“Staff watched videos from outside the hotel, which was housing about 200 asylum seekers, as violence flared with police outside. Thomas Birley is accused of being part of that violence, the court hears.”
The BBC, along with a number of papers, often seems to be arse-covering when there is absolutely no longer any need to, dotting reports with ‘allegedly’ and so on where there is actually no doubt or risk of contempt.
This particular report concerns Thomas Birley (pictured) , from Doncaster, who stoked a fire in a wheelie bin that was pushed against an exit of the hotel on 4 August.
Today’s Birley hearing is for sentencing. He has already pleaded guilty to a charge of violent disorder, one of arson with intent to endanger life and one of possessing an offensive weapon.
He is not “accused of being part of that violence” as the BBC report (above) would have us believe. His part in it is settled. He did it. He has admitted it.
Now he’s just waiting to find out how long he’s going down for.
(The arson charge carries a maximum tariff of life imprisonment).
STEVE SILVER spotlights the role of trade unions in countering fascism
VISITORS TO TRANSPORT UNION RMT headquarters in London can see a plaque with the names of over 100 rail workers and seafarers who volunteered to fight fascism in Spain, many of whom never returned. This article is an abridged extract from a new pamphlet produced by RMT and the International Brigade Memorial Trust, which looks at the rise of fascism and what motivated people to go to Spain and fight against it. Ultimately, those who fought fascism in this country or volunteered to fight in Spain went a long way to exposing this poison and ultimately contributed to the victory over fascism in 1945.
On 7 June 1934, at the notoriously violent British Union of Fascists (BUF) rally at West London’s Olympia stadium, a young anti-fascist seaman from Poplar in East London, created a sensation by climbing on the roof of the building and crawling along the girders to a spot above BUF leader Sir Oswald Mosley, where he remained shouting anti-fascist slogans.
The next day’s issue of the Daily Worker newspaper reported: “Several Blackshirts mounted the girders in pursuit, but the comrade climbed out a skylight window. When he got outside the fascists below prepared for his reception, and the Blackshirts above threw stones at him, but they all missed. Buckets of water were also brought into play, but they could not reach the worker.
“Eventually the police were brought in, and the comrade went down the ladder, and was allowed to pass outside.”
Olympia was the first real glimpse of what fascism would look like should it ever take hold in Britain – and it shocked the nation. Eyewitnesses described unprecedented political violence before the eyes of 20,000 people inside and outside the huge Olympia hall. This violence had been well planned, with London’s Fascist Defence Force trained to mete out punishment. Its numbers were swelled by fascist thugs from across the country armed with knuckledusters and other weapons.
Thugs were grouped into small squads and spread all around the hall, as well as out of sight. On the slightest interruption a signal would be flashed and the Blackshirts would spring into action. Meanwhile, Mosley, lit up on stage, would stop his speech while the hecklers were dealt with.
Even the Tory MP Geoffrey Lloyd, Parliamentary Private Secretary to Stanley Baldwin, who attended the rally out of curiosity, was shaken by the experience.
Lloyd told the Yorkshire Post newspaper: “I saw with my own eyes case after case of single interrupters being attacked by ten to twenty fascists. I do not think I saw a single heckler ejected from the meeting in a decent and orderly way. On the other hand, I saw several respectable-looking people, who merely rose in their places and made no struggle, treated with the unmerciful brutality that I have described.
“I can only say it was a deeply shocking scene for an Englishman to see in London. The Blackshirts behaved like bullies and cads.”
Quiet champion
Newly elected National Union of Railwaymen (NUR) General Secretary John Marchbank (below) was not surprised by these events and made it his business to speak out, actions that would lead to one of the most extraordinary legal battles of the period.
Marchbank, a quiet and reserved man, came to lead the NUR in 1933 around the same time that Hitler came to power in Germany and Mosley rose to popularity in Britain.
The NUR leader knew that his union had already crossed political swords with Mosley back in 1931, when he walked out of the Labour Cabinet and formed the New Party, which led to his expulsion from Labour, along with a handful of other of the party’s MPs who followed him.
Mosley’s first electoral contest with New Party was at the Ashton-under-Lyne by-election the same year, following the death of the sitting NUR MP, Albert Bellamy. Much to the chagrin of the NUR, Mosley’s party split the vote, which led to the NUR-backed Labour candidate JW Gordon losing out to the Conservatives.
The New Party became increasingly fascistic and violent, and in 1932 Mosley founded the BUF whose ‘Blackshirts’ were frequently involved in street violence.
The BUF’s foundation initially won widespread popular support and a sizeable following, with the party claiming 50,000 members at one point. Mosley also received a massive media boost when Lord Rothermere, owner of the Daily Mail and Daily Mirror newspapers, wrote articles in January 1934 in both newspapers carrying the headlines “Hurrah for the Blackshirts” and “Give the Blackshirts a helping hand”.
An internal Labour Research Department (LRD) report sent to the NUR during this time marked “Completely confidential” revealed how serious the BUF threat was becoming. It noted: “Fascist propaganda is far more effective and is making more headway than is commonly realised.”
Sued for slander
What happened next remains probably one of the most unlikely political and legal battles of the era when Marchbank, this unassuming former shepherd from rural Scotland, took on the aristocratic fascist leader in the courts almost single-handedly.
Throughout that spring Mosley held more rallies where anti-fascist protestors were viciously beaten, with eyewitnesses reporting the use of excessive political violence rarely seen among fringe groups in Britain before.
Shortly after the Olympia rally, Marchbank addressed a trade union meeting in Newcastle, outlining evidence of “secret instructions issued by Sir Oswald Mosley”, that fascists were active among the armed forces, that certain weapons were recommended for use, including clubs, knuckledusters and knives. Marchbank was reported to have said: “We strongly object to any particular party assembling in the guise of a military machine with the object of overthrowing by force the constitutional government of the country.”
After a report of Marchbank’s speech appeared in the Daily Telegraph, Mosley’s solicitors informed him that he was being sued for slander. The fascist leader had already sued many publications successfully for libel and turned his attentions to the NUR.
However, based on the meticulous collection of evidence, Marchbank decided to fight the allegations based on three points: that he had not said the words alleged in relation to Mosley personally, that the meeting had been a privileged occasion, and that the words that he had said were true.
Finally, in February 1936, after much legal wrangling over the course of five days in court, Marchbank used his defence to publicly give detailed examples of Blackshirt brutality. This included statements by former BUF members on the organisation’s use of violence and its anti-Semitism.
Famously, Mosley won the case but was awarded just one farthing in damages – one quarter of one penny – a humiliating ruling that ended his run of legal wins. Despite this symbolic victory, Marchbank’s costs totalled some £5,518, an enormous sum at the time, and NUR rules prevented any use of the union’s funds to assist him individually.
A testimonial fund committee was set up, which included Labour heavyweights such as Walter Citrine, Clement Attlee, Hugh Dalton, George Lansbury, Ernest Bevin and Herbert Morrison. As a result, all costs were covered, with the remainder used to fight other cases including the Amalgamated Engineering Union (AEU) successfully suing another fascist, and a former Labour MP John Beckett, for libel after he smeared the union in his pamphlet ‘Fascism and Trade Unionism’.
Following these legal victories, the AEU and NUR general secretaries wrote a joint introduction to an LRD pamphlet aimed at trade unionists, called Fascism – Fight It Now.
These legal, physical and ideological battles between trade unionists and the fascists proved to be decisive in deepening the understanding of the true nature of fascism and the threat it represented to workers and the labour and trade union movement.
“They Shall Not Pass: The seafarers and rail workers who fought fascism”, written by Brian Denny, Steve Silver and Jim Jump, costing £5, is available from the RMT webshop atwww.rmt-shop.org.uk/books/they-shall-not-pass-book
This article first appeared in the Summer 2024 issue of Searchlight
In May, the alleged leaders of the suspected German far-right coup attempt went on trial. The case shocked Germany to the core when, in December 2022, 25 individuals were arrested on suspicion of preparing for a violent overthrow of the German government and the installation of a new leader and regime. At the time, Reuters stated that they were inspired by the storming of the US Capitol building in 2021.
The members of the German group were said to be members of the Reichsbürger Movement (Citizens of the Reich Movement). The leader of the new state was apparently to be Heinrich XIII Prinz Reuss, with plans to set up new government departments and a “homeland protection company”.
According to apnews, Reuss is among the defendants, along with Birgit Malsack-Winkemann. Had the coup been successful, Malsack-Winkemann, it is claimed, was to be installed in the new government. Interestingly, she had been a member of the AfD, and was also a member of the Bundestag in 2017-2021. The Guardian reported that other members of the parliament described her as a supporter of conspiracy theories, specifically Q-Anon, which gained a growing number of followers during the Covid-19 pandemic in Germany.
These suspects, along with former German military officers, are in the main charged with belonging to a terrorist organisation, with the aim of using force to demolish the current democratic order in Germany, with treasonous intent. Reiss is said to be a ringleader, along with Rüdiger von Pescatore.
Von Pescatore is a retired army officer, and alleged to be one the leaders of the military arm of the coup. He is said to have been discharged from the army after the unauthorised sale of weapons. Von Pescatore was also a commander in the subsumed Special Operations Forces Command (KSK), which Searchlight has reported on previously. In 2020, KSK had 70 soldiers moved from their unit over alleged fears that they were right-wing extremists. In 2017, German broadcasters were said to have reported that at a party members of KSK gave Hitler salutes and listened to right-wing music.
Prosecutors in this case have stated that the Reichsbürger Movement rejects the post-war constitution of Germany and has called for the government to be brought down. The German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser was reported as saying that they are not cranks, but dangerous terrorist suspects.
The group’s plans are alleged to have involved storming the parliament building in Berlin and then negotiating a post-coup order with Russia. Apnews reported that the group had €500,000 in funding, including an arsenal of firearms and weapons. There was also alleged to be an “enemy list”, containing regional and local authorities, to be dealt with when they came to power.
The trials for this case are complex, and there are three ongoing. The Frankfurt trial discussed here, is the most well known, with 26 suspects. In Stuttgart, a trial of nine people began in April, and focused on the military side of the coup. These defendants were allegedly tasked with recruiting new members for the defence side of the coup. Others were allegedly responsible for IT systems and for underground network communications during the coup. Suspect Andreas M is accused of scoping out new army barracks, Alexander Q is accused of being the group’s propagandist, and Markus L and Ralf S are accused of weapons offences.
Finally, a third trial began in Munich with another eight suspects, accused of membership of this terrorist organisation. Four men have been charged with preparing an act of violence against the state and one is charged with weapons offences.
There are three separate trials because there is a large number of defendants, and the verdicts are not expected until 2025. Dw.com has reported that, in the Munich case alone, the Higher Regional Court has set 55 dates to sit for the main trial.
Searchlight will continue to follow and report on these trials.
Photos:Suspected ringleader and future head of state Heinrich XIII Prinz (left); Ex-Bundestag member Malsack-Winkemann(right)
This article first appeared in the Summer 2024 issue of Searchlight
Despite alleged links with foreign powers and remarks about the SS, leading to France’s National Rally pulling out of an alliance with the party in the European Parliament, Germany’s AfD made significant gains in the Euro elections. Dr Kat Williams and Dr Siobhán Hyland report
The Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) election campaign for the European Union (EU) parliament got off to a shaky start when two of its candidates, Maximilian Krah and Petr Bystron, became embroiled in controversy: an aide for Krah was arrested on charges of spying for the Chinese government, and the constituency offices of Bystron were raided following allegations of money‑laundering and bribery.
Jian Guo, Krah’s long-time aide, was also suspected of spying on opposition figures in Germany and was arrested in Dresden earlier this year. Unsurprisingly, China’s foreign affairs ministry has vehemently denied that Guo was involved in espionage on behalf of the Chinese state. Krah himself, as reported by Euronews.com, has denied all knowledge that his aide was a double agent, stating that he first found out about the case when it was initially reported in the German press.
Alongside this, BBC News stated that Krah has come under intense political and media scrutiny for allegedly claiming that members of the SS (Schutzstaffel) could not automatically be called “criminals”, and that their culpability in the genocide of six million Jews during the Second World War could only be assessed on an individual basis.
As a result of these remarks about the SS, Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (Rassemblement National, RN) — arguably in an attempt to repudiate its own history of Holocaust denial under the tenure of Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie Le Pen — announced that it is no longer prepared to sit with the AfD in the EU parliament.
Talking to French radio about the controversy, Le Pen stated that establishing a “cordon sanitaire” between the parties was an urgent task. Subsequently, the AfD was thrown out of the Identity and Democracy (ID) group in the EU parliament. In light of all of this, Krah stepped back from campaigning for the EU elections but stopped short of withdrawing from the race altogether, remaining the AfD’s lead candidate.
Kremlin cash
Bystron, second candidate on the AfD’s EU election list — and considered one of the most pro-Russian AfD members — stands accused of receiving Russian bribes in exchange for political influence. Despite Bystron’s denials, BBC News reported that the Czech intelligence service is said to hold an audio file in which he is allegedly heard counting €20,000 (£17,000) worth of cash given to him by a pro-Kremlin Ukrainian businessman.
According to a report in Czech newspaper Denik N, Bystron has been in contact with the pro-Russian Voice of Europe network, an organisation considered part of the Kremlin’s concerted efforts to spread disinformation and pro-Russian rhetoric within the EU.
Bystron and his pro-Russian colleagues within the AfD have routinely opposed sanctions against Russia following its invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and have argued against Germany subsequently supplying weapons to Ukraine. In a parliamentary debate, Bystron went so far as to compare the latter with the war waged against the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany.
In light of these allegations, the Bundestag, the German federal parliament based in Berlin, has lifted Bystron’s parliamentary immunity, meaning that criminal proceedings could be brought against him if the charges are proven.
True to form, party leaders Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla have claimed that the raid and subsequent exposé of Bystron’s alleged activities are an attempt on the part of the German state to unfavourably influence the AfD’s EU election chances.
Voters undeterred
Despite the controversies in which the AfD has become embroiled in recent months, its results in the EU parliament elections surpassed expectations: it gained over 16% of the vote, beating Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD) and coming second overall behind Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democrats (CDU). The CDU also came second to the AfD in eastern Germany, where key regional elections will take place in September.
The AfD’s strategic narrative of victimisation appears to have struck a chord with some voters seemingly concerned about so-called politically motivated attacks on the party from judges and Germany’s domestic intelligence services in relation to the party’s alleged links to right-wing extremism in recent years. Additionally, the AfD’s shrewd use of social media platforms such as Tik-Tok has seen it increase its vote share among younger voters.
Following the AfD’s success at the EU elections, Weidel has called for a vote of confidence and new parliamentary elections, similar to the steps taken by French leader Emmanuel Macron after his centrist Together alliance was trounced at the polls by Le Pen’s RN following the EU elections on 9 June 9. This, however, according to DW.com, has been ruled out by the incumbent coalition, with the German federal elections expected to take place in the autumn of 2025 as planned.
Photos: AfD MEP Maximilian Krah (above left) and Bundestag member Petr Bystron (centre) have been accused of dealings with foreign powers. AfD leader Alice Weidel (right) claimed the accusations against Bystron were part of government attempts to sabotage the party’s EU election chances
This article first appeared in the Summer 2024 issue of Searchlight
The British National Party probably never experienced such a hefty and concerted blow as it did 20 years ago, in the late summer of 2004. About half of the August issue of Searchlight was dedicated to hammering Nick Griffin’s nazi outfit, following through on The Secret Agent, a BBC documentary broadcast in mid-July, which had shocked much of the nation.
Martyn Lester describes the instrumental role played by Andy Sykes, fascist‑turned-Searchlight mole, in sabotaging the BNP and helping it on its way to near extinction.
Valuable though they frequently are, TV documentaries do not often attract a huge number of viewers, but The Secret Agent had a massive audience, prompted both by the BBC’s own trailing of the programme and a no-punches-pulled editorial in mass circulation newspaper The Sun, urging its readers to tune in.
“The BNP is not a legitimate political party,” read The Sun’s editorial leader on the day of the broadcast. “It is a collection of evil, hate-filled, moronic thugs. Watch the BBC’s brilliant documentary tonight and hear from the BNP’s own disgusting mouths their stories of racial hatred and violence… They are criminals who should be locked up for a long time.”
If you are thinking that it’s something of a rarity for a Murdoch-owned paper to use words like “brilliant” about the BBC, marvel further at what the often Beeb-bashing Daily Mail had to say the morning after the broadcast. “Moronic, vicious and full of hate, the racist thugs exposed in last night’s BBC documentary shatter the BNP’s pretence of political respectability. This powerful piece of journalism revealed a truth about BNP extremism that needed to be told.”
If it seems like Searchlight dedicating so much of its next issue to the BNP was a piece of shameless piggybacking on the BBC’s hard work, nothing could be further from the truth. That’s because the documentary had “Searchlight” running through it like “Blackpool” in a stick of rock. The magazine had approached the Corporation with the idea of the documentary a year earlier, had consulted on the programme throughout its production and had supplied the producers with the star (and indeed hero) of the exposé. Yes, another case of what is virtually a trademark – the Searchlight Mole.
The brave inside source in this case, the “secret agent” of the title, was a BNP member who, even as he rose within the party (he eventually became its organiser for the whole of Bradford), became increasingly disillusioned.
Same old leaflet
Andy Sykes had joined the BNP in 2001, worried about rumours of hordes of asylum-seekers and Asian immigrants lurking in the wings. But, once a member, he found nothing to support these scare stories.
“We had leaflets saying that thousands of asylum-seekers were about to move into our area. I then found the same leaflet being distributed in other parts of the city with only the area name changed,” he said in 2004. “Three years after joining the BNP and I have still not met, seen or heard of a single asylum-seeker in my area of Bradford.”
But fears that something was rotten in the state of Griffmark had already begun to assail Sykes before he put together the full picture regarding the scare propaganda. “It was the Bradford riots that got me questioning the BNP,” he said. “My city was up in flames and BNP members were jubilant.”
That’s an observation well worth reflecting on as the riots of July and August 2024 are cheered on by a new generation of fascists. And, if that is not enough to dispel any questions that you may have about “Are these 20 Years Ago Today pieces of any relevance to 2024?”, hang on to your hats for the straw that broke this particular camel’s back.
In April 2002, Bradford TUC organised a community Fun Day in Sykes’ local area of Eccleshill. Sykes was taken aback when the callow leader of the Young BNP phoned him and told him to put together a “crew” of lads, including some of the area’s contingent of Leeds United hooligans, to disrupt the day.
“I couldn’t believe what he was asking me to do,” Sykes recalled later. “I told him that I wouldn’t. That it was an event for women and kids. He didn’t seem to care, and from that day I thought ‘Sod you and your party’.”
That mindless Young BNP thug? Step forward Mark Collett, still in 2024 ploughing the same headbanger furrow but now as the leading light (or perhaps “dawdling dark”) of the preposterous hate machine Patriotic Alternative. Old nazis never die, it sometimes seems. They just cross-fade from one grift to another.
Before formally throwing in the towel, Sykes, along with his wife and young child, attended the very same Fun Day that he had been asked to break up, and approached Bradford TUC’s Paul Meszaros to arrange a meeting a few days later. Meszaros in turn contacted Searchlight, and a secret operation began. Between them they persuaded Sykes to stay in the BNP and supply them with intelligence.
Saboteur extraordinaire
Infiltration or conversion operations do not topple fascism overnight, but they can be successes on their own terms. And, on its own terms, this one was a smash hit. Sykes kept Meszaros up to date on the BNP’s plans, so that Bradford TUC could wrong-foot the nazis time after time, often by carrying out activities in different places and times to what the BNP was expecting.
After The Secret Agent was broadcast, one Bradford anti‑fascist (who had known nothing of the operation) commented: “That explains why we’ve never come across the BNP in two years of leafleting!”
Sykes also sabotaged BNP strategies, in part by actively discouraging or just failing to follow up on membership enquiries. “I was particularly keen to keep anyone with a hint of ability from being active in the party,” he later said. “Those people simply didn’t get invited to our events.”
He similarly put off members who showed an interest in being election candidates, sometimes “accidentally” letting it slip that stories in Searchlight and newspapers about Griffin & Co being connected to murderers and gangsters were “unfortunately true”, or by stressing to prospective candidates how much hostility they might face from neighbours and workmates.
Though the failure to achieve as much as the BNP had hoped for in the 2004 local elections did hint at incompetence, it in part put this down to the after effects of a beating Sykes had received earlier in the year.
But keeping the mole in play once The Secret Agent was broadcast looked like a difficult proposition. One ploy considered was to point the finger at Jason Gwynne, an undercover reporter that the BBC had slipped into Bradford BNP to support Sykes, to portray him as the architect of the documentary, leaving Sykes looking like no more than a man who had naively trusted the reporter.
But this was a far from foolproof solution, and eventually Sykes decided that he – much like Searchlight’s most famous mole, Ray Hill, a couple of decades earlier – would come out as a whistleblower during the programme. It brought him some death threats, but support from friends and neighbours who had been unhappy with his BNP membership, and a standing ovation from colleagues when he went back to work.
Contentious question
Among other things, The Secret Agent exposed BNP activists boasting of violent acts against Asians, BNP council election candidates describing how they wanted to kill Asians (one of them saying this on 24 occasions), and a newly elected BNP councillor conspiring with other party members to launch an arson attack on a vehicle carrying the Searchlight election newsletter.
Searchlight was, of course, pleased that the documentary had such an impact on the public. But some of the shine was, we felt, taken off the programme’s success by the fact that it had been ready for broadcast in May, but that the BBC had delayed it so that it would not be viewed before the June 2004 local elections.
This is another aspect of the affair that remains a contentious issue to this day: the question of whether broadcasters should be obliged to treat extreme organisations as “normal political parties” just because they have managed to register with the Electoral Commission.
It would be nice to be able to report that The Secret Agent put an end to the BNP, but of course it didn’t. The party had yet even to achieve its high watermark in local elections. But the programme did damage the BNP, which later went through attempted (even successful) internal coups, slowly dying but never officially pronounced dead. It has effectively been dormant since 2019.
The leader at the time of the documentary, Nick Griffin, still turns up from time to time, like a bad penny. But he is mostly now regarded even among the far right as a political dinosaur – the Führer of Fossilised Fascism.
Top photo: Searchlight mole Andy Sykes (left) and undercover BBC reporter Jason Gwynne (right) with BNP leader Nick Griffin (centre), at a dinner hosted by the party in 2004 for France’s then fascist leader Jean-Marie Le Pen
This article first appeared in the Summer 2024 issue of Searchlight
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