Glenys Kinnock, 3rd from left, alongside Joan Lestor MP, a former editor of Searchlight in the 1960s, at an ANC ‘Year of the Woman’ meeting, London 1984
Searchlight is deeply saddened to learn of the death of Glenys Kinnock, Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead, a long-time friend and supporter of Searchlight who worked with us on a number of occasions to tackle fascist activity in South Wales.
Glenys was for many years a patron of Searchlight Research Associates and in 2011 joined in a call for support for the magazine saying that: “I have read Searchlight for the past 24 years. I find its illumination of the issues essential to my work as an MEP”. With her husband, former Labour leader Neil Kinnock, Glenys was also a long time and firm supporter of the Anti-Nazi League.
In 1997, as MEP for Wales south-east, Glenys joined with us to put pressure on the authorities and the local police to shut down a planned ‘International Aryan’ music festival being organised by Rock Against Communism. At the time, RAC was trying to take over control of the highly lucrative neo-nazi music scene from the Combat 18-run Blood and Honour. Together, we devastated their scheme: nazis planning to attend were physically stopped and turned back by Welsh police as they travelled to the event and some American nazis were picked up at Heathrow and immediately deported. The festival was eventually cancelled, and a much smaller event later held in Coventry, but it effectively destroyed RAC as a force on the far right.
Then, in 2011, Glenys helped us throw another spanner in the nazi music scene works when we discovered that neo-nazi CDs including the vile ‘Barbecue in Rostock’, were being pressed by a respectable CD company in Wales. At first the company, Nimbus, insisted that it was purely a commercial arrangement but soon backed down when confronted with their legal liabilities once the nature of the CDs was drawn to their attention. They then called in the police.
Searchlight salutes a staunch anti-fascist and offers its deepest condolences to her family and friends.