Tony Greenstein's Blog: EXCLUSIVE: THE OTHER SIDE OF GERRY GABLE – Praised by the Tory Press & the Morning Star for his ‘Anti-Fascism’ They Omit His Support for Zionism & Israeli Apartheid

The Death of Searchlight’s Gable Represents the Death of Bourgeois Anti-Fascism

Gerry Gable, the Editor of Searchlight Anti-Fascist Magazine from 1981 onwards, died recently. What is remarkable is that all the obituaries, from the Morning Star to The Telegraph and Times were completely uncritical, almost identical.

According to Andrew Bell, a former Searchlight Editor in the Guardian Gable

was one of the most formidable and persistent figures in the postwar fight against fascism and the extreme right in the UK.

The genocide supporting anti-Palestinian Jewish Chronicle said that Gable

remained consistent in his efforts to defend democracy and expose the dangers of far-right extremism.’

According to Andrew Bell, Steve Silver, former Campaigns Officer for the Israeli funded Union of Jewish Students, in the Morning Star, Gable was ‘the most tenacious post-war anti-fascist Britain ever produced’.

The Telegraph described Gable as having ‘waged a 50-year war on British neo-Nazis’.

It is not often that someone can receive almost identical praise from the paper of the Communist Party and the Tory Party. And still they got it wrong. Not a hint of the criticism Gable received found a space in their eulogies. Although one must not speak ill of the dead it is also important to speak the truth.

Perhaps the reason for their praise is that Gable’s work against Britain’s neo-Nazi right not only posed no challenge to the British state but was often carried out in collaboration with it. These tributes tell one side of the story. There is another, darker and murkier side.

Part of the reason is that Gable was a racist not an anti-racist, a Zionist not an anti-Zionist. The real credit for the Searchlight’s political strategy should go to Maurice Ludmer, its Editor between 1975 and 1981. Unfortunately Ludmer died an untimely death in 1981 at the age of only 54 leaving Gable to align Searchlight’s political direction with his own.

Whereas Ludmer resigned from the Communist Party because it was not sufficiently devoted to the fight against racism in the working class Gable resigned in 1962 because ‘it had begun to adopt an anti-Israel line’ [Jewish Chronicle 23.10.87]. Gable explained that:

Israel was a democracy and these (Arab) countries were not. I have always supported Israel on those grounds first and foremost because I have always been a Jewish trade unionist.

Therein lies the difference between Ludmer and Gable. According to David Edgar’s obituary for Ludmer

Maurice believed passionately that fascism could not be effectively fought without attacking racism as well; he believed, too, that black workers must play their full part in the struggle against the most extreme and virulent form of racism, the National Front and its allies.

Gable’s lack of socialist politics led to his collaboration with a British state that was racist to the core. This was also why the Anti-Fascist movement lost its trust in him.

Gable’s relationship with the British state and his trading information on neo-Nazis with Special Branch and MI5 in exchange for information on the Left led to that distrust.

Gable’s Memorandum to London Weekend Television

In 1977 Labour Home Secretary, Merlyn Rees proposed deporting American journalist Mark Hosenball and ex-CIA agent Phil Agee. Agee and Hosenball were targeted because they were exposing CIA activities and the existence of Britain’s electronic intelligence agency, GCHQ, which was then a secret.

While researching to defend Agee and Hosenball against deportation, Time Out journalists Crispin Aubrey and Duncan Campbell met with John Berry, a former Signals Intelligence employee, a whistleblower, to discuss the operations of GCHQ.

Hosenball and Campbell, had co-written an article for Time Out magazine titled "The Eavesdroppers" which detailed the work of GCHQ. This, along with Agee's work, led to them being deemed threats to national security.

The ABC trial arose from the government's attempt to silence investigations into its intelligence activities. Aubrey, Berry and Campbell (ABC) were arrested on February 20, 1977, days after the deportation order was finalised, under the Official Secrets Act for collecting and passing on information regarding signals intelligence.

In November 1978 this trial collapsed with token sentences being handed out. During the trial and the campaign that preceded it, the security services had done their best to poison the media via corrupt and tame journalists. One such was Gerry Gable, a researcher with London Weekend Television.

On 2 May 1977, Gable sent a memo to his superiors at LWT regarding Phil Kelly who was active in the campaign to support the ABC defendants. Kelly later became editor of Tribune and an Islington Labour councillor.

The memo confirmed that Gable was working hand in glove with the British and Israeli secret services to smear the campaign to support Hosenball and Agee.

Gable alleged that Kelly had taken part in a PLO terrorist training camp. There was no truth in this allegation but lies came easily to Gable. According to the New Statesman (15.2.80):

The wording of Mr Gable's memo suggests clearly that he was engaged in a 2-way transaction with his security sources... The nature of the official material received and recorded by him suggests that much of it was coloured by phone-tap info and informer reports."

As Time Out observed, the memo caused those who Gable mentioned, like Hosenball, who had previously considered Gable as a friend, to feel betrayed. (22.2.80)

It is something that people in anti-fascist politics have also experienced. There is reason to believe that Campbell was also being monitored by Gable.

Brian Gentleman

Nine years later and Gable was up to his old tricks, this time for Channel 4's 20/20 Vision. Gable befriended, and took advantage of, a lonely low-level civil servant in the DTI, Brian Gentleman. One day Gentleman found himself accused, live on TV, of being a Czech agent.

However the Police refused to prosecute. Gentleman was considered a Walter Mitty character whom Gable had entrapped. The Broadcasting Complaints Commission delivered a stern rebuke. It was also the subject of a question in the House of Commons from Gerald Howarth MP.

The Role of Searchlight

Searchlight Magazine played a crucial role in exposing the National Front in the 70s as a neo-Nazi organisation. Under Ludmer it was an effective weapon for the anti-fascist movement. In the words of Unmesh Desai, now a right-wing Labour councillor but at the time an anti-fascist activist, ‘Searchlight was our bible’.

Once Ludmer had died Gable took the magazine in an overtly pro-imperialist direction. For years I helped sell the magazine but I stopped doing so when it became pro-imperialist. One particularly absurd front page was the September 1987 issue ‘The New Axis’ featuring Ghadffi, Khomeini, Patrick Harrington and Louis Farrakhan. It was a precursor of George Bush’s ‘evil axis’.

This was followed up by the January 1989 issue ‘The Year of the Mad Dogs’ featuring Ghadaffi again. This fitted in with Reagan’s rhetoric against the Libyan regime. An equally demented graphic on the State of the British Right in January 1989 included Muslim fundamentalists, Black British activists, Arabs a plenty but curiously no mention of Zionist organisations such as the Jewish Defence League.

Searchlight had became a pro-imperialist rag and a mouthpiece for British Intelligence. It is little wonder that the Telegraph, not normally sympathetic to the fight against fascism or racism, gave such an adulatory obituary to Gable.

Anti-Fascist Action (AFA)

It is in his effect on the anti-fascist movement that Gable and Searchlight were most destructive. AFA was formed in February 1985 to take on a resurgence of violent fascism and groups like Blood & Honour, C18 and the British Movement.

Searchlight since the death of Maurice Ludmer had been openly Zionist. Not only was Searchlight trading information with MI5/Special Branch but it was actively trying to split and destabilise the anti-fascist movement. When Zionist Board of Deputies attacked the newly formed Anti-Nazi League [ANL] Ludmer didn’t hold back in his attack in a leader article:

‘In the face of mounting attacks against the Jewish community, both ideologically and physically, we have the amazing sight of the Jewish Board of Deputies launching an attack on the Anti-Nazi League with all the fervour of Kamikaze pilots.’ [Searchlight November 1978]

Guardian journalist David Rose, described by Larry O’Hara as a ‘journalistic mouthpiece’ for the Met Police and Searchlight, smeared Class War as a fascist organisation. Allegations were made by Gable that their leadership, in particular Ian Bone, were supporters of the NF, that racism was endemic in CW, that they were police agent-provocateurs on demonstrations and that the NF & CW jointly planned the Stop the City demonstrations targeting Jewish businesses.

CW were never popular on the Left, their paper was often crude politically but no one doubted that they were anti-fascists. They attracted a young, punk periphery. They also appealed to a section of the working class including many miners during the 1984-5 strike. They were the perfect foil for Gable and MI5.

At its Manchester conference in 1986, AFA narrowly took a decision to suspend CW from membership until an Inquiry looked into Searchlight’s allegations. Searchlight was unable to supply any evidence to support its allegations.

At this, AFA’s second conference I was elected onto AFA’s Executive. When a Commission of Enquiry reported, CW were exonerated but the damage to AFA had been done. The 1986 AGM nearly broke up in turmoil as a result of the allegations.

As the AFA Report into Searchlight Allegations Against Class War concluded:

Despite the leading role of Searchlight magazine in the affair, and despite many approaches to the magazine for evidence, the sum total of material from Searchlight to the enquiry was nil. We are bemused by Searchlight's role in this affair.

In the course of the inquiry Gable had admitted to monitoring anarchists. For whom he didn't say. He had engaged in the destabilisation of AFA on behalf of the British state and his Special Branch and MI5 friends. None of his obituaries have even mentioned Gabel’s role as an informer for the British state.

See also my article for the Newsletter of Palestine Solidarity Campaign Undermining Anti-Fascists, Defending Zionism. I was heavily involved in the Anti-Fascist movement from the mid-70’s onwards. See my 2012 book on the History of Fighting fascism in Brighton and the South Coast.

Black Activists Challenge Searchlight’s Racism

In July 1991, a coalition of black-led anti-racist groups published an open letter in Labour Briefing that publicly denounced Searchlight. This challenge was driven by a series of long-standing disagreements, culminating in allegations of racist treatment of black anti-fascists at an Ilford synagogue meeting.

The letter highlighted an incident where black attendees, were banned, searched, and physically intimidated by security guards at a meeting in an Ilford synagogue. NMP secretary, Jasbir Singh, reported being subjected to a body search.

The letter represented a major public rift between Searchlight and several black-led anti-racist groups. It led to the formation of the Anti-Racist Alliance later that year.

Black activists questioned the magazine's methods and its collaboration with the state. This highlighted a rift between Searchlight and grassroots Black-led groups, such as NMP regarding the leadership of the anti-racist struggle.

The Briefing letter highlighted tensions regarding how anti-racist movements were being led and who they were protecting. They alleged that Searchlight had fostered a hostile environment for black activists. Whilst Searchlight worked with the Police Black people were suffering from police racism. Searchlight was seen as the right-wing of the anti-fascist movement.

These tensions were exacerbated by the association with Herut, the political party that formed Israel’s extremely racist Likud party. Although the letter said that their main differences were not over the Middle East it was inevitable that Searchlight’s support for Zionism crossed over into anti-Black racism.

The letter’s authors took issue with Searchlight’s multi-cultural approach to racism which emphasised cultural differences rather than seeing economic and political racism as being at the heart of state racism, a term that Searchlight barely recognised. The signatories also took issue with the equation by Searchlight of anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism given that many Black people are drawn to oppose Zionism as an apartheid ideology.

Of course all these issues passed the Socialist Workers Party by. The SWP equates ‘anti-Semitism’ and anti-Black racism as being equal without ever differentiating between prejudice and racism. This is what the signatories called an ‘ultra left’ economic reductionist approach.

There followed a heated correspondence in Briefing with first Graeme Atkinson, Searchlight’s European Editor, defending Gable and then my responding to his arguments. I will post copies of the correspondence when I receive it.

Most of the most prominent Black anti-racist groups in Britain signed this letter, which made serious allegations of racism against Searchlight. Gable never responded.

Brighton AFA Letter to AFA Groups (24.6.93) and to Gable (16.7.93) and Gable Letter to Greenstein (13.7.93)

On 24 June 1993 I wrote on behalf of Brighton AFA to other AFA groups warning them about Gable and Searchlight. I referred to his targeting of Malcolm Astells, a member of Midlands AFA as a neo-Nazi infiltrator on the basis that:

‘every time he takes charge something goes wrong: either people get arrested or are led away from confronting the nazis on wild-goose chase.’

I referenced similar allegations against Class War and made the point that when false allegations are made against people

the result can only be to sow confusion and suspicion in our ranks. lt is a classic tactic of the secret state, the purpose of which is to destabilise and demoralise its enemies. It also means... that it is that much easier for genuine fascists to infiltrate our ranks.’

My letter stung Gable into sending me a rebuttal on 13 July 1993. Gable disguised his anger with the pretence that I owed Searchlight money for copies of Searchlight that he had sent me to distribute. In fact I never heard again of his legal threats.

The rest of his letter was mere bluster, repeating claims that he had supplied evidence to AFA’s CW Inquiry. In the course of his rant, Gable accused me of being a ‘self-hating Jew’. Gable, also resented my comparison to Maurice Ludmer who had always taken the position that the issue of Zionism should not be allowed to divide the anti-fascist movement.

This was a time when some supporter of Israel, such as Miriam Karlin and Professor Geoffrey Alderman, had broken ranks with the Board of Deputies to sponsor the Anti-Nazi League. Today when the Zionists are holding hands with Tommy Robinson and supporting Genocide, such a position is clearly untenable.

In my response three days later I explained that the term ‘self-hater’ has a Nazi lineage, as that was what anti-fascist Germans were accused of before going on to make the point that:

I have always found it difficult to oppose racism and fascism in Britain and then turn a blind eye to racism and fascism directed against Palestinians simply because the perpetrators are Jewish. You have no such qualms. Therein lies the reason for your political degeneration.

Below are a number of links to documents I refer to in this blog.

Tony Greenstein

Black activists challenge Searchlight July 91 and here

Gerry Gable Again – Black Flag – the Brian Gentlemen Affair and here

Spy Trial By Television and here

The Eavesdroppers – Duncan Campbell and Mark Hosenball, Time Out and here

Powerbase Article on Searchlight

Searchlight 'anti-fascist magazine joins forces with Labour’s ‘anti-Semitism’ witchhunt