January 2004: INTERNATIONAL Searchlight, issue 343 is priced at £2.50 and runs to 36 pages.
As usual, this issue is devoted largely to hating the BNP.
On page 18, Maureen Foster interviews another trade union leader: Adrian Askew, General Secretary of Connect.
There are many overseas reports as usual, including from Zeskind in the United States and Atkinson, who reports on (or from) Switzerland.
Page 35 is a full page advertisement for back numbers of the magazine while the back page is devoted to local contacts for Stop The BNP.
February 2004: INTERNATIONAL Searchlight, issue 344 is priced at £2.50 and runs to 36 pages.
Collins contributes two articles to this issue including the front cover story, about Northern Ireland. Apparently, there has been an explosion of racist violence there, of late, which might be construed as an improvement on the explosions they used to have there!
On page 6, Lowles reports on pressure to close Redwatch; the website lasted in Britain until 2019 but the Polish website called REDWATCH POLAND (in Polish) is still active at the time of writing (April 2024). I have given it the once over and it looks nasty, to put it mildly.
On page eight, the rarely seen Mike Luft contributes an article about opposition to the BNP in Oldham. His first appearance on this site is dated November 4, 1975.
The second article by Collins is the regular column WHAT THEIR PAPERS SAY, which is usually unsigned.
Gable publishes a glowing obituary for a black dude named Jeff Taylor.
On page 16, Dave Renton rails at an appending asylum bill which is followed on the next page by a book review from Kate Taylor. Pages 17-8 is another Taylor article, about the BNP and UKIP and the European Parliament.
Pages 20-21 is a one-off contribution about a visit to Poland by the unfortunately named Sarabjit Singh, unfortunate because when I Googled him I was directed to another individual of the same name, a Pakistani terrorist who murdered 14 people in bomb attacks. He was sentenced to death in 1991 but departed this Earth only in 2013 when he was murdered in prison.
There are many international reports, the last one from Zeskind, who talks about beating xenophobes in Iowa. His fellow travellers usually do this with blunt instruments!
March 2004: INTERNATIONAL Searchlight, issue 345 is priced at £2.50 and runs to 36 pages.
This issue has a heavy emphasis on the forthcoming local council elections with the usual hysteria about the BNP.
Gable contributes three articles, and Sonia explains the London elections on June 10; as people will have 5 votes each, they need some explaining, especially how not to vote for the BNP.
The cover story, by Silver, appears on page 20; Gutter press makes gutter votes, this being primarily a reference to the Daily Mail newspaper. As you might imagine, this is all about something called racism.
Collins contributes two articles; one about the BNP, another about Loyalist paramilitaries in Northern Ireland, who are said to be totally opposed to racism. Does that mean they shoot only white Catholics?
One of Gable’s articles is truly bizarre. On February 4, a large group of illegal immigrants (from China, of all places) were killed in bizarre incident at Morecambe Bay in the north of England where they were collecting cockles. Gable gives the death toll as 24; the final tally appears to be 23; 21 bodies were recovered. Six years later, a skull was found that was positively identified as that of a woman whose husband had also drowned. We need not argue with Gable’s arithmetic, but his logic is something else. The article, on page 8, includes a photograph of Roberto Fiore, a genuine asylum seeker, and the only one whose presence in this country Gable objects to. Fiore had absolutely nothing to do with the illegal gangmasters who employed these unfortunates, but try telling Gable that. For the full background of his obsessive hate campaign against Roberto Fiore, see this pamphlet (Section D).
There are several overseas reports, including one from Germany, but not by Atkinson, who contributes a half page report about the arrest of a Russian national in the Czech Republic. Zeskind writes about the US gun lobby.
April 2004: INTERNATIONAL Searchlight, issue 346 is priced at £2.50 and runs to 36 pages.
The front page is said to be an exclusive, an interview with Maureen Stowe, a local councillor in Burnley who quit the BNP in March; the interview by Matthew Collins appears on pages 6-7. It will be recalled that Collins was himself a BNP member although like his predecessor Ray Hill, he was widely believed to have been an agent provocateur. Stowe was said to be 62 at the time of this interview and clearly a newcomer to politics, so this resignation was hardly surprising.
Also on page 7 is a report to the effect that Combat 18 had folded and the man said to be its leader, Mark Atkinson, had moved to Spain. He is of course no relation to Graeme Atkinson. I met him once, when he was considering following in my footsteps and suing Gable. He was friendly enough but didn’t seem to be very bright. I won’t tell you here what he admitted doing, but frankly I found it embarrassing. Page 8 is an article by Paul Jones and on page 9 one by a contributor named Dale Barton.
Pages 10-11 is a big spread by the time-serving Mr Silver who reports on the BNP putting up a Jewish candidate at the next election, something that is said not to have gone down well in all quarters.
Page 12 is another contribution from Collins, this time about Northern Ireland. He contributes a third article on page 16, about the far right press, while sandwiched between them on pages 14-5 is an article called THE BNP IN IRELAND by his Führer, Herr Gable.
Page 17 is a full page advertisement for a new Searchlight publication called Signs OF hate which is being offered for £15 post free, apparently for organisations only. Although it is said to be published by something called Operation Wedge with the Association of London Government, cheques are payable to Searchlight Information Services. David Hoffman took photographs at the book launch on December 4, 2003, so no prizes for guessing on whose research this polemic was based.
The international section includes a 4 page spread by regular correspondent Stieg Larsson on a murder in Sweden and inter alia one from Zeskind in the United States.
The back page is a full page advertisement for stopthebnp dot com.
May 2004: INTERNATIONAL Searchlight, issue 347 is priced at £2.50 and runs to 36 pages.
The front cover is an advertisement/promotion for Hope Not Hate, something Gable would clearly come to regret after he was betrayed by Lowles.
Much of the issue is taken up with railing at the BNP, which should come as no surprise.
On page 12 is another article by the rarely seen Mike Luft.
On page 13 is a list of contacts for stopping the BNP.
Page 16: Steve Silver outlines (what he believes) to be the BNP’s election formula.
Page 20 is a signed article by Matthew Collins reporting on the demise of the National Front, which he calls a fascist party. The latter claim is false, the former is, well, National what?
Page 21 includes an appeal for funds.
There are contributions from Tim Lazard, David Renton (Dave?) – who writes about the 1979 death of Blair Peach and international reports including from Michael Klein in Germany.
On page 30, a dude named Klaus Maler contributes an article called Totalitarianism theory.
Pages 32-3 is a report/reports from Scandinavia by Tor Bach, Sven Johansen, Lisa Apfelbaum, Stieg Larsson and Daniel Poohl.
On page 35 is a report from Greece by Irene Koutelou. All these people appear to belong to local groups in their own countries; Stieg Larsson is well known but none of them are as odious as Gable.
The back page is a full page advertisement for stopthebnp dot com.
May 24, 2004: That is the date issue 26 of New Target came through my front door, so I assume it was published a day or two earlier.
With it was this letter addressed of to all members of the Communication Workers Union
June 14, 2004: Letter solicitors for Gerry Gable to solicitors for Mark Taha (which contained a cheque for £12,000)
July 21, 2004: Annual return/list of members – signed by Sweet Sonia.
Obituary of Ken Sprague (who edited Searchlight very briefly) by Karl Dallas, published in The Independent, August 2, 2004, page 35.
Jews predict record level of hate attacks by Jamie Doward, published in the Observer, August 8, 2004.
“After 11 September, the big fear was a significant increase in attacks on the Muslim community,” said Gerry Gable, publisher of anti-fascist magazine Searchlight. “But in London the number of attacks actually went down. What has gone up, especially in Manchester and Leeds, are attacks on Jewish places of worship by people who are identifiably from the Muslim community.”
[The above is taken from the Newsbank database.]
Letter re Ken Sprague by Sid Brown published in The Independent, August 30, 2004, page 33.
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