Searchlight again In the Daniel Brandt essay in this issue there is a section on the scandal in the United States resulting from the discovery that the Jewish organisation, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), has been found to be collecting data on hundreds of political groups, both right and left, and trading data with agencies of the U.S. state, such as the FBI. The best summary so far of this story to date — and a list of the groups being spied on — is to be found in the Covert Action Quarterly, no. 45, Summer 1993.
There is no ADL in the U.K. that I am aware of: its nearest equivalent is Searchlight, which, while tiny in comparison, is doing the same sort of thing. But what a contrast between the attention and seriousness given to the ADL spying story in the U.S. where it has been reported coast to coast, and the total lack of interest shown by our major media in the developing critique of Searchlight.
Since the last issue of Lobster, a number of publications have commented on the Larry O’Hara/Green Anarchist pamphlet attacking Searchlight, A Lie Too Far (see Lobster 25 p. 21 for details).
- Class War 60 (September ’93) commented on the pamphlet’s allegations that ‘none of this is news to us; as long ago as 1985 Class War was temporarily expelled from Anti-Fascist Action after Gerry Gable, Searchlight’ s editor, spread lies that we were Nazis.’
- Freedom (18 September) commented in its review of the pamphlet that ‘Searchlight’s links to the (secret) state are — or should be — well known’; and commented that Larry O’Hara had been ‘the victim of a sustained, and even more absurd smear campaign over the past year or so’.
- Outlook (July 1993) reviewing A Lie too Far, asked ‘Who else is Searchlight destabilising, and for whose benefit?’
- Here and Now 14 (October ’93) discussed the dispute, carried a long, detailed chronology of events surrounding the O’Hara/Searchlight conflict, and a very interesting (5 page) critical discussion of anti-fascism and its role within the British left. At the end of that essay there is this statement:
‘Larry O’Hara has been accused by Searchlight of being a fellow traveller of fascists. This is a lie concocted by Gerry Gable for reasons best known to himself. Here and Now supports Larry O’Hara’s right to carry out his research wherever it may lead him, and condemns the use of intimidation and guilt by association to silence discussion.’.
- On October 15 the New Statesman and Society published a piece by its deputy editor, Paul Anderson, which surveyed the dispute with Searchlight and took O’Hara’s side.
Gerry Gable replied in the issue of 22 October, claimed to be bored with O’Hara (after smearing him for nearly a year!), but admitted he had dealings with the security services (unspecified).
October also saw Alexander Baron’s curiously titled Editors! Are You Being Fed A Load Of Bullshit? You Are If You Subscribe to Searchlight: A Documented Expose Of Gerry Gable’s Error-prone, Lie-ridden, Mischief-making Magazine. This is 25 A4 pages which does indeed document and expose Searchlight in the manner its title advertises. Alas, as well as 24 pages of solid, frequently fascinating research, Mr Baron has indulged himself in about a page’s worth of personal insults and abuse worthy of Searchlight itself. Mr Baron’s work should be approached with care by those of a sensitive, politically correct sensibility. At the end of a recent ‘open letter’ he has circulated, he describes himself as as ‘Libertarian, atheist, rationalist, anti-Zionist, Social Crediter and homophobe.’ Be that as it may, this pamphlet is still excellent value at 1.50 from Anglo-Hebrew Publishing, BCM Mono, Box 2293, London WC1N 3XX.
The assault on Larry O’Hara continued in almost every issue of Searchlight from January through to September. It reached some kind of peak of absurdity and inaccuracy in August with another ‘Ray Hill column’, the relevant part of which is reproduced below. The numbers added to the text by me refer to the points below.
It had to happen. Larry O’Hara, who for more than two years has been slandering anti-fascists and accusing Searchlight of being the centre of a web of intelligence intrigue, in league with British intelligence, Mossad and probably the Salvation Army, has found his way into the arms of the very same MI5 he is always going on about.
Searchlight first ran into this now very paranoid “researcher” back in 1988. Since then he has found his way into the political arms of Patrick Harrington, the state’s best friend on the far right, Steven John Brady, the Ulster Loyalist terrorist admirer and former vice führer of the National Front, and, word has it, a range of other nazis, racists and extreme right-wingers from Western Goals to the Revolutionary Conservative Caucus. When I described him in my column as an errand boy for Patrick Harrington, the Press Complaints Commission held that this was fair comment.
Not satisfied with attacking Searchlight, its editor and Andrew Bell, a television producer any my co-author on The Other Face of Terror, he is now making forays into Australia. His [Larry O’Hara’s] targets are never nazis, always anti-fascists.(1)
So along comes Morris Riley, failed author and, in his own words, a Special Intelligence Service operator.(2) O’Hara sends him a copy of his unreadable booklet A Lie to Far and aks him for information on anti-fascist moles working inside nazi groups.
Riley, almost but not quite as potty as O’Hara, responds as favourably as he can, but as he knows next to nothing he invents. The reason his books do not get into print is because most of the material he writes, at the behest of his intelligence masters, is so libellous that no lawyer would pass it.(3) The letter to O’Hara reflects this inability to tell truth from fiction.
Gerry Gable is accused of being in some kind of plot with the KGB to kill Lyndon LaRouche’s people in Paris some years ago.(4) In making this accusation he grossly libels an academic and writer by saying that Gerry had paid this man to attend a LaRouche gathering to gain information on the organisation. Searchlight actually sent somebody to a World Anto Communist League conference abroad. No attempt was made to kill anyone and the conference had no connection with LaRouche.
It says something about the low standard of recruitment by British intelligence when they have to hire misfits like Morris Riley. His greatest achievement on their behalf, and this is from the horse’s mouth, was when he was used to infiltrate Militant in the 1980s. He told Gerry and a colleague what we was doing and also gave them the name of a person running him.
A more sinister person whom Riley was close to was a man called Pat Jordan,(5) who now serving a long sentence for being a spotter for IRA bombers.(6) Jordan wrote to Searchlight from prison recently. Searchlight ignored his letter, having no interest in communicating with terrorists or their helpers, but I wonder what that was all about.
Riley’s lack of ability as a super spook became very apparent when he insisted on trying to foist an unusable programme idea on colleagues of Gerry in television. A free lunch always at the forefront of his mind, Riley went off, leaving his unlocked briefcase in their office. Gerry promptly opened it and copied Riley’s rather uninteresting address book.(7) Watch this space.
O’Hara cannot claim he does not know of Riley’s SIS connections because Riley spells it out in his letter to him dated 13 July 1993. In the letter Riley says Gerry paid him money to do some spying on the far right.(8) The purpose of the money was to lure him in because, knowing how loose-tongued he is, Gerry was trying to find out who was behind a smear campaign against Searchlight in 1982, similar to the one being run by Larry O’Hara and his playmates at present.
So there we go. Gerry is now working for MI5, Mossad and the KGB all at the same time. But we now know what Larry O’Hara is. Not just an errand boy for the nazis, now he has made it into the big time as an informant for an agent for the SIS.(9)
I suppose it is ironic that Robin Ramsey, who runs one of the two Lobster magazines now doing the rounds and got his first real boost using Searchlight’s 1970s research in his magazine a few years ago, has now joined the O’Hara bandwagon in accusing Searchlight of having MI5 connections.(10)
Notice, first, that it’s called the Ray Hill column. Does Hill write it? If he does he has a remarkable knowledge of the early years of Searchlight, years when he as apparently a fascist.
- ‘His targets are never nazis’. Nazis? This is the core of the Searchlight ideology. The British right are all closet nazis; nazis never change; once a nazi always a nazi — childish simplification. Lobster has published about 20,000? 30,000? words by Larry O’Hara on the British neo-fascists, some (but not all) of whom affect a national socialist ideology; some (but not all) of whom are Jew haters.
- ‘Special Intelligence Service’ — sic. Presumably he means Secret Intelligence Service. Stupid mistake or someone trying be clever, pretending they don’t actually know the other name of MI6?
- ‘At the behest of his intelligence masters’ — there is no evidence that Morris has any intelligence masters and he — while flattered, perhaps — denies it.
- ‘plot with KGB etc’ — Gable has simply misread or misrepresented Morris Riley’s letter to O’Hara. (And how did he get it? Riley denies sending him a copy.) I have subsequently seen a copy and this just isn’t there.
- ‘Pat Jordan’ — actually Peter Jordan.
- ‘IRA’ — actually INLA.
- Hang onto your address books while Gable’s about!
- ‘Riley spells it out in his letter’ — no he doesn’t. At one point Riley writes, ‘SIS told me’ to drop somebody. It’s just Morris’s shorthand. He meant an ex SIS officer he was then corresponding with. But since the Riley letter was stolen, Gerry Gable could hardly ring Morris up and check what he meant, could he?
- I’m certain that Morris is not an SIS agent. He’s an accountant who is interested in spooks.
- ‘Has now joined the O’Hara bandwaggon’. Ho ho. It was in Lobster 11, seven years ago in 1986, that I said I thought Searchlight was being run at some level by MI5. Yes, I used some of Searchlight’s material in Lobster 11, every bit of it, unlike Searchlight, fully sourced and acknowledged.
Whether or not you believe that Searchlight is being run by/with the help of the British secret state, as Larry O’Hara and I (and others) do, no magazine which publishes crap like this deserves to be taken seriously.