Notes from the Underground: British Fascism 1974-92. Part 2

See also:

• Part 1: British Fascism 1974-92 (Lobster 23)
• Part 3: British fascism 1983-6 (Lobster 25)
• Part 4: British Fascism 1983-6 (II) (Lobster 26)
• The 1986 National Front Split (Lobster 29)

Introduction

In the first part of this essay, in Lobster 23, after reviewing the strategies adopted by significant British fascist parties in the period, I concluded that there had been no attempt to seize power by violent means or closely collaborate with elements in the secret state/ruling class who may have entertained such fantasies in the 1970s. (1) In this essay I examine some aspects of the links between the British fascists and their continental European colleagues, some of whom were engaged in serious violence and a ‘strategy of tension’: the role of Steve Brady, alleged paramilitary ‘fixer’, the ‘political soldiers’ group in the National Front, the ‘safe-housing’ of Italian and German fascists, and the alleged plot to bomb the Notting Hill Carnival.

Steve Brady: the Henry Kissinger of international fascism?

In September 1979 Steve Brady was appointed International Liaison Officer (ILO) for the neo-nazi League of Saint George. (2) Almost immediately rumours started to circulate that he was a high-powered ‘fixer’ for euro-fascism. The legend began with two very intriguing articles in Hibernia, a now defunct Irish magazine, in February and July 1980. (3)

The two articles posited connections between Column 88, the League of Saint George, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) and the Belgian neo-nazi VMO. The Maguire article stated that in 1975 ‘a splinter group within the VMO formed the Viking Group specifically to fight alongside the UDA in any future civil war in the North [of Ireland]’ (p. 11). Brady is described as ‘prominent in the UVF in Britain’, as well as allegedly quoting from Mein Kampf at a ceremony held at the World War One Langemarke cemetery. (4) Interestingly, Maguire mentions but immediately glosses over the Irish republican sympathies of many involved in the League of St. George (p. 10).

In 1981 theSun reported (19 February) that Brady had been ‘enrolled as a full ‘brother’ in the UDA’; and a Fortnight (Belfast) article in 1986 contended (without direct quotation or specific evidence) that Brady by then was claiming ‘joint membership of both the UDA and the UVF’. (5) It was also suggested, in a Ray Hill/Searchlight production, the ‘Guns on the Right’ documentary shown on British television in 1981, that Brady had been instrumental in smuggling guns to Northern Ireland. The ‘hooded figure’ who testified to this gave no details, and Brady says he was not subsequently questioned by the police.

But what really transformed Brady into an almost mythic fascist ‘fixer’ was the publication by Searchlight in August 1982 of parts of a 1980 letter from Brady to Andy Tyrie of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), offering to help them build links to European groups on the political far right. (6) Henceforth Brady’s inclusion in stories of UDA-National Front links became obligatory. As Steve Bruce noted recently, he ‘is one of the very few people who come even close to making the case for fascist and racist influence on loyalism.’ (7)

According to Searchlight, Brady ‘had a hand in bringing the fascist VMO and the UVF together, with the VMO offering the UVF weapons and explosives…. Searchlight investigators were told by VMO senior officers that Brady had been instrumental in setting up the liaison.’ (8) And according to Searchlight (and admitted to an extent by Brady) that he had been involved in ‘safe-housing’ Italian fascist political refugees in the U.K..

I shall look at the key charges: UVF membership; the League of St George as a ‘terrorist’ organisation; his relationship to the UDA; links with VMO; and finally ‘safehousing’ of foreign fascists. (9)

An Ulster volunteer?

Brady denies ever claiming to be a member of the UVF, and none of the articles I have seen quote him on it or cite any evidence. No details have ever been given of his alleged UVF ‘unit’ or of any military actions he may have been involved in. What he has said is that given his origins in Northern Ireland, and former membership of Ulster Vanguard, when he came to England in 1973 and was asked about membership of paramilitary organisations, he would give a knowing wink — just the sort of behaviour that might be expected from a 18 year-old new to London. Although the state has not been averse to arresting and imprisoning the odd UVF member, according to Brady he has not ever been questioned on the subject. (10)

The only item held up as proof of such links has been a fragment of a letter (undisputably written by Brady) referring to the fact that a UVF ‘Death Squad’ had murdered an Irish Republican Socialist Party student, one Michael Adamson. According to Brady, this followed an ‘exchange of views between the UVF men and Adamson which the UVF men won with that most forceful, and final argument, a .45 calibre bullet!’. Brady speculates that further named individuals had incurred the ‘displeasure of UVF Brigade Staff’, and proferred his opinion that their lives and commitment to proletarian struggle — they were members of an obscure Maoist sect, the Communist Party of England — Marxist Leninist — might soon be discontinued. (11) At the very least, this letter is tasteless, but such sentiments (expressed both publicly and privately) are not uncommon in Northern Ireland. Does this letter show, as Searchlight would have us believe, ‘how closely he is linked with the UVF “Death Squads” ‘? (12) Is there anything here that was not known in Loyalist circles, within which Brady has unquestionably moved for a long time? (13) I am not saying Brady has not had connections with the UVF (although he denies this). What I am saying is that this letter is not proof.

In League with the Devil?

Being International Liaison Officer of the League of St. George, an explicitly neo-nazi outfit, at first may sound like a high-powered job, and unquestionably involved communication with the wilder fascist fringes. Robert Edwards’ assertion, cited in note 5, that the League was itself capable of and intent on, planning and executing armed actions, was not only bereft of evidence, but was dismissed by none other than Ray Hill. In February 1981, after a series of British press stories, Hill notes the League ‘had been nick-named the Leak of St. George by other nazi hard-liners. So Oumow [of the French FNE] was by-passing them and making contacts directly with other far-right activist groups ‘in the field’ ‘. (14)

Close collaboration by the League qua organisation (as opposed to individual members) with Ulster Loyalist groups would have been made difficult by the Irish republican sympathies of many in the League. (15)

Of his own involvement in the LSG Brady told me, ‘I was sent into it by Richard Lawson in 1975, to find out what it was…… we [i.e. those who that December had formed the National Party — author] thought it was a Tyndallite plot… we came to the conclusion it was a load of old Mosleyites and Hitler cultists’. After the collapse of the National Party in 1977, along with David McCalden, Brady reactivated his membership, as the decision ‘had been taken to radicalise the NF from within — we needed a platform to address NF members. The LSG didn’t do anything, have a central agenda. It was a club.’ (16) This account of the League is consistent with what is known from other sources: in the first part of this essay I noted (Lobster 23, p. 17) Martin Webster’s perception of the League as a focus of intra-NF dissent. Of his task as International Liaison Officer, Brady said, ‘All the job involved was translating magazines and sticking reports in the League Review …… asking them if they wanted anything printed.’ (17)

Brady is being too modest here, for unquestionably being ILO brought him into correspondence with, and on occasions such as Diksmuide, contact with a wide variety of far right personnel, some of whom were undoubtedly engaged in ‘armed struggle’. What remains to be proved however, is that such contact meant he was engaged in organising or preparing for military actions.

Ironically enough, those who have constructed the persona of Steve Brady as the ‘Stavro Blofeldt’ of the fascist right have missed the fact that in late 1979 he was a U.K. member (they would say supporter) of the U.S. ‘National Alliance’, headed by none other than William L. Pierce, pseudonymous author of The Turner Diaries which had by then been published. (18)

For Brady, his sojourn in the LSG, including his International Liaison stint (which ended early 1981 to be followed by his resignation from the League in May of that year), was just the search for a political home after the loss of the National Party. He says,
‘Once I could get back into the NF, all experiments like the National Alliance and League of Saint George were dropped. I got back into communication with the NF before the end of 1980. Webster [by then facing a threat from Tyndall, the NF Constitutional Movement, the British Democratic Party and the British Movement — author] decided that keeping up the emnity of 1975 was no longer worthwhile.’ (19)

Confirmation of this is again apparently forthcoming from a glance at the initially Strasserite Nationalism Today, founded in April 1980. Brady contends that he was involved with it from the start, but to avoid annoying Webster and causing Nationalism Today’ s proscription, his name did not appear as a by-line till issue 4 of February 1981.

There is no doubt that both before and after becoming League International Liaison Officer Brady was active in conventional British fascist politics. There is nothing to suggest a ‘paramilitary fixer’. Rather, the period in the League of Saint George was just a stop on Brady’s political journey round the schismatic British fascists.

Going underground?

If Brady had been an advocate of’armed actions’ by the fascist right — Searchlight’s analysis — Brady should have gone with the ‘political soldier’ Official NF rather than the Flag NF after the split in 1986 which resulted in two groups each claiming to be the NF. In fact he stayed with the Flag group, and remained a leading figure up until his resignation in 1992. Not to be cheated of a good story, in 1986 Searchlight carried a fascinating piece, claiming ‘a blueprint for a new cell structure….. breaking the [NF] up into more or less autonomous cells has been drawn up by Steve Brady, whose intimate knowledge of Loyalist paramilitary death squads in Northern Ireland equips him well for the task….. the whole scheme fits perfectly with the perspective….. that, ultimately, their road to power will be a violent one’. (20)

Not only has Brady’s passing reference in the document to the advantageous security aspects of decentralisation to be seen in the context of struggles with the ‘political soldier’ NF group — i.e. answering their arguments — later contributions by him to strategic debate within the Flag NF illustrate that ‘security’ was not a prime concern of his. So, he was to write articles attacking the ‘revolutionary’ fantasies of the ‘political soldier’ NF, pouring scorn on their theses about the ‘inevitability’ of state repression. (21) Indeed, his most substantial theoretical contribution to the Flag NF’s politics after 1986 was the elaboration of a much praised but little acted upon ‘Ladder Strategy’, based on nothing more sinister than building local support step by step in target electoral wards. (22) How exactly this sort of political theorising fits in to the Flag NF ‘going underground’ Searchlight has thus not explained. (23)

Brady and the UDA: a shut case reopened?

Central to the analysis of his role as a ‘paramilitary fixer’ on the far right, is Brady’s relationship with the Ulster Defence Association (UDA); and central to that is the letter he wrote to Andy Tyrie on 30 May 1980. Searchlight, who published the letter, believe it showed that Brady sought to establish some sort of connection between the UDA and far right/nazi groups on the European continent. Furthermore, in outlining the personnel and policies of some of these groups, Brady came out with some choice descriptions. For example he described the Italian Ordine Nuovo as ‘basically neo-Fascist urban guerillas, whose main activities are machine-gunning Red marches, blowing up Red offices, car bombing of Reds, assassinations of leading Reds and good clean fun of that sort.’ (24)

This much is agreed, but macho rhetoric aside, what exactly was Brady suggesting to Tyrie? The way the letter has been presented by Searchlight implies that Brady was thereby some paramilitary fixer, directly involved in setting up scenarios such as ‘an attempt to bring the Flemish fascist VMO and the UVF together, with the VMO offering the UVF weapons and explosives in exchange for its activists being trained by the UVF in Northern Ireland in the techniques of bomb making and handling explosives.’ (25) That is a possible interpretation of Brady’s letter, but Searchlight only reproduced parts of it. Reading the whole thing conveys a rather different impression of his intentions.

Thus they did not seem fit to reproduce Brady’s suggestion that Tyrie contact Franz Josef-Strauss, of the right-wing (non nazi) Christian Social Union (p. 5). Most tellingly, because it does not fit their basic thesis, nothing at all of the last page has ever been reproduced or even referred to by Searchlight. In it Brady starts by raising and then answering a potential query from Tyrie ‘as to what sort of help you can expect from the European groups, and what form co-operation between them and you could take, that is a matter for you… The following possibilities suggest themselves to me, and doubtless you will be able to think of other ones…..

1. Propaganda for the Ulster Cause overseas…
2. Joint political initiatives: pro-Ulster demonstrations in European capitals, speaking tours by your spokesmen etc…
3. Exchanging information on the IRA and its network abroad
4. Financial assistance…. ‘ (p. 8).

Brady’s explanation of the letter is that he was struck, as League International Liaison Officer and reader of foreign literature, by how many European neo-fascists (my term, not his) sympathised with the IRA, and how poor the Loyalist propaganda machine was by comparison. It was for this reason, he says, that the letter was written, and his outline of the activities of groups like Ordine Nuovo was mostly culled from the pages of Searchlight. The references to moving men and ‘material’ were put in to spice it up, as bait to ensure the UDA took his offer of propaganda assistance seriously. (It is clear from the letter that at that time he wasn’t a member of the UDA.) (26)

Even the episode used most often to ‘prove’ that Brady’s letter was the start of something sinister, the alleged VMO-UVF link — the only example available — does not quite stand up unsupported. It is true that UVF men Joseph Bennett and John Irvine met a VMO leader in Antwerp, Belgium in 1980. This was confirmed by VMO leader Roger Spinnewijn. Spinnewijn knew about Brady’s letter to Tyrie – – Brady and Spinnewijn knew each other — and said that it was the UDA, not the UVF which ‘took up [Brady’s] recommentation’. (27) There is nothing to link the UVF-VMO link to Brady’s letter but the word of UVF ‘super grass’ Joseph Bennett. However, and surely relevantly, the convictions of all fourteen defendants Bennett had implicated in crimes were overturned on appeal, and he was dismissed by Lord Justice Lowry as an unreliable witness. (28)

The 1986 article in Fortnight by Cathy Johnson, patently taken from Searchlight, kept the pot boiling. (29) By 1992, when Searchlight again returned to the theme, Brady’s role had been ever so subtly enhanced, when readers were informed that ‘Searchlight’s investigators were told by VMO senior officers that Brady had been instrumental in setting up the liaison.’ (30) A reader of Searchlight could take that to mean that Brady was privy to the UVF’s visit to Antwerp, and knew and approved of its alleged purposes, including the suggestion that the UVF bomb mainland U.K. Jewish targets. (This allegation is supported by no evidence whether quotation or otherwise.)

The very prominence of this flimsy house of cards as proof of Brady’s paramilitary connections makes me think there may well have been nothing more to it than his relationship with Tyrie. (31) Or rather, more evidence is needed to make me think that such links were anything more than they appear to be. After all, until this year the UDA was a legal organisation in Northern Ireland, and still is on the mainland U.K.. (32)

The source of the letter?

How did Searchlight get the Brady letter to Andy Tyrie? According to Brady, ‘When the UDA was raided by the British Army, the letter was stolen from their offices….. Searchlight definitely did get it from the Army.’ (33) The dates do fit. The UDA offices were raided on 14 April 1982, and many documents taken, in what was transparently a ‘fishing expedition’, although ostensibly the aim was to look for guns and explosives. The letter appeared in Searchlight in August that year, the first time its existence had even been hinted at. (34)

Little seems to have resulted from the UDA taking up Brady’s suggestion to get in touch with VMO. Bob Marsh, a UDA member from Liverpool, was in June 1980 sent by Tyrie to Diksmuide to check out the organisations represented there. (The News of the World, 6 July 1980 has a photo of him and Brady at the gathering.) The next public thing of note to happen was a 40-strong NF visit to Belfast. On 28 May 1981 Brady, along with Martin Wingfield, Caralyn Giles and Ian Taylor (three of them NF Directorate members) met UDA Chair Andy Tyrie and Political Spokesman John McMichael. According to Brady at the time, this meeting ‘left both sides on the friendliest of terms and with a much better understanding. As part of an agreement between the NF and the UDA to exchange information of mutual interest, the home addresses of local IRA supporters were handed to the Ulster paramilitary group.’ (35)

But despite Brady’s long-standing friendship with Tyrie, not only does nothing military seem to have resulted in which Brady was involved, the fact that many European fascist groups still broadly sympathise with the IRA indicates that Brady’s letter was not acted upon.

The allegations about Brady I outlined at the start of this section remain just allegations.

The Notting Hill bomb plot reconsidered

No account of putative British plans for fascist violence in the early 1980s can ignore the allegations of Ray Hill, the ex-nazi who became Searchlight magazine’s ‘super-mole’ inside the far right. Hill, it is said, exposed and prevented all manner of mayhem, in particular a plot to bomb the Notting Hill Carnival on August Bank Holiday 1981. (36)

Hill claims that at an international euro-nazi meeting in France — appropriately enough to celebrate Hitler’ s birthday, on 20 April 1981 — at which he was the only British representative, on behalf of the British Movement, it was put to him that in the light of fascist bombings elsewhere in Europe — Bologna 1980, the Munich Beer Festival 1980, the Rue Copernic synagogue in Paris in 1981 — it was about time some similar action took place in the U.K., at the said carnival. Hill’s role was to inform one Tony Malski in the U.K. that he had to go over to France to pick up relevant materials. Then Special Branch were informed of Malski’s exact time/place of return to Britain, in order to pick him up on the ferry. According to Hill, Special Branch warned Malski in advance not to do anything stupid, so he returned, minus the materials. In order to prevent a bomb going off anyway, Searchlight fed the story to the Daily Mirror, and ran it themselves in August 1981. While it is not possible to say for certain that this is not what happened, the whole episode raises nagging doubts. (37)

Differing origins of the plot

In Searchlight the idea is said to have been first mooted at the above-mentioned gathering attended by Mark Fredericksen and Alex Oumow of FNE (French neo-nazis), and Yann Tran Long, a Vietnamese arms dealer. (38) However Searchlight do not attribute the idea to a particular individual. In the television documentary of this incident, ‘The Other Face of Terror’, we were told the suggestion was made by ‘French people’. By the time of Ray Hill’s book The Other Face of Terror (hereafter OFOT), four years later, Hill was able to attribute the specific suggestion to an (unnamed) Frenchman with a missing finger. And yet another version appeared in in the News of The World article which appeared the Sunday before the TV documentary was broadcast. In that Hill attributed to Malski the (1981) observation that he ‘already knew of the plan. In fact he said the bombing idea was his’.

Tony Malski’s trip to France

Tony Malski became the organiser of the tiny National Socialist Action Party, set up in 1982 after the British Movement had been written off by him as too soft. He was undoubtedly given to bellicose verbosity and paramilitary fantasies within a framework of ‘hard-line’ Hitlerism. (39)

It could just be that Malski boasted he’d thought of it when he hadn’t. (40) Leaving that aside, the next question concerns the materials required to do the job. According to Hill, Malski ‘already had access to explosives and knew how to make timing devices’ — the only items missing, therefore, were detonators. (41) These were to be obtained from France. Here we have an experienced ex Territorial Army soldier, an alleged stockpiler of arms who has to go all the way to France to pick up detonators? Could they not be relatively easily obtained here, from quarries, military depots, railways — or, indeed, from the massed legions of Column 88? (42)

In any event, according to Searchlight, the ‘missing detonators’ were eventually brought into the country in January 1982, by Yann Tran Long, who had apparently renewed his accquaintance with Malski. After a tip-off from Searchlight, Special Branch visited Tran Long’s flat where they failed to find these elusive detonators, even though they were allegedly hidden under his bed. (43) How this account squares with Searchlight’ s 1981 claim that they had ‘received firm information that the explosives are already in this country and are ready for use’, is not clear. (44) By 1983 Searchlight were referring to Malski as having travelled to Paris in 1981 and ‘collected a consignment of detonators from Yann Tran Long’. (45)

What of the personnel intended to take part in the bomb plot? At the time, according to Searchlight ‘in the mayhem which will follow the explosion, snipers are to open fire from vantage points in two properties which have already been obtained and secured’. (46) This particular tale was repeated in the Hill book, but no details of the property or snipers were given.

While in his book (p. 216) Hill reports Malski as having told him over the phone of the plot, there is no taped record of this, even though Searchlight did manage shortly after to tape a conversation with Malski. The ace in Hill’s pack is the tape-recording made in the pub with Malski in 1983, for the TV documentary. From it, it is clear that at some point previously Malski had gone to France to pick up some ‘gear’ from Yann Tran Long, who was unquestionably an arms dealer. It would also seem that he was warned in advance by some unspecified authorities — quite likely to have been Special Branch — that he shouldn’t do so. The full passage in the documentary is this.

Malski: ‘They said ‘we know that you’re going to pick up some things in Paris. We were tipped off. We’ve got your description and your name. Don’t bring the gear back in….’ The only three that knew I was going over to see him was Alex Ormouw. Only him Yann and me knew I was going over there’.

This much is certain, but that the ‘gear’ was actually detonators intended for use at Notting Hill, in 1981 — that is not so clear. Tran Long sold arms, including detonators. But that does not prove Hill’s version of events to be true, even if it is potentially credible. For despite carrying around a microphone for months (years?) on end, prior to his breaking cover, Hill did not manage to secure one incontrovertible admission on tape from anyone allegedly involved in the plot. Hill portrays Malski as a talkative, ludicrous, egoistic (though violently-inclined) fool. Does this suggest Malski as the type of person who might be expected to carry out such a bombing, or just the type of person who might boast about doing such a bombing even if he had neither the intention or capability to do so?

The purpose of a Notting Hill bomb?

Finally, what was such a bomb intended to achieve? How did it fit into euro-fascist strategy? There is no doubt whatsoever that had such a bomb gone off in that location (in any year) the first targets for police interest would be the far right, irrespective of whether they admitted it or not. Presumably this effect would have been anticipated by those planning the outrage. In which case, doesn’t this rather contradict the other major activity euro-fascists were undoubtedly engaged in to some degree at this time in Britain, namely arranging for wanted comrades to be ‘safe- housed’? What is the point of going to great lengths to set up a network of European terror, from which Britain was specifically excluded because of the UK’s role as a ‘bolt-hole’, in order to then mess it all up with something like the Notting Hill bomb?

Safe as safehouses?

Though there is no evidence of a concerted Europe-wide neo-fascist bombing campaign to start in the early 1980s, let aone one that involved the U.K. neo-fascists, the ‘safe-housing’ of wanted fascists did take place. According to Searchlight, Ray Hill was approached in June 1980 by one Enrico Masselli (a contact made because of Hill’s earlier South African NF links), to arrange ‘safehousing’ in Britain for Italian political refugees ‘in the near future’. (47) According to Hill, he then approached Steve Brady on Masselli’s behalf, and asked the League of Saint George (LSG) to take over the liaison. Nothing more was then heard by Hill until he went to a League social at Acton in April 1981, when he allegedly noticed Alesso Alibrandi and other Italians in conversation with Steve Brady and Mike Griffin of the LSG. (48)

There are two issues here. First, is the question of Hill’s own involvement in, or knowledge of, the events. Second, is the significance of the safehousing itself. Not for the first time Hill seems to have got his script muddled. Thus, in his book, in place of the name Enrico Masselli used both in Searchlight and the TV film ‘The Other Face of Terror’, he chooses to call the Italian ‘Paolo’. Yet otherwise the details are exactly the same, right down to the character working for Olivetti and visiting London for an IBM computer course.

Steve Brady does admit some involvement. According to him, he had no advance knowledge of the Italians’ arrival. Rather, ‘at 6 am one morning, late in 1980, there came a knock on the door of my Brighton flat. This ragged-looking dishevelled Italian, who didn’t speak any amount of English [Fiore] said ‘Refugees, we are persecuted Italian state. We have hunger, no food, no money, help’. He took me down to Brighton bus station and there were loads more, heaps of rubbish suddenly started to move and I realised they were people, a couple of dozen at least. They only stayed in my house for one night, and then made contact with people in London.’ (49) This is certainly possible — the Madeira Place address in Brighton was internationally known as the Hancock family’s publishing base — but in the light of Brady’s role as International Liaison Officer, and his correspondence with foreign fascists, there is no way that pre-planning can be ruled out. (Whether the approach came before the Bologna bombing or not might bear on the question of whether the bomb was a pre-meditated fascist attack, something that is by no means certain. Unquestionably, after the Bologna attack the Italian neo-fascists were persecuted. Italians who fled here may not have done so because of guilt, and according to Brady they denied guilt for Bologna when asked (as they might be expected to do…). (50)

The analogy that Brady used to justify this to me was that if members of a foreign leftist group turned up on my doorstep and claimed all their members had been arrested, would I put them up? I suppose that were I able to I would, especially if I had read their magazine earlier and felt generally sympathetic. Critics would say that Brady and the LSG were quite prepared to find accommodation for foreign fascists without knowing for certain of their guilt or innocence; indeed Brady has said he only knew the names of a few such as De Francisci and Fiore. Brady further says that these Italians ‘were quite openly living in Britain and weren’t hiding’ (51) — that I can’t really comment on except to say that until their cases came to court, I don’t think their presence was widely known. Indeed, according to Brady, the only Italian present, who gave a speech, at the LSG Acton social in 1981 was Roberto Fiore. (52) Presumably Britain was chosen because its extradition laws require more proof than is normally required by courts before extradition proceedings are successful.

The Italians involved were mostly militants of the Terza Positione (TP) grouping, plus some NAR members, the former in the eyes of some observers being merely a front for the neo-nazi NAR anyway. (53) Brady would say that he and the LSG were exonerated, for with the exception of the NAR’s Luciano Petrone, the extradition of these individuals was refused — apparently for lack of evidence. (54) Fiore himself said in an interview, ‘It was a deliberate choice…… in England they still have some kind of political system and right-wing Italians can wangle their way into the top echelons of the National Front, the British party of the extreme right’. (55)

Fiore, allegedly the leader of TP (although others would see Paolo Signorelli as deserving that title), subsequently became influential in the NF (which he never formally joined). Suffice to say here, like the other Italians, he was just ‘passing through’ the League. (56) While it is beyond dispute that elements of the far right put up Italian political refugees, there is no evidence that this fitted into an overall euro-fascist division of labour.

The German connection

In February 1983 three Germans, Gottfried Hepp, Walter Kexeland Ulrich Tillman, wanted in connection with bomb attacks there, were entertained by the self-styled ‘Major’ Ian Souter-Clarence (who had left the army in 1947 as a Lieutenant), long-standing organiser of paramilitary camps and attender at the Diksmuide rally. Two of them were arrested at his home, the third (Hepp) in Paris in April 1985. (57) The Germans were accused not just of attacks on traditional fascist targets such as Jews, but also of actions against U.S. military bases and personnel, the type of operation hitherto thought to be the province of the Left. (58)

In 1981 Souter-Clarence had become embroiled in controversy when he wrote a ‘Guest Editorial’ for the May edition of Protect and Survive monthly, inveighing against left critics of civil defence, in particular local authorities which proposed to abandon it. (59) At the time Souter-Clarence’s intervention had been the cue for accusations that he was not only a member of Column 88, but that his ‘Wessex Survival’ courses, advertised extensively in the League Review, were a form of paramilitary training for nazis. This he denied. (60)

Safehousing assessed

These two episodes of ‘safe-housing’ (especially the second) constitute the closest British fascists are known to have come to those from abroad engaged in ‘armed struggle’. However, before we read into this conjuncture something of a turning-point, it is worth reflecting that both sets of refugees came here because they were on the run. Indeed, in the case of the Italians, active engagement in anything hinting at ‘armed struggle’ would to this day constitute activities ‘prejudicial to public order’, the best excuse for extradition that could be found. As for the Germans, they were even more desperate, and presumably picked on Britain as a bolt-hole precisely because it was a comparatively tranquil back-water. In any event, whatever Souter-Clarence’s ambitions, there has yet to be established any intimate connection between him and NF leaders after the late 1970s. (61)

Souter-Clarence’s backing of Tyndall’s authoritarian stance rather than the confused democratism of his NF opponents, might well explain his subsequent trajectory. Thus he was rumoured to have not only trained the British Movement ‘Leader Guard’ in combat techniques, but also to have provided bodyguards for Tyndall in the early 1980s. He also was said to be the key figure behind the Edelweiss camps, attended by neo-nazis from all over Europe. (62) Disentangling fact from fiction here is difficult and all that can be said with certainty about Souter-Clarence is that when he was a teacher in Bournemouth he had recruited pupils for his ‘Viking Cadet Commandos’, one of whom said later: ‘I was in his unit from 1968 until 1971 and during that time I can only describe the motivation behind the whole thing as training guerrilla fighters’. (63) But no-one who admits to having been trained by the ‘Major’, or his alleged associate in Column 88, Leslie Vaughan, has subsequently carried out military actions, although the name Column 88 was appended to quite a few examples of mayhem.

Warriors Rising?

Rising was a short-lived and poorly circulated magazine, irregularly produced, with only five issues between 1982 and 1985. The chief movers behind the enterprise were Roberto Fiore, Paul Matthews and Derek Holland (all Lefebrvite Catholics). Author of many NF initiatives after 1983, Holland became the chief ideologist of the NF after 1986, and much of this was prefigured in Rising. The journal had as its avowed purpose a significant change in orientation for the far right. In particular, ‘Too much emphasis has been put on doctrines to be followed instead of preparing the ‘political soldiers’ Europe desperately needs to be reborn… political soldiers with the spirit of legionnaires totally dedicated to the movement… the solution lies in men, not in programmes’. (64)

Given the later prominence of the group around Rising, and the radical changes they wrought in the NF after 1986, as well as the profusion of violent imagery therein, Rising has become something of a legend. But was Rising a focus of preparations for ‘armed struggle’?

There is no doubt that camps and seminars were undertaken, associated with Rising, at both the Liss Forest home of Rosine de Bouniaville and the Suffolk farm owned by the father of Nick Griffin, accountant and Conservative Party activist, Edgar Griffin. Certain things nobody disputes took place at these seminars — ideological instruction, physical fitness programmes, self-defence training, and plotting how to get rid of Martin Webster. (65) On some accounts there was also instruction on how to take the offensive on street demonstrations. (66) But there is no evidence of preparation for ‘armed struggle’. Fiore, who played a key role in such camps, would have been extremely foolish to have given instruction in such matters: in 1981 he had only just escaped extradition back to Italy. Further, the Rising seminars were hardly a closely-guarded secret for long, for they were publicised under their cover name (the A.K. Chesterton Academy) in early 1983. (67)

Nevertheless, rumours of preparations for ‘armed struggle’ at Rising seminars persisted, and were given a further twist by the activities of Graham Gilmore, a mercenary who had joined the NF in 1981. He started to train the NF Flag (Colour) Party to take the lead on demonstrations in late 1983. According to Searchlight magazine, starting in October 1983 at a farm in Swanley, Kent, owned by NF member George Nye, this was not all the training they undertook. On the first day, time was taken up by drill practice, on the second day of the camp ‘the Colour Party received training in guerrilla warfare, including exercises in laying ambushes and night ambushes.’ (68) While not linked to Rising, this camp at Swanley, Kent is the only one to have been named with any degree of specificity as to time and place where ‘paramilitary’ training allegedly took place. Despite the determined efforts of Searchlight photographers at the Rising seminars they were aware of, no concrete evidence of arms and/or explosives training there has ever been produced.

All the above would be merely an allegation to set alongside all the others made above, with the same tag, ‘not proven’, but for one thing. In October 1988, during the ‘Disciples of Chaos’ TV programme made for Channel 4, with which Searchlight were intimately associated, the allegations about Swanley that had first appeared in Searchlight were repeated. (69) As a helicopter hovered above the location, the programme narrator stated that ‘training in the politics of revolution began in October 1983 at this farm at Swanley, Kent. Some of the Front’s first cadres were shown how to mount night-ambushes, and shown how to strip and then reassemble hand-guns….. The courses were run by Graham Gilmore, a former South African mercenary.’ (70)

George Nye was not very pleased at this allegation. He ran a riding-school on this property, and lost custom as well as reputation, purportedly leading to the school’s closure. He therefore sued Channel Four Television, and secured a fulsome apology: ‘Channel Four Television now accept that in fact Mr Nye has not allowed his land to have been used for such revolutionary or violent activity….. They have agreed to pay him a substantial sum by way of damages and to indemnify him as to his legal costs… C4 TV now acknowledges that there was no truth whatever in the allegation implied against Mr Nye in the programme, and wishes to apologise for having ever made it.’ (71)
Searchlight magazine did not feel it necessary to cover the story, nor did the national press as far as I can tell. The only reference I’ve come across to it is in The Flag newspaper, which stated that Nye received 30,000 damages from Channel 4 plus an earlier 10,000 from a Kent newspaper. (72)

Although two other named camps were mentioned in the programme, Suffolk 1986 and Offa’s Dyke 1988, no paramilitary aspects to such camps were mentioned. (73) The sole allegation of paramilitary training cannot be substantiated. I am not saying there were no paramilitary training camps anywhere: the ideology espoused by some in the NF in recent times would make that a distinct possibility. But no such proof has yet been published by Searchlight — or anybody else.

Notes

1. While since my last article I have come across more reliable documentation than hitherto concerning the activities of Column 88, and specific individual instances of fascist preparation for violence, they do not add up to enough to cause a change in my cautious conclusions then.
2. September, not July as I mistakenly stated in Lobster 23.
3. Ed Moloney, ‘British Nazi Group Links up with UVF/TARA’, 21 February 1980, and Michael Maguire ‘The Loyalists and the Neo-Nazi Connection’, 31 July 1980. See also Andrew Drummond’s article in News of the World 6 July 1980 on that year’s annual Dixmuide Rally. In Lobster 23 I referred to Dixmuide to as a neo-Nazi rally. In fact Dixmuide is a Flemish Nationalist festival to which many neo-Nazis flock, not quite the same.
4. Maguire p. 10. Brady denies both allegations, and I have not yet seen the film of the event.
5. Cathy Johnson, ‘The NF and the Ulster Connection’, Fortnight, (Belfast) 7 July 1986, p. 8. Robert Hamilton Edwards, a Nazi cartoonist who, on his own account, left the League’s ruling council in late 1979 [around the time of Brady’s appointment as ILO therefore] suggested that he, Edwards, had ‘been privy to secret plans to hit Jewish targets in this country with guns and bombs’. Op. cit. No details were given of personnel, locations of arms dumps, bombs, or anything else. Edwards’ credibility as a witness was somewhat dissipated by his later conviction for publishing anti-semitic cartoons worthy of Julius Streicher in a publication entitled The Stormer.
6. This would seem to indicate such contacts by the UDA had not been substantial (or at least widely-known) before then.
7. Steve Bruce, The Red Hand, Oxford University Press, 1992 p. 152. Bruce is right to pour scorn on the wildly exaggerated version of Brady’s career purveyed by Cathy Johnson, but he does so sloppily, e.g. by repeating without investigation the assertion that Brady is a Catholic, and has claimed UVF membership. His account of VMO-UVF connections also conflates two separate meetings, and to dismiss NF influence in Northern Ireland because of David Kerr’s poor result in a 1987 by-election is similarly sloppy, given that elections were of little strategic interest for the ‘political soldier’ NF.
8. Searchlight April 1992, p. 6.
9. The gun-running allegation needs no further mention as there has not been even a half-serious attempt to substantiate it. But see for example Searchlight, April 1986, p. 4 which refers to Leslie Vaughan and Steve Brady ‘trying to amass weapons to send to Ulster’ — but gives no details. Obviously other NF members have been involved in such matters, but here I am concerned with Brady.
10. Relations between the UVF and the UDA have been somewhat fractious in the past, to say the least. Joint membership sounds unlikely, not to say dangerous. In any case, no evidence has been offered for this claim.
11. Letter reproduced in Searchlight, May 1983 p. 3, and April 1992 p. 6. None of these people were killed as it happened.
12. Searchlight, April 1992, p. 6.
13. The use made of this text is interesting. Thus, whereas in 1983 it was taken to merely indicate ‘close knowledge of UVF violence’, by 1992 it showed his ‘links’ to the Death Squads. Even more startlingly, it was apparently written, on Searchlight‘s own declaration, to two different people. So, in 1983 it was merely written to ‘another fascist’; but by 1992 the same letter was described as having been written to Andy Tyrie! Brady says it was written to a girlfriend.
14. The Other Face of Terro r, p. 207. Interestingly, Edwards isn’t cited in Hill’s book as a source of information on the League’s capabilities, having been ‘tainted’ by the above-mentioned The Stormer episode.
15. See for example Vol. 1 no. 27 of League Review, 1979, which contained an article advocating a United Ireland by ‘Robert Hamilton’ entitled ‘The Divided Nation’ pp. 11-15. This in itself might not have been so significant, except for the fact that between printing and distribution a disclaimer which had said ‘The contents of this article are purely a stimulus to debate, and are emphatically not to be regarded as reflecting the views of the League…. It is a personal opinion… the League itself has no policy on Ireland/Ulster’ (p. 14) was overlaid by a garish black decoration, beneath which the words were (are) still visible. This is a clear indication that the League did have a de facto policy on Ireland, or at least the editor (then Mike Griffin) did, even though a dissenting view was later published. An added twist is the fact that the author of the disclaimed disclaimer was…. Steve Brady.
16. Brady interview, 1 March 1992.
17. Ibid
18. The December 1979 edition of National Vanguard featured a letter entitled ‘British Hoaxocaust’ from ‘SB’ of London, England, casting aspersions on ‘Jew whines about pogroms etc.’, very close to a photograph of Brady selling National Vanguard near the Houses of Parliament (pp. 8 and 15). This was followed up by a long article in May 1980 under his full name called ‘Report from a British Teacher’ which disclosed that at a ‘recent march in Brighton… [skinheads] bought more than 250 copies of National Vanguard (p. 4). In light of the allegations about Brady, it is striking that his membership of National Alliance has not, to my knowledge, been referred to in print in opposition circles before.
19. Interview 1 March 1992.
20. Searchlight, October 1986 p. 4. The original Brady article is ‘All Power to the Branches’ in Vanguard 1, August 1986 pp. 4-5. A casual glance at the actual Flag NF ‘Constitution of the National Front’ 1990, shows how laughable Searchlight‘s interpretation was as a piece of serious analysis.
21. See ‘Radicals v Revolutionaries’, Vanguard, 4 December 1986, pp. 8-9; ‘State Repression — is it inevitable?’ in Vanguard 5, January 1987, pp. 8-9; and ‘Beating Repression’ in Vanguard 6 Feb. 1987, pp. 14-15.
22. See ‘Mapping out the Nationalist Road to Power’ in Vanguard 14, November 1987, pp. 10-11, and also ‘The Sixty Seat Campaign’ in Vanguard 31, July-September 1990 pp. 8-9
23. Following the demise in 1990 of the Official NF, the Flag seems to be following them underground at some speed, but that is more likely to be slipping into the grave than any planned policy!
24. Pp. 5-6 He also referred to the Turkish Grey Wolves, ‘whose main activity appears to be killing communists’ (p. 7).
25. Searchlight April 1992, p. 6.
26. Had he been a member of the UVF, as is alleged, that would have surely deserved a mention, or called for a more direct personal approach. Incidentally, had the ‘Viking Group’ mentioned by Michael Maguire in Hibernia (see note 3 above) two months later actually existed, then one might think this would have deserved a mention in the letter.
27. Searchlight May 1983, p. 4.
28. Bruce op. cit. p. 141.
29. Two out of the three photos in it were from Searchlight‘s May 1983 article, and sections are copied word for word, including Spinnewijn’s comments.
30. April 1992, p. 6.
31. The fact that depending on the particular story-line being pursued UDA and/or UVF membership is attributed to Brady makes me somewhat sceptical of information imparted by such sources. Thus, in Searchlight for August 1981 Brady was apparently a ‘UVF activist and gun-runner’ (p. 3). A year later, in August 1982, Searchlight made no mention of his being a member of either organisation, when it would surely have been most germane while talking about a letter to the UDA. Nine months later, in May 1983 (p. 3), he had suffered temporary demotion, merely having ‘boasted in the past of his UVF connections’. By issue 130 in April 1986 (p. 4), Brady had been reinstated, and generously granted retrospective membership of the UVF going back to the mid-seventies, but was ‘now a member of the UDA’. Not to be outdone, Johnson in her Searchlight -inspired Fortnight article of July that year (p. 8) had him claiming ‘joint membership’. In April 1992 the dice was given another shake, and the May 1983 article was retrospectively upgraded, now cited as having referred to two of his ‘fellow members in the UVF’ (p. 4). All this makes me eagerly wait the next instalment, when according to Searchlight, Brady’s connections with the paramilitaries ‘which still exists…[will be fully exposed’ (p. 4).Brady also denies the Searchlight assertion that he was ‘born a Catholic’ (p.4). According to him, his father’s family in Ireland were pro-British Irish Catholics. His grandfather had fought in World War One in as an Irish Guardsman, and served in the Royal Irish Constabulary (later the RUC) from 1919-22, being wounded in a gun-battle with the IRA in 1919. Brady’s father was an RAF Lancaster tail-gunner in World War Two, and had renounced Catholicism at the age of 16. Brady himself was born into the Anglican faith in Altrincham in July 1955. Therefore he has never been a Catholic, something confirmed by his past membership of Loyal Orange Lodge 1691 (Thames Valley), the same Lodge that Nick Griffin and Joe Pearce have belonged to. For it is just not possible to join the Orange Lodge if your birth certificate shows you to have been born a Catholic.
32. Whatever my/others opinions about the politics of Northern Ireland, it is a fact that the UDA/UVF (like Sinn Fein/IRA) represent a significant section of ‘activist’ opinion within their base community. Therefore, that Brady, a Northern Ireland Protestant, should express sympathy for the UDA is totally unsurprising. To link someone to paramilitary activity in an operational sense, more is needed.
33. Interview 1 March 1992.
34. We know from Colin Wallace’s evidence that such a document haul would be thoroughly analysed by the state intelligence forces for potential psy-ops use. It would not take genius to work out that a copy of the letter would be used by Searchlight. Had Searchlight a genuine ‘infiltrator’ in the UDA — something they have never claimed — then more solid and reliable information would have been forthcoming from them, one would think. Tyrie himself, in a Sunday World (Belfast) article of July 1 1984 is reported (though not quoted) as saying ‘that the NF had at one time suggested having some of the more extreme members trained in military tactics in Northern Ireland by the UDA as a form of NF stormtroopers, but had got short shrift’. Unfortunately, no date is given for this request. Tyrie went on to say some highly uncomplimentary things about the NF, distancing his organisation from ‘neo-Nazism’, and stating ‘we don’t need the NF’.
35. Sussex Front 11, July 1981, p. 4.
36. For non U.K. readers, the Notting Hill Carnival is the largest Black street festival in Europe.
37. These doubts did not arise until I read Hill’s own book The Other Face of Terror (Grafton, London, 1988), (hereafter OFOT), co-written by Time Out journalist and Searchlight associate Andrew Bell.
38. Searchlight May 1984, p. 11
39. This was chronicled by Searchlight in 1981 when they tape-recorded a phone conversation of him boasting about armed squads ready to intervene in riots. He was later to call repeatedly for the far right to build up its own paramilitary army.
40. People who knew him at the time have suggested to me that after a few drinks, just such a boast, accompanied by a profusion of expletives and racialist comments was the type of thing Malski might be expected to come out with.
41. Searchlight May 1984, p. 11.
42. Or for that matter from the UDA/UVF, if you accept the logic of Searchlight‘s version of Brady’s career examined above.
43. Searchlight May 1984, p. 12.
44. Searchlight August 1981, p. 3.
45. Searchlight June 1983, p. 3.
46. Searchlight August 1981, p. 3.
47. Searchlight June 1984, p. 10.
48. This development, on Hill’s account, occurred via his involvement, and the other two ‘safe-housing’ possibilities Hill speaks of — for the American J.B.Stoner and Marc Frederiksen of FANE — did not come about.
49. Brady interview 1 March 1992.
50. It now appears that the bombing was the work of the Italian secret state. See my review of Philip Willan’s Puppet Masters in Lobster 23. In a way, the question of whether or not the Italians contacted Brady, Hancock (whoever) prior to entry into the U.K. is irrelevant. Even if they did only stay at Brady’s place for one night, both he and the League aided people who were definite political fugitives. Brady contends that he believed and trusted these people when they proclaimed their innocence, and that at the time the escapees (and general listening on the grapevine) told him everyone on the Italian far right was being targetted in a blanket measure, irrespective of any guilt, merely for membership of fascist groups. In that situation, they had fled for their lives and were now asking for help. In February 1980, article 270 of the Italian Criminal Code made it a crime to join, promote, constitute, organise or direct an association seeking to subvert the democratic order by violent means, punishable with a prison sentence of between 4-15 years. See chapter 7 of Leonard Weinberg and William Lee Eubank, The Rise and Fall of Italian Terrorism (Westview Press, Colorado, U.S.A. 1987) on this. What was crucial about this legislation is that from then on, direct involvement in illegal acts did not have to be proved for the person (or whole group) to be suppressed. Thus, merely publishing an inflammatory far right or far left magazine would be enough. For an insight into how the same legislation was used to attack leftists see The Italian Inquisition (Red Notes, London, 1983).
51. Interview 1 March 1992
52. If so, Hill’s failure to recognise him speaks volumes about the paucity of Searchlight‘s intelligence network. See OFOT pp. 186-7.
53. See Thomas Sheehan, ‘Italy: Terror on the Right’ in New York Review of Books, 22 January, 1981.
54. This is not to say such evidence does not exist, merely it was not forthcoming. Alesso Alibrandi was later shot dead by police in Rome. On Alibrandi OFOT p. 186.
55. Quoted by Aldo Amiagi in a submission to the Commission on Racism and Fascism in Europe, 10 December 1985, Annexe 4, published by the European Parliament.
56. As to the charges against Fiore, having no Italian contacts and distrusting greatly the scant British press reports of the matter, I still have an open mind, and would be grateful for any information readers of Lobster can supply on this important matter.
57. Times 19 February 1983 and Sunday Times 20 February 1983.
58. The Red Army Fraction denounced the ‘attacks on ordinary GIs (which) had been aimed at making left-wingers appear to be to blame and at confusing issues on the police wanted list’. Die Zeit (Hamburg) 28 January, 1983. The careers of the Hepp, Kexel and Tilman are covered in Bruce Hoffman’s Right-Wing Terrorism in West Germany, RAND Paper 7270, Santa Monica, California, October 1986.
59. U.K. readers may recall that this was the moment when CND had just been given a great boost by the government’s own ‘Protect and Survive’ leaflet, full of helpful advice such as sellotaping the windows and hiding beneath the bed in the event of Armageddon.
60. See Candour, February-March 1982, p. 22.
61. In 1983 Webster admitted Souter-Clarence had been a member, until 1977, leaving ‘saying we were too democratic’. Daily Mirror 22 February 1883.
62. Daily Mirro r 21 February 1983.
63. Daily Mirror 22 February 1983.
64. Rising 1, 1982, pp. 3 and 6 The philosophical and political ramifications of this ‘political soldier’ ideology are myriad, as were the influences feeding into the concept, principally the Italian Count Julius Evola (who criticised Mussolini from the right), the Rumanian fascist Corneliu Codreanou, and the German SS.
65. For the NF’s public version of events see N. Griffin, ‘Training for Power’ in 31, July 1985, pp. 8-9.
66. N Griffin hints at the desirability of this in ‘Confrontation Politics in France’ in Nationalism Today, August 1983, p. 14. One participant (who would prefer anonymity) has suggested that this preparation included how to make petrol bombs.
67. See ‘Action on Academy’ in Candour, February 1983 pp. 9-10, and the whimsical piece by ‘Loki’ in Scorpion, issue 7, Summer 1984, p. 36.
68. Searchlight April 1984, p.3.
69. As they put it in the 1989 Searchlight pamphlet From Ballots to Bombs, ‘a Searchlight journalist was to be a producer for the programme and through him the programme gained access to our extensive files on the far right. We also agreed that under very stringent conditions, we would make available information coming from our own people operating under deep cover inside the NF.’ P. 4.
70. Interestingly, Souter-Clarence’s alleged attendance, mentioned in 1984 reports, was left out here.
71. Queen’s Bench Division, High Court of Justice ref. no 1989-N-No. 282 8 November 1991.
72. Issue 61, January 1992 p. 3. Irregular Flag NF publication.
73. All this is apart from the unspecified and timeless assertion of UDA-NF camps in Ireland.