It is a very long time since I was a Searchlight mole inside the British fascist movement. Over 30 years and how time flies. I only visit the UK irregularly as I’m based in West Africa. Sometimes memories come flooding back. And this one was inspired by watching a Netflix cold case drama.
It was November 1987. A cafe right beside first floor offices by the Corn Exchange in Leeds which, at the time, served as a not too secret BNP headquarters. Used for regular monthly meetings, quarterly rallies and internal party goings on, the next door cafe was an obvious hang out.
My shame
The BNP was small. I was, to my shame, a well-known activist. The party in West Yorkshire had around 70 members.
We were sitting in the cafe and I remember the day because a proposed Remembrance Day rally in York had been called off when anti-fascists blocked the entrance to a hotel where a room had been booked by Leeds organiser Mick Gibson.
Party leader John Tyndall – also the former leader of the National Front – was there. He was furious that the rally had been cancelled so plan B was to go back to Leeds and hold a meeting at the HQ. But Mick Gibson couldn’t be found and he was the only one with a key. It was farcical. A total disaster.
So we were sitting there with Tyndall, John Wood, Gordon Gee and others. Apart from Tyndall they were all ex-members of Oswald Mosley’s Union Movement (UM). In the 1960s Gordon Gee had helped out at the UM offices in Gorton where Jeffrey Hamm had a shopfront office.
UM was quite active in Manchester in the early 60s, and in Sheffield the party also had a headquarters. John Wood was one of the organisers.
Drunk and lazy
Gee would often produce photos of himself watching Mosley’s back. He didn’t do a very good job.
Wood was too lazy, drunk and incompetent to organise anything effectively so when Mosley came to Manchester and Sheffield on a Northern tour he and his people got thrashed on the streets and relied on heavy police protection.
Tyndall was always critical of Mosley, largely through jealousy and feelings of inferiority. Hardly a surprise but he did model himself on Mosley, especially in terms of his vocal delivery.
But Tyndall was never as careful as he liked people to believe especially once he’d got a drink or two inside him.
Discussing why he hadn’t gone in with Mosley, and opted to form his own variety of tiny neo-nazi sects, Tyndall described Mosley, as all anti-Mosleyites did, as a part-time kosher fascist leader.
Involved a murder
Tyndall also accused Mosley of losing his bottle during the North Kensington by-election in 1959 where he polled a measly 8.1% of the vote.
Wood said, “Yes and we all know why!”
Why, I asked, not being particularly familiar with those times.
“Well, it was because of Kelso Cochrane,” said Tyndall. “We all know what happened. But it’s history now.”
Intrigued, I pressed. What did he mean?
The problem was, Tyndall continued, that a Mosleyite, no doubt wound up by the many fascist rallies, marches, leaflets and winding-up of racial tensions in the area, had been involved in a murder. The murder of Kelso Cochrane.
Kelso Cochrane was a young immigrant from Antigua, working as a carpenter to earn enough money study law at university.
On Saturday 17 May 1959, he was returning home from hospital where he had been treated for an injury to his thumb, when he was set upon by white youths and stabbed in the heart.
He died shortly afterwards.
A lengthy police investigation failed to result in any arrests, though two men were identified as the prime suspects.
They were Patrick Digby and John Breagan, who had been at a party nearby. Breagen had been released from jail only days before, having served sentences for knife attacks on three black men. Digby, however, is thought to have actually killed Cochrane.
Notting Hill at that time was a hotbed of racist agitation against black immigration and Oswald Mosley, who had established an office in the area, had already announced he would run for the constituency in the forthcoming general election.
After the murder he released a statement saying:
“On May 17 a negro was reported murdered in the Notting Hill district. The next day some daily papers suggested that this was due to racial tension and that I was responsible on account of my prospective candidature, although I had just circulated to every house in the area to settle the question by ‘votes not violence.”
Then, disgracefully, he proceeded to hold a public rally at the scene of the murder.
Years later, Union Movement’s local organiser Peter Dawson admitted to the Sunday People: “It was one of the Union mob … A great guy. Did it to teach the other n**s a lesson. But none of us in the movement would tell the police a thing.”
In the election Mosley, who had expected to win, polled just 8.1%. It was an ignominious failure.
Tyndall continued, “Cochrane was stabbed by some local youths in Notting Hill. One of them was a UM activist. We all knew. Mosley held a rally there as if to try and suggest he had no knowledge, that UM was political and was warning about potential violence.”
“So everybody knew?” I asked, quite shocked. Fisticuffs is one thing. Murder quite another.
“If the n****r hadn’t been there nothing would have happened,” added Tyndall. Wood, Gee, Barry Bolton and BNP London activist David Bruce all laughed. I remember thinking this was pretty sick, even though I was active within the BNP at that time.
“So did Mosley know?” I enquired.
“Of course,” said Tyndall.
“Was it someone known at the time?” I continued.
“Oh yes,” the fuhrer went on. “It was an open secret.”
Wood nodded his agreement. He was a pompous and loathsome little man but he did know people.
In fact, he went on the make the following bizarre claim: “See this. This is my key ring and contact book. It’s miniature. But I’ve had it since those days and always kept it close. Special Branch would love to see this. In here, there’s the name of the man involved in that very incident.”
“Bloody hell”, I said.
Tyndall let out one of his throaty laughs and smiled. “You’re a braver man than me John. I would have burned that immediately.”
“No worries JT,” said Wood. “It’s ancient history and nobody cares anyway.” More laughter.
A small incident at the time, or so it seemed. And yet consider. Tyndall knew. Mosley knew. Wood, Gee and other UM people knew. Which means that many inner core people knew.
Dirty secret
And they ended up running the National Front in the 1970s and formed the fascist backbone of Tyndall’s BNP from 1982 to the late 1990s when he was ousted by Nick Griffin.
They all knew. Tyndall knew. He took his lies and dirty secret to the grave.
They had helped cover up for a murderer.
A legacy of lies, murder, and hate stretching back to 1959. I had completely forgotten about all this until yesterday. It seems to me that although there probably isn’t much that can now be done, it’s vital, and absolutely the right thing to do, to offer this account.
And this, to the very best of my recollection, is exactly what happened.
