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 both completely uncritical and 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 Steve Silver, former Campaigns Officer for the Israeli funded Union of Jewish Students, in the Communist 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 papers 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 Searchlight’s work during the 1970s when it played a key role in destroying the National Front as a political force should go to Maurice Ludmer, its Editor between 1975 and 1981, and not Gable. 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.

Maurice Ludmer, unlike Gable, was an anti-imperialist

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 a breakdown in relations.

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.

From Left to Right - Campbell, Aubrey and Berry

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 overtly pro-Zionist. 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-Zionist 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.

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  attacking the BOD:

‘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. When the Inquiry asked for evidence 

Searchlight was unable to supply any 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.

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 real reason for writing 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. 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.

Black Activists Challenge Searchlight’s Racism

In July 1991, a coalition of black-led anti-racist groups published an OpenLetter in Labour Briefing that publicly criticised Searchlight. Searchlight of course had refused to print the letter.

This letter was driven by a series of long-standing disagreements, culminating in allegations of racist treatment of black anti-racists at an Ilford synagogue meeting. 

At the meeting Black attendees, were banned, searched, and physically intimidated by security guards. Newham Monitoring Group Secretary, Jasbir Singh, reported being subjected to a body search. All this was directed by Gerry Gable.

The letter represented a major public rift between Searchlight and Black anti-racist groups. It led to the formation of the Anti-Racist Alliance in November of 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.

The Briefing letter 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 movement.

These tensions were exacerbated by the association with Herut, the political party that founded Israel’s Likud party led by Netanyahu. Although the letter said that their main differences were not over the Middle East it was inevitable that Searchlight’s support for Zionism had an effect on relations with Black activists.

The letter’s authors took issue with Searchlight’s approach to racism which emphasised cultural differences rather than seeing economic and political discrimination 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 oppose Zionism because it is an apartheid ideology. Most prominent Black anti-racist groups in Britain signed this letter.

There followed a heated correspondence in Briefing itself. This clearly angered Searchlight which had always taken care not to print critical letters in the Magazine.

When the Campaign Against Racism & Fascism [CARF], which had produced its own separate section in Searchlight from 1979 until 1990 split over political differences such as the magazine’s pro-Israel stance and its prioritisation of anti-Semitism over state racism and its pro-imperialist politics, they sent in a letter explaining why they were parting. Searchlight refused to print it despite CARF having produced a section of the magazine for 11 years. See Powerbase for a timeline of the split.

Searchlight however could not ignore the letter that was printed in Labour Briefing given the support it had in the Labour Movement and from several MPs like Corbyn and McDonnell. Searchlight acolytes had no option but to defend it but Gable stayed silent.

In the September 1991 issue Ray Hill, a former Searchlight mole in the British Movement, who had become Deputy Leader, penned a letter which avoided virtually all the accusations. He did though insult the Black organisations who had signed the letter as ‘three men and a dog’. Daphne Liddell, of the New Communist Party, contributed a more emollient letter.

In the October issue Larry O’Hara, an independent anti-fascist researcher penned an article which I am told made Gerry Gable spit blood. O’Hara rehearsed all the allegations of Searchlight’s links and work for the secret State. O’Hara, although he didn’t always get things right, had been a thorn in Searchlight’s side for years. Gable had become obsessed with him.

In the February 1992 issue Graeme Atkinson, Searchlight’s European Editor, contributed an article but added little that was new, referring to the ‘hoary old 1977 ‘Gable Memorandum’. That was the best he could do because it was difficult to explain Gable’s admission of working for the security services. Graeme accused Briefing of using ‘knife in the back’ tactics in printing O’Hara’s article. Graeme has since broken with Searchlight.

Finally in March 1992 I had a long letter in Briefing responding to Atkinson and also explaining the political problems that anti-racists and anti-fascists now had with Searchlight. The full correspondence can be found here.

Winter 2015 Searchlight Suggests that the Labour Party expel 'Jew hater' Tony Greenstein

Searchlight Support for the Labour Party ‘Anti-Semitism’ Witchhunt

It was not therefore surprising that Searchlight and Gable would lend their support to the ‘anti-Semitism’ witchhunt of socialists and anti-Zionists in the Labour Party. In its Winter 2015 issue there was an item ‘Anti-Semitism’ which asked

‘How is it that nobody appears to have looked into the background of Tony Greenstein, a Brighton antifascist and pro-Palestinian activist’ before going on to call me a ‘Jewish Hater’.

In fact I was suspended in March 2016 and I was the first Jew to be suspended and then expelled from the Labour Party as part of the ‘anti-Semitism’ witchhunt. The article makes it clear that it thoroughly approved of this right-wing attack on socialists and anti-Zionists in the Labour Party. 

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

Tony Greenstein

AFA Report into Searchlight Allegations Against Class War

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

The Death Agony of Searchlight Anti-Fascist Magazine

Searchlight & the State – Kate Sharpley

Destabilising the Decent People – Duncan Campbell, Bruce Page, Nick Anning

Searchlight Obituary for Gerry Gable

Jewish News Frazer Article

Morning Star Obituary for Gable

Jewish News  Obituary

Gable Memorandum transcript

Our Searchlight Problem – Lobster Magazine

Letter – Tony Greenstein, Brighton AFA to supporters 24 June 1993

Letter – Gerry Gable to Tony Greenstein 13 July 1993

Letter -Tony Greenstein to Gerry Gable 16 July 1993

Obituary -:Gerry Gable (1937-2026), architect of modern British anti-fascism – Andy Bell

Andrew Was The Tip Of A Royal Iceberg – The Question is Why Hasn’t He Been Prosecuted for Rape & Conspiracy to Pervert the Course of Justice?

 Charles Too Covered for a Child Abuser - The Crown & the Monarchy is the Human Face of a Corrupt Establishment

VIDEO: Leaked ABC News Insider Recording EXPOSES #EpsteinCoverup "We had Clinton, We had Everything"

On 16 November 2019 an interview with Andrew Windsor by Emily Maitlis, was broadcast. I blogged on it at the time and thought that Maitlis had been too deferential. Nonetheless the interview proved a disaster. It was the snowball that triggered the avalanche.

Why did he do it?  Sheer arrogance. Andrew wanted to clear his name of the allegations that had surrounded his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein. He denied the allegations of abuse made by Virginia Giuffre and even denied having met her, despite a photograph that was widely circulated. We now know that he asked his police bodyguard to dig up dirt on Giuffre.

He asked us to believe in his ‘honour’ and thought that that was the best strategy to put an end to all the rumours and gossip. He was advised against doing the interview by his press adviser Jason Stein and his media lawyer Paul Tweed but his arrogance and stupidity carried the day.

Andrew was overconfident in his ability to handle the interrogation despite being unable to explain his four day stay with Epstein after he had been convicted. He even thought the interview went well. Aides noted his "lack of understanding of what had just happened was pretty profound". Andrew ‘was so pleased with how things had gone that he gave the Newsnight team a tour of the palace afterwards.’

In my blog I wrote that ‘It’s not a carefully controlled, softball interview with the BBC but an interview under arrest which is required’. It is clear that having sex with a girl of 17 who is being trafficked and unable to give consent is rape. To date however the Metropolitan Police prefer to arrest elderly ‘terrorists’ than royal rapists. However that too may have to change.

If you were to listen to the ever loyal BBC then you might be fooled into thinking that King Charles was straining at the leash to put clear blue water between him and his younger brother. Prince William, we are told,  would have Andrew carted off to the Tower.

But as the video above makes clear the Palace made strenuous efforts to kill the story including pressurising ABC News to spike an interview with Virginia Giuffre.

"Nobody's Girl": Virginia Giuffre's Memoir Details Sex Abuse by Epstein, Maxwell, Prince Andrew

One result of his interview was that in August 2021 Giuffre filed a civil lawsuit against Andrew, alleging he sexually abused her on three occasions in the early 2000s when she was 17, a minor under US law, after being trafficked by Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.

In January 2022, after a US judge ruled the case could proceed to trial, Andrew was stripped of his honorary military affiliations and royal patronages, and he ceased using the style "His Royal Highness" in any official capacity.

In February 2022, Andrew and Giuffre reached an out-of-court settlement , reported to be around £12m. He made no admission of liability but acknowledged that Giuffre had suffered as a victim of abuse. It was clear to most people that if he had nothing to hide then Giuffre would not have been paid off.

Andrew was previously an arms salesman to all the world’s most unsavoury regimes. However his friendship with Epstein led to his role ending. He was also criticised for his use of private jets and helicopters rather than scheduled flights and for his close links with foreign dictators and businessmen.

Andrew has now been stripped of his Dukedom and ‘prince' title and will move out of Royal Lodge, albeit not for some months. However it would be a mistake to see the behaviour of Andrew Windsor as anything  out of the ordinary.

He will also move to lodgings at Sandringham in Norfolk and receive a stipend from his brother Charles, which is in effect a subsidy from the public. Andrew is not  the  only one with skeletons to hide.

Lord Mountbatten, Charles’ great uncle and a man whom he called his ‘honorary grandfather’ was an active paedophile. He preyed on boys in the infamous Kincora children’s home in Belfast which was run by MI5 in conjunction with Ulster loyalists as a honey trap.

The Belfast Telegraph carried a story ‘I was raped by Mountbatten in Kincora at age 11; he wasn’t a lord… to me he was king of the paedophiles.’ A former BBC journalist, Chris Moore, described in his book Kincora: Britain’s Shame

a detective, contacted by concerned social workers, secretly photographed VIPs visiting Kincora and logged their car registrations.... The visitors included NIO officials who worked for MI5, lay magistrates, police officers and businessmen.

William McGrath

Moore said it was possible MI5 planted Kincora housemaster William McGrath, an Ulster Loyalist who founded the far-right Tara, in the children’s home as part of an intelligence-gathering operation. Either way McGrath raped an 11 year old boy Arthur Smyth and then introduced him to Mountbatten who also raped him at least twice. McGrath was later was gaoled for four years in 1981

The government has decreed that the files on Kincora and MI5’s involvement will remain under lock and key until 2085. Clearly they wish to protect MI5 and not for reasons of national security.

But Charles too has not behaved very differently himself from Andrew. He too covered up for a paedophile, Peter Ball, the Bishop of Lewes and subsequently Gloucester.

Kincora Boy's Home

Ball boasted of his role as “counsellor to royalty” according to Cliff James, one of his victims. Ball was friends with Thatcher, peers, senior judges and headmasters of leading public schools.

Ball was investigated by police in the early 1990s resulting in a police caution. In 2015, he was convicted of sexual offences against 17 teenagers and young men and jailed for 32 months. He was released in February 2017 after serving half his sentence.

Charles and Ball had a long-standing friendship and Charles supported Ball for many years, believing him to be the victim of a malicious campaign. 

Ball was the local diocesan bishop when the prince lived in Highgrove. Ball was described by the prince as a "loyal friend".

In a 2018 written submission to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), Charles stated he was "misled" by Ball, who claimed to have engaged in a minor "indiscretion" that prompted his 1993 resignation as Bishop of Gloucester. Ball presented himself as a victim of a "malicious campaign".

In letters read to the inquiry, the prince expressed strong sympathy for Ball. In a 1995 letter, he wrote:

I wish I could do more. I feel so desperately strongly about the monstrous wrongs that have been done to you and the way you have been treated. It’s appalling that the archbishop has gone back on what he told me, before Xmas, that he was hoping to restore you to some kind of ministry in the church. I suspect you are absolutely right — it is due to fear of the media.

 In another letter, he described an accuser as a "ghastly man" and said he would "see this horrid man off if he tries anything"

When questioned as part of the inquiry, Prince Charles played down the significance of their correspondence, saying he answered Mr. Ball’s letters, “believing it the polite thing to do.”

Investigators, who pored over a large file of correspondence between the two men, said “the replies are suggestive of cordiality rather than mere politeness.”

They noted that Charles’s private secretary had made inquiries about Ball’s reinstatement with a top aide to the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Within six weeks of his resignation, the Archbishop publicly said that he hoped to see Mr. Ball returned to the ministry.

The inquiry concluded that Ball’s supporters failed to consider that someone they knew and liked might also be an abuser. They found:

It is likely that they genuinely believed in Peter Ball’s innocence. These individuals could not conceive of the possibility that someone like Peter Ball could be guilty of such offending behaviour (they) thought they knew more than they did and, in fact, knew nothing about the extent of the allegations faced by Peter Ball,”

Ball’s victims, many of them teenagers, described approaching him for spiritual guidance and being asked to strip naked, take cold showers while he watched, masturbate him, submit to beatings, or sleep naked with him.

One cleric, who had asked Ball to support his ordination, said he refused to remove his clothing at Ball’s request. Ball subsequently withdrew his recommendation for ordination. The cleric was later rejected for ordination, told that there was “a big black mark against him in the Church of England.”

Ball was eventually arrested as a result of a complaint by Neil Todd, who began to visit Ball at the age of 17, and became fearful when the bishop began speaking of beating or whipping him as part of their religious practice. Neil Todd attempted suicide at age 19, and subsequently made reports of Ball’s behavior.

Neil Todd killed himself in 2012, days before the case was officially reopened.

Lord Carey, the former archbishop, has since said that he and other church officials underplayed Ball’s conduct because it did not involve penetration.

“I think all of us at the time were saying, ‘Well, he wasn’t raping anybody, there was no penetrative sex,’” he said.

He acknowledged that he attached more importance to Ball’s testimony than to Neil Todd’s.

“I actually believed him for quite a time, because who else were complaining about him? I didn’t know these people,” he told the inquiry.

The Telegraph reported that ‘Charles refused to provide a formal witness statement to the child sex abuse inquiry.’  His lawyers used human rights law to block efforts to compel him to send a witness statement, instead sending a signed letter. 

Fiona Scolding, lead counsel to the investigation, said that his lawyers argued that compelling him to give evidence was outside its powers. 

Despite Ball’s caution in 1992 he was later allowed to officiate at events including at schools and confirmations. 

"Despite lengthy correspondence, including assertions from the Prince’s solicitors that the Inquiry’s requests for evidence were outside its powers, i.e. 'ultra vires', there was never any suggestion at any point that the statement would be provided by letter," she said. 

The inquiry made several attempts to compel the lawyers to provide a witness statement with a formal statement of truth, which is essentially equivalent to swearing on oath. Charles’s lawyers argued that asking for a witness statement was "unfair", and constituted a request for "intensely private and confidential" personal data. 

The inquiry was forced to treat the letter as equivalent to a witness statement. The Prince refused to give evidence in person. His statement was read out at the hearing. 

Richard Scorer who was representing victims and survivors, expressed "surprise and concern" at the decision, saying. 

This will inevitably raise concerns that the letter may be less than entirely frank about his relationship with Peter Ball and that it contains matters to which he s reluctant to attach a formal statement of truth

Ball was first reported to Gloucester Police by Neil Todd and others in 1992. But no charges were brought against him after police received supportive telephone calls from "many dozens of people- including MPs, former public school headmasters, JPs and the Lord Chief Justice", the court heard.

It was also revealed that there had been "two thousand letters of support...including letters from cabinet ministers and Royal Family". The member of the Royal family was not named by Ball's barrister. Anthony Lloyd, who was then Lord Justice, described Ball as a "saint"

A Freedom of Information request by the Telegraph has led to the release of the letters written by some high profile figures in his support, they include former Lord Justice Anthony Lloyd, former Archbishop of Canterbury Donald Coggan and David Cameron's late godfather Tory MP Tim Rathbone, who gave Cameron his first work experience in the House of Commons.

Rathbone wrote that he found it "literally inconceivable" that Ball would ever become involved with anyone in the way described. You can see how the Establishment protects its own here.

                Alan Dershowitz - Zionist lawyer and friend of Epstein

In what the New York Times described as ‘an unusually tough rebuke of the future king’ the Independent Inquiry Into Child Sexual Abuse, which was led by a professor of social work, Alexis Jay, concluded that “the actions of the Prince of Wales were misguided.”

He should have recognized the potential effect that his apparent support for Peter Ball could have had upon decision-making within Lambeth Palace

Mr. Ball, 87, was close with the archbishop, George Carey, and Lord Lloyd of Berwick, an appeals court judge. But the most powerful of his friends was Charles, the Prince of Wales. After Ball's resignation, Charles arranged for the Duchy of Cornwall to buy a house that was then rented to Ball and his twin brother from the late 1990s — after he had been forced to step down — until 2011, and preached at the funeral of the prince’s second father-in-law, Bruce Shand.

Wayne Murdock, a police detective assigned to the investigation in 1993, anticipated early on that the suspect’s powerful friends would try to quash it.

“The jungle drums will start going and the phone calls will start,” he said, according to the report.

The report quotes correspondence suggesting that, after Ball was forced to step down as bishop of Gloucester, the prince lobbied for him to be returned to the ministry.

Charles denied attempting to influence police investigations and stated he ceased contact with Ball after his conviction in 2015.

The prince conveyed his "deep personal regret" that he was among many who were deceived by Ball over a long period, and his heart went out to the victims of the abuse. The inquiry ultimately found that the Church of England prioritized its reputation over the needs of victims and that the support from high-profile figures, including the Prince, was a factor in the decades-long cover-up that allowed Ball to evade justice.

The argument against the Monarchy and the Crown is not about the failings of individual members of the Royal Family.  It is about the fact that a hereditary monarchy is inherently undemocratic. They are unelected and yet have enormous reserve powers. The monarch interferes with legislation and at a time of constitutional crisis has enormous powers.

If there was ever an army coup then it would be legitimised by the Crown.  The Monarchy is, as Shelley said ‘the string that ties the robbers’ bundle.’ They personify class oppression with their palaces, unearned income and way of life. They symbolise the idea that merely because of an accident of birth you are destined to rule.

There is no more logic in having a hereditary ruler than having a hereditary historian or mathematician.  Today they symbolise nothing so much as a dysfunctional family that nonetheless absorbs hundreds of millions of pounds in subsidy. They are the icing on a very rancid cake.

There is also a very good blogpost by Craig Murray. The Four Mentors of King Charles Craig mentions a fourth paedophile in Charles' life, his 'spiritual mentor' Laurens van der Post. Craig makes this point:

To the best of my knowledge and belief, I do not know any paedophiles – but none of us can be absolutely certain we do not. Of one thing, however, I feel extremely confident. The four most-valued advisers in my life, the people whose advice I have most craved and to whom I have turned in times of crisis, are not all paedophiles. I should be astonished if any of them were.

You just can’t have your four closest non-official life guides as paedophiles by accident. You just can’t. It has been put to me that Charles, by nature of his role, knows vastly more people than ordinary folk. That may or may not be true (there is a counter-argument about privilege and protection). But it if were true, it does not improve things. If there is a much larger-than-normal pool from whom Charles could have chosen, it makes it even weirder he chose four prolific paedophiles.

To be clear, prolific paedophilia is extremely abnormal behaviour.

Tony Greenstein