Laura Towler, Patriotic Alternative deputy leader plumbed new depths when responding to Jeremy Hunt’s budget announcement of £1m for a memorial to 1.5 million Muslims who died in WW2, she posted: “What is there even left left to say anymore?” And. not one to be outdone in the sheer vileness stakes, Laurence Fox contributed this:
Tommy Robinson gets warm welcome back into UKIP fold
It was only back in 2018 that UKIP began tearing itself apart when leader Gerald Batten appointed Tommy ‘Ten Names’ Robinson as the party’s ‘grooming’ adviser. An association with the likes of Robinson was too much for many members. The link was short lived but the damage was done. Now it seems Robinson is once […]
Exclusive: How Margaret Thatcher approved right-wing smear sheet attacking Searchlight editor
Gerry Gable Margaret Thatcher Documents from Margaret Thatcher’s Downing Street office, declassified at New Year 2024, show that Thatcher and her closest advisers discussed and approved of a right-wing smear sheet that attacked Searchlight’s editor and publisher Gerry Gable. This smear sheet – British Briefing – was edited by a former MI5 officer whose wife […]
Book Review- The Other Pandemic: How QAnon Contaminated the World
Martyn Lester reviews James Ball’s account of the crazy world of QAnon and conspiracy theories The ‘wellness-to-fascism pipeline’. It was a phrase almost guaranteed to catch our attention, and when we spotted it in the headline of a Guardian feature (‘”Everything you’ve been told is a lie!” Inside the wellness-to-fascism pipeline’) back in August, it […]
BOOK REVIEW: Short history of Fascism in Liverpool 1923-1940: by Chris Jones
Steve Silver reviews The Flash in the Pan (originally published in the Winter 2023/24 issue of Searchlight magazine) Merseyside historian Chris Jones has done the anti-fascist movement a great service in bringing out this concise history of the fascist movement in Liverpool. Flash in the Pan, which gets its name from what anti-fascists dubbed the […]
Far right and nazis mobilise on Madrid streets
The Spanish election results have served to energise the more astute of nazi elements, who are busy bolstering links with like-minded Europeans. Roger Pearce reports This article was first published in the Winter 2023/24 of Searchlight magazine A narrow victory for Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and his allies has brought a coalition of conservatives, […]
Bigots whipped up hatred to incite Dublin riots
Austin Harney explains how the right uses social media to spread poisonous lies about asylum-seekers and specifically how this tactic led to recent events in Dublin This article was first published in the Winter 2023/24 issue of Searchlight magazine The end of November saw the Irish far right organise a dangerous riot in Dublin after […]
Populist PVV take most seats in Dutch elections – Charles Fox analyses the results
Geert Wilders’ anti-immigration party gained the most seats in November’s elections, but forming a government in the Netherlands in never simple. Charles Fox sees parallels with past events This article originally appeared in the Winter 2023/24 issue of Searchlight magazine Even by the standards of the often higgledy-piggledy world of Dutch politics, the results of the […]
Eco-fascism A new found ‘concern’ for the climate emergency – writes Luke Michael
Under the guise of concern for the planet, far-right parties are using green issues to legitimise and promote their extreme ideologies. Luke Michael highlights their tactics This article originally appeared in the Winter 2023/24 issue of Searchlight magazine As the climate and ecological crisis starts to devastate communities worldwide, more people will consider green issues […]
Don’t underestimate Vox – warns David Karvala
Since the elections, the ultra-right Vox party has been busy mobilising street protests, but has failed to have a great impact. David Karvala warns, however, it is too early to relax This article originally appeared in Winter 2023/24 issue of Searchlight magazine In our Autumn issue we carried an analysis of the biggest Spanish far right […]
Party Time Is Over (Again)
Former BNP leader says it’s time for ‘direct action’ Mark Scholl considers the implications. In October 1981 a certain Nicholas John Griffin, then aged 22, stood as the National Front candidate in a by-election for the Croydon North West constituency. The party had been crushed in the 1979 General Election, because of very well organised […]
Breaking: UKIP chief sacked as magistrate
We did ask, back in October, how UKIP Chair Ben Walker could be appointed as a magistrate given the several criminal convictions he enjoyed, the most recent only four years ago for a string of building regulation offences, when he was fined £11,000 by Bristol Magistrates and branded a “rogue builder” by the local press. […]
Britain First wiped out in Wellingborough
Golding and crew before the result sank in Having polled just 477 votes, a paltry 1.6%, Britain First’s crestfallen leader Paul Golding went online this morning to observe that this was “a disappointing result”. For him maybe; not for us. He had his excuses oven ready, the main one being that, after all, “Wellingborough is […]
Shreela Flather, Baroness Flather (1934-2024), race relations pioneer and friend of Searchlight
Searchlight was saddened to hear of the recent death of Shreela Flather, Baroness Flather at the age of 89. She was veteran race relations campaigner and pioneer – the first Asian woman to receive a peerage and one of the first people from an ethnic minority to sit in the House of Lords, originally as […]
Watch out for the MAGA moms
Working the crowd (clockwise from top left): Moms for Liberty founders, Tina Descovich and Tiffany Justice, presidential contenders Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley and Donald Trump; to round off the organisation’s 2023 summit in Philadelphia singer Mary Millben belted out God Bless America. First published in Winter 2023/24 Searchlight magazine A ‘conservative’ organisation that spread to […]
UKIP’s ‘rogue builder’ boss gets more and more desperate
If you thought that the sordid world of UKIP was, well, as sordid as it might get, then you are sadly mistaken. The latest extraordinary development is the distribution in Wellingborough, which goes to the polls in a Parliamentary by-election on Thursday, of a leaflet calling for a vote for the UKIP candidate, Geoff Courtenay. […]
Holocaust denier, Irving, is on his deathbed
Out of all the gloom, some good news: David Irving, the pretend historian and cheer leader for the Third Reich, is on his deathbed and is not expected to last much longer. And before we get any lectures on poor taste, remember this: Irving is an evil swine who spent much of his life minimising […]
Remembering a true anti-fascist legend
26 years ago today we lost Baron Moss, one of the great unsung heroes of the British anti-fascist movement. Baron was one of the leadership committee of the 62 Group which decided to launch Searchlight as a newspaper in 1964. And it was Baron who brought together Gerry Gable and Maurice Ludmer to relaunch […]
Funds row splits Scampton anti-asylum campaign
NSD’s leader Alek Yerbury (left) denied all knowledge of irregularity, but Scott Pittsy (centre) quickly pointed the finger at Darren Edmundson (right) of rival outfit Patriotic Alternative for the missing cash THERE HAS BEEN serious friction down at RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire, where rival groups are campaigning against government proposals to house asylum-seekers on the […]
Edinburgh court orders extradition of French Holocaust denier
First published in the Winter 2023/24 issue of Searchlight magazine Reynouard Absconding risk means he is likely to remain in jail if he appeals HOLOCAUST DENIERs are panicking after an Edinburgh court judgment that threatens to end their use of the UK as a base for pseudo-academic anti-Semitism. On 12 October, Sheriff Chris Dickson ordered […]
