 1984, pages 48-9.

A book review.


MAYDAYS by David Edgar, Revised and definitive edition, published by Methuen, London, (November 1984). 148 pages + advertisements.

This is some sort of political garbage; premiered by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Barbican in October 1983.

According to the back cover, Edgar was born in Birmingham in 1948.

[BBIP, 1991]


November 17, 1984: Marriage certificate of Gerry Gable and Sonia Hochfelder.


KNOW YOUR ENEMY NO.11 SEARCHLIGHT by Mark Taha, published in DREADNOUGHT: A Journal of Conservative & Unionist Opinion, Yuletide, 1984, No. 25, pages 5-6.

A vitriolic polemic from the eclectic Mr Taha. He has done much better since.

This file has been compressed and has lost some quality; the bottom two lines of the first column of the last page read

anti-anti-racist. I believe that race relations
would be immeasurably improved if the

And the last two lines read:

they say but will defend to the death their right
to say it.


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