Certain elements of the British media like to quote from the self-described “anti-fascist” or “anti-racist” organisation, Searchlight.

But who is Searchlight exactly? And just how reliable is that organisation as a source of information for the media?

The public record of Searchlight, and its cousin, “Unite Against Fascism” (UAF) answer both these questions:

They are hardcore, unrepentant Communists; and the lies espoused by Searchlight and its Communist co-travellers have cost the media over a MILLION pounds in damages, after they were sued by the people Searchlight had libelled.

Searchlight certainly shouldn’t be consulted by any responsible media outlet on any aspect of politics, history or current affairs.
GERRY GABLE — DIE-HARD COMMUNIST!


* Stood as a candidate for the Communist Party;

* Worked as a writer on the Communist Party’s Daily Worker newspaper;

* Has several criminal convictions.

Gerry Gable, the person behind the Searchlight organisation, is a hard-line Communist whose red record goes back to 1952, when he joined the Young Communist League. By 1960, he was a Tape Room Boy and junior writer on the Daily Worker newspaper, the official organ of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). From 1960 to 1961, Gable worked as a full-time Communist Party Industrial Organiser.

He was a formal candidate for the Communist Party in May 1962 in Northfield Ward, Stamford Hill, North London. He came last.

In 1964, Searchlight Magazine, already being published in newspaper format by fellow Communists, offered him a job as a “research editor.” By 1969, he was editor, but quickly ran the magazine into the ground.

For many years, Gable ran Searchlight purely as a self-described “press bureau” with fellow Reds Maruice Ludmer (a one-time journalist for the Communist Party newspaper, the Morning Star) and Mike Cohen. They received a subsidy from an unnamed source to restart the magazine in 1975.

Once again, Gable managed to run the new magazine into the ground, and he was forced to go and seek work elsewhere. Incredibly, despite his open Communist Party membership, Gable was appointed as an “investigative journalist” at London Weekend TV, a job he managed to hold until 1983. In that year, Searchlight magazine was once again entrusted to his care. This time, with a carefully worked out budget and massive subsidies, Gable managed to produce the magazine format Searchlight until 1998, when he was made ‘publisher,’ a post he still holds today.

It is remarkable then, that any newspaper or media source takes this overt Communist as an authority on anything except his own extreme views.

He is certainly not capable of an objective opinion on any political matter of the day.
Searchlight’s Hard-Core Communist Backers


Apart from Gerry Gable’s own explicitly Communist record, almost every single other activist within the Searchlight stable has an equally extremist leftist origin. Two examples suffice:

DAVID EDGAR, who is a Searchlight Publishing Ltd. Shareholder, also served on the editorial board of Marxism Today, Britain’s largest Communist magazine for many years.

GRAEME ATKINSON, Searchlight’s European correspondent and criminal. Like his mentor Gable, Atkinson worked for the Communist Party’s Morning Star newspaper as its district reporter in Yorkshire and the North East.When in Sweden he manhandled a young thalidomide victim, Ulf Ranshede, so badly that the Swedish police wanted him for questioning and placed him on official report.

He was convicted and fined together with Searchlight activist Michael Avril Loft of distributing an illegal leaflet during the October 1974 General Election.
How Searchlight’s Lies Cost the BBC £1 million Pounds


In 1984, Gerry Gable and Searchlight provided “research” back-up to the BBC Panorama programme on “Maggie’s Militant Tendency” - supposedly about “extreme right wingers” within the Tory Party.

Despite this ruse being an obvious Communist attempt to divert attention away from the very real extremist leftist “Militant Tendency” which was then still tenaciously involved in a power struggle within the Labour Party, the BBC accepted Gable’s “research” without question and based an entire episode on it. Gable was in fact, quick to boast of how the programme “drew heavily upon Searchlight’s own revelations”, (Searchlight No 130 April 1986, p2). According to Labour MP Mr. Robin Corbett, Gable “was the man mainly responsible for the programme” (Daily Telegraph, 13 March 1985).

BBC Admits Gable’s Story was Fantasy

Of course, it was yet another Gable fantasy, and the two Tory MPs named s “secret Nazis,” Neil Hamilton and Gerald Howarth, quickly issued a libel action against the BBC.

Faced with the overwhelming evidence that Gable had simply manufactured the “evidence” and had given the BBC utterly untruthful information, the BBC’s legal department surrendered, and in 1986, the Beeb offered an out-of-court settlement, which was accepted, and the damages amounted to £1 million in cash.

It is little wonder that an article in The Observer said Gable is “a conspiracy theorist who could spot Nazi architecture in a kindergarten sandpit”.
GableWorld Fantasy: BNP Clay Pigeon Shoot becomes Preparation for ‘Civil War‘


Hilarious! That is the only word to describe one of Searchlight publisher and failed Communist Party candidate Gerry Gable’s most paranoid fantasies, as published in the April 2008 edition of his second rate Marxist rag, Searchlight.

According to a hysterically funny article “From race riots to civil war: What is the BNP preparing for?” penned by Gable, the BNP is preparing for a ‘civil war.’

The evidence? Well, according to Gable, the BNP held a clay pigeon shoot last autumn. Yes, that’s it. You read right.

A clay pigeon shoot is ‘preparation for civil war’ in the utterly bizarre mind of Britain’s most comical political character since Screaming Lord Sutch!
Searchlight Wales proudly display their Communist Party banners during their anti-BNP march in Wrexham, 12 April, 2008

The Communist mask behind which Searchlight hides, was brutally torn away for the voting public to see on Saturday, 12 April 2008, when the Communist extremist Searchlight organisation held an anti-BNP march in Wrexham, North Wales - and proudly put their hammer-and-sickle Communist flags on display for all the world to see.

Searchlight Wales proudly announced its “Unite for Socialism” ideals during its anti-BNP march, Wrexham, 12 April, 2008.


Searchlight Wales marchers shock the public with their hammer-and-sickle Communist flags during its anti-BNP march, 12 April 2008.


Above: Proudly clutching his Searchlight “Hope not Hate” leaflets, a Communist from Searchlight Wales proudly displays his hammer-and-sickle banner, Wrexham, 12 April.


Searchlight leaflets are handed out by a member of the ultra-extremist leftist Socialist Party in Wrexham, who also tried peddling “The Socialist” newspaper to an unwilling public.

Searchlight Wales is a joint operation run between the Communist Party, the Conservatives, the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats and Plaid Cymru.

Mark Isherwood, Conservative Party Welsh Assembly Member, is Honourary Vice President Searchlight Cymru.

Lord Dafydd Ellis Thomas, Plaid Cymru Assembly Member, is Honourary President Searchlight Cymru.

Mike German, Liberal Democrat Welsh Assembly Member, is Honourary Vice President, Searchlight Cymru.

Huw Lewis, Labour Party Welsh Assembly Member, is Honourary Vice President Searchlight Cymru.

The Tory Isherwood recently was quoted in the media as “pouring scorn on BNP claims that Searchlight Cymru is ‘a Communist Party front’. Rather, he said, ‘it is the voice of mainstream fair-minded people.”

Unfortunately for Isherwood, the public display put on by Searchlight Wales on 12 April 2008, showed exactly how wrong he was.

Ordinary members of the Tory, Labour and LubDem parties might well wonder what their parties are doing in bed with the most extreme Communists in Britain…
Gable’s Fables: The “Nazi Army Trained by Nato”


Welcome to Gable Fantasy Land, where there is a “Nazi Army, trained by Nato to fight the Communists….”

Gable’s shocking journalistic abilities and bizarre imagination and, what can only be generously described as malicious lying, has landed this incompetent would-be ‘authority’ in trouble time and time again.

In 1975, Searchlight had its first major story exposing what it announced to the world as “Column 88.” This was, according to Searchlight, a “neo-Nazi terror group, intent on having its members in places of influence across the whole spectrum of the Right, from the Monday Club to the National Front” (‘Searchlight’ May 1975, p5).

Gable then used a tactic which has since become commonplace for Searchlight: he put one of his agent provocateurs into place to generate the “facts” and Bob’s Your Uncle, he had a story! By April 1976, Gable had managed to place one of his agents, the Communist Party of Great Britain member, Dave Roberts, into some small fringe group which liked to dress up in military fatigues and run around on Salisbury Plain.

Despite the fact that the Searchlight agent was the leading light in this otherwise freakish minuscule operation, Gable blew the story out of all proportion, claiming that they were carrying out “joint operations with the Territorial Army”!

Not happy with this utterly delusional outburst, Gable followed up what he called “Searchlight’s research into the extreme right Column 88″ by saying that “C88 is a private army. It is illegal. There is no legitimate reason why it should be allowed to continue”, (‘Searchlight’ May 1976, p3-4).

Not too surprisingly, the Territorial Army found no trace of Gable’s fantasy “Nazi army” and dismissed the allegations for what they were - the ravings of a crank. Never one not to flog a dead horse, Gable raved on about C88 for years. In 1991, Searchlight still referred to C88 as “the Nazi underground paramilitary and intelligence cell” (No 187 January 1991, p3).

Gable Admits C88 was Invented

By 1995, almost everyone knew that Gable was lying about C88, but he could not resist raising the story once more: in the April 1995 edition of Searchlight, Gable retracted all of his allegations made over the previous 20 years (!) and said that “C88 was a honey trap operation set up by British intelligence”, and furthermore, that C88 “should not be counted as a genuine far-right or racist group”, (‘Community Handbook’, Sect 2.2-2). Of course, the reality was that “Column 88″ never actually existed in any serious degree outside of Gable’s fertile imagination, much less as a “NATO-created anti-Communist organisation!”

The fact that Gable could have even printed such a laughable, ludicrous, allegation that NATO was actively recruiting “neo-Nazis” to “fight Communists” is possibly one of the best indicators of the utterly bizarre and outrageously fictional world in which Gable and Searchlight live.
“The Secret Agent” Setup


Much publicity has been given to a TV show, The Secret Agent which resulted in the dramatic trials - and acquittals - of BNP leader Nick Griffin and party colleague Mark Collett on “race hate” charges in 2006.

Less publicity was given to the fact that the whole programme was a set up by Searchlight, with that magazine acknowledging that Searchlight writer Nick Lowles was a “consultant” to the programme, and in fact, that it was Searchlight which instigated the situations which were allegedly the “most shocking.”

As Lowles himself wrote in the pages of Searchlight: “The Secret Agent was a six-month investigation. . . BBC journalist Jason Gwynne joined Bradford BNP during the recent local and European election campaign.

There he operated alongside local BNP organiser Andy Sykes, who unbeknown to the BNP, was secretly working for Searchlight and Bradford TUC.”

In other words, Searchlight planted two moles with the BNP, and they then created situations where they and their Searchlight masters could try and portray the BNP in the worst possible light.

The whole thing was artificially created and set up by Searchlight.

In this way, Searchlight was able, in its usual fashion, to manipulate and create the situations which they then exploited. Sykes, as a party organiser, knew exactly to which individuals he could introduce Gwynne, safe in the knowledge they would say something outrageous which could be used on TV.

Quite apart from deliberately setting things up in this way, the Searchlight operation also deliberately ignored the vast majority of BNP members who are nothing like those supposedly shown in the TV show, with Sykes - no doubt under the experienced guidance of Gable, an old hand at these tactics - seeking out the most vulnerable individuals to say something “racist.”

The reality is that there are people with “strange” views in every party - for example, Tory Ann Winterton famously joking in private about illegal immigrant Chinese cockle shell pickers drowning at sea; or Labour Party backbencher Tam Dalyell, declaring in May 2003 that Tony Blair had surrounded himself with a “cabal of Jewish advisers.”

As it later transpired, even some of the people making the “outrageous comments” in The Secret Agent, were also working for Searchlight - making it one of the most fraudulent, pre-arranged, smear campaigns ever seen.

In 1981, Searchlight claimed to have uncovered a “neo-Nazi” plot to bomb the Notting Hill Carnival. This story appeared in three different places:

- the Daily Mirror, which repeated Searchlight’s story complete with major inconsistencies;

- and in a book and a TV documentary, both called The Other Face of Terror.

The Searchlight story suggested that Special Branch officers had “discovered that the neo-Nazis plotted to set off a suitcase bomb”, (Daily Mirror July 21, 1981). Searchlight enhanced the story claiming that the plot was “intended to leave hundreds dead”, (Searchlight No 74 August 1981, p2). Unfortunately for Gable, inquiries with the press officer at New Scotland Yard revealed that the police had no knowledge of any such bomb plot.

Furthermore, no-one was ever arrested or charged with any offence - the whole thing was a figment of Gable’s imagination.
How Private Eye Magazine was Sued After Publishing Searchlight’s “Murder Plot” Fantasy The April 1986 issue of Searchlight magazine ran this headline: EXPOSED! TORY MP IN PLOT TO MURDER SEARCHLIGHT JOURNALIST.” This was allegedly a “plot” by a Tory member of parliament to kidnap and murder Gerry Gable himself. As crazy as it sounds, this story was taken up by Private Eye magazine, issue 636, 2nd May. Of course, no arrests were ever made, as the whole thing was yet another absurd Gable fantasy.


Private Eye had cause to regret its involvement with this Gable-originated pack of lies. The Tory MP and the others named at the centre of this bizarre nonsense all successfully sued Private Eye for naming them. Gable himself refrained from printing their names in his publication, fully aware that he would be sued for such libel.

Private Eye was forced to publish a full apology and retraction to Gerald Howarth, Reginald Gulliver-Buckingham and James Ross for the shocking Gable lies which it had republished. In addition, Private Eye was forced to pay a “substantial” amount in damages.

Private Eye has since been careful not to use any more material originating with Gable and Searchlight…as all sensible media should do.
The “Notting Hill Bomb Plot” that Never Was

In 1981, Searchlight claimed to have uncovered a “neo-Nazi” plot to bomb the Notting Hill Carnival. This story appeared in three different places:- the Daily Mirror, which repeated Searchlight’s story complete with major inconsistencies;

- and in a book and a TV documentary, both called The Other Face of Terror.

The Searchlight story suggested that Special Branch officers had “discovered that the neo-Nazis plotted to set off a suitcase bomb”, (Daily Mirror July 21, 1981). Searchlight enhanced the story claiming that the plot was “intended to leave hundreds dead”, (Searchlight No 74 August 1981, p2). Unfortunately for Gable, inquiries with the press officer at New Scotland Yard revealed that the police had no knowledge of any such bomb plot.

Furthermore, no-one was ever arrested or charged with any offence - the whole thing was a figment of Gable’s imagination.