FROM BALLOTS TO BOMBS: THE INSIDE STORY OF THE NATIONAL FRONT’S POLITICAL SOLDIERS, author(s) uncredited, published by Searchlight Publishing, London, (1989). 39 pages.
[This large format illustrated publication is credited by Gable to various authors in his 1991 essay The Far Right In Contemporary Britain.]
Page 4 refers to A.K. Chesterton as an anti-Semitic crank.
Page 5 reproduces a 1962 photograph of Colin Jordan and John Tyndall. How many times have we seen this?
Page 6 says Martin Webster was ousted from the National Front in the 1983 coup.
Page 7 lays the responsibility for Bologna and other bombings at the door of NAR, a Third Positionist group. In retrospect this is demonstrable nonsense.
Page 19 refers to Ian Souter Clarence as the former military commander of Column 88. More garbage.
Page 20: Ray Hill is said to have claimed that Derek Holland repeatedly incited younger National Front members to attack Asians. The reality is that Hill had a long record of inciting violence both inside and outside of the NF, and it was he who incited such violence, if anyone. It boasts also of Hill’s assault on Holland, but distorts the circumstances.
Overall this pamphlet is very tame, but its one redeeming feature is that it is very anti-Harrington, who has always been far more of a pragmatist than a nationalist, and never was any sort of Nazi.
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY: Conflicts and Continuities AN INTRODUCTORY TEXTBOOK, Edited by Dennis Howitt, published by Open University Press, Milton Keynes, (May 1989). 202 pages. Index.
The authors of this book are grandly titled “The Loughborough University Social Psychology Group”. It was published simultaneously in harkback and paperback.
Billig’s contributions are Chapter 7, Social cognition, pages 99-121; and Chapter 9 GROUPS AND INTERGROUP RELATIONS, pages 139-59, (predictably it covers racism, ad nauseum).
[BBIP, 1991]
Mayday, Mayday!, published in Marxism Today, February 1989, page 41.
This is a column called CULTURE, apparently by Mark Fisher. David Edgar’s work gets more than a cursory mention.
Destructive forces: neo-Nazis and the “revisionists” and Les Assassins de la Mémoire..., by Pierre Vidal-Naquet, published under Reviews in Patterns of Prejudice, Summer 1989, Volume 23, Number 2, pages 46-8.
Michael Billig’s contribution to this issue of the Institute of Jewish Affairs magazine is a review of two books, The Other Face of Terror and M. Vidal-Naquet’s work. Not reading French I am able to comment on the latter, but when Billig says, “...Vidal-Naquet stresses, these publications should not be treated as academic publications.” the tone of the work becomes obvious.
Billig’s credentials as an academic must surely come into serious question when he (and his ilk) dismiss scholarly works such as The Hoax of the Twentieth Century as unworthy of consideration while at the same time taking at face value the implausible lies of Ray Hill and his paymasters.
The argumentative nature of holding strong views: a case study, published in the European Journal of Social Psychology, 19, 203-22, 1989.
This article – or one with the same name – appears as a chapter in Billig’s Ideology And Opinions.
A painful case of déjà vu, by David Edgar, published in the Guardian, February 3, 1989, page 23.
THE OTHER FACE OF SEARCHLIGHT: Thuggery, Buggery, Arson and Whores, authors not credited, researched by SID – the National Front’s “Security and Intelligence Department”, published by BCM Grimnir, London, (March 1989). 35 pages. Illustrated.
[Based on photocopy.]
The persistence of prejudice: Antisemitism in British society during the Second World War, by Tony Kushner, published by Manchester University Press, Manchester, (March 1989). 257 pages.
[BBIP, 1991]
A one-sided A4 leaflet was inserted in the April 1989 issue of Searchlight for the TORCH war crimes campaign. Up to 250 alleged Nazi war criminals are said to be living in the United Kingdom.
A double-sided A5 leaflet was inserted in the same issue advertising the books Traditions of intolerance and The persistence of prejudice.
Traditions of intolerance: Historical perspectives on fascism and race discourse in Britain, Edited by Tony Kushner and Kenneth Lunn, published by Manchester University Press, Manchester, (May 1989). 245 pages. Index.
Acknowledgements by Kushner and Lunn.
Chapter 4 is called The paradox of prejudice: The impact of organised antisemitism in Britain during an anti-Nazi war, by Kushner, is pages 72-90.
[BBIP, 1991]
A letter published in the American magazine SOLDIER OF FORTUNE, June 1989, page 14.
This appears under the heading BRITS SUPPORT AMERICAN POW/MIAs... and was written by L. Wooler, who wrote from 126 Burstellars, St. Ives, Huntingdon, Cambs.
He claims to have formed an organisation called the Democratic Alliance in 1963.
FACTION PLAN: Co-author of a new BBC2 drama based on real events, “Vote for Them”, DAVID EDGAR believes that a critical confusion exists in our attitude towards “faction” programmes, published in the Listener, June 1, 1989, pages 13-4.
Arguing and Thinking: A Rhetorical Approach to Social Psychology, by Michael Billig, published by Cambridge Univesity Press, Cambridge, (September 1989).
[Not seen by compiler.]
This is the paperback edition; the hardback was published April 1987.
[BBIP, 1991]
The Other Face of Terror, reviewed by Danny Reilly, pages 100-1, Race and Class, Volume 31, Number 1, July-September, 1989.
Reilly, a member of CARF, takes the bomb plot rubbish at face value.
Arguing and Thinking: A Rhetorical Approach to Social Psychology, by Michael Billig, published by Cambridge Univesity Press, Cambridge, (April 1987).
The paperback edition.
[BBIP, 1991]
Life in the shadow of the fascist threat, by Martin Shipton, published in the Northern Echo, September 2, 1989, page 6.
Gable interviewed – repeats the story of how he was stoned on the way home from school for the alleged sins of his ancestors. “You’re a Jew, aren’t you Gable?” said the wicked Mosleyite teacher as the school broke up for the Easter holidays, and poor Gerry had to run home under a hail of stones.
Searchlight is said to have been formed in response to Jordan’s 1962 “Free Britain from Jewish Control” rally. Gable is said to have a membership card from the NSM but it is not clear from this article if he is supposed to have joined, presumably under an alias. The Searchlight Association was set up early in 1965 and was said to be “very liberalish”. Talk about chutzpah. Says Hill became JT’s deputy, and “The war killed 53 million people. There must be no forgiving and no forgetting.”
Oh yes, and there was a plot to murder Gable, and, four years before that, a plot to bomb his office.
BRITAIN NOT AN ANTI-SEMITIC SOCIETY, DEBATE CONCLUDES, published in the Jerusalem Post, September 20, 1989, page 2. [Compiled from CD-ROM.]
Gable said that nowadays there were fewer abusive phone calls and more instances of arson.
More rubbish about Hill. Takes the bomb plot at face value. Hill’s wife said to be apolitical – masochistic would be a better word – devotes much of her time to church. Said to run a small guest house from a secret location. Hill was interviewed at some length here; he claims the reason fascist violence has not succeeded is because of “...our exposure of their activities” which set them back a few years.
NF about-turn is ‘not serious’, published in the Jewish Chronicle, October 13, 1989, page 21.
Searchlight quoted.
UJS to join anti-fascists, published in the Jewish Chronicle, November 3, 1989, page 9.
Searchlight said to have “monitored” the far right since 1963. “The Friends of Searchlight” set up to raise money and other support.
Reginald Gulliver-Buckingham An Apology, published in Private Eye, 731/6 22 Dec. ’89, page 6.
In the High Court, 13 December, 1989, Private Eye apologised to Mr Gulliver-Buckingham re the May 1986 article – the Gable kidnap/murder fantasy. “The court was also told that Private Eye had agreed to pay Mr Gulliver-Buckingham substantial damages and all of his legal costs.”
A letter from Adrian Davies published in The Scorpion, Winter 1989/90, issue 13, page 49, complaining that a “Searchlight spy” photographed the panel of a recent conference.
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