Local election time is here again, and as ever the team from
Searchlight are asking you to dig into your pockets to stop the BNP,
because we all know that once they come to power they'll send all the
Jews, the blacks and Mr Patel in his corner shop to the gas chambers.
Or should that be gas ovens?

So send a donation to "Searchlight" and help stop them. What could be
more noble?


One little question though: if you do send your money to "Searchlight"
will it be used to fight the BNP, or to pay for expensive lawyers?


As long ago as 1976, "Searchlight" magazine then edited by Maurice
Ludmer was branded scurrilous, disreputable and sinister by a
Birmingham stipendiary. This was after it accused the Nazi leader Colin

Jordan of being behind a series of arson attacks on synagogues in the
1960s. In fact it wasn't Jordan but Jordan's deranged and fanatically
anti-Semitic estranged wife Francoise Dior.


The late Ludmer and his co-conspirator Gerry Gable - who is
unfortunately still with us - never allowed the facts to stand in the
way of a good story, and a few years later they accused a number of men

of plotting the bomb the Notting Hill Carnival, a plot which if it
existed at all was incited by their agent provocateur Ray Hill. No one
took legal action on that occasion, but in the 1990s a number of people

decided that enough was enough. Journalist Garry Bushell sued the
magazine, and they settled out of court. I sued, and after a long,
dirty fight in which he made all manner of allegations which he
couldn't prove, Gerry Gable published a retraction and paid me £5,000.

My colleague Mark Taha sued as well, and as well as paying him, Gable
found that most left wing bookshops would no longer stock his magazine.



Most damningly, Derbyshire-based accountant and former ex-serviceman
Morris Riley sued, and won a libel judgment and £5,000 damages against

Gerry Gable, Searchlight Magazine Limited and "columnist" Ray Hill,
although you wouldn't think so to read the brief report Gable wrote
about the case in "Searchlight".


Gable is fortunate that Italian asylum seeker Roberto Fiore has never
sought satisfaction in the courts, because not only has he consistently

accused him of being behind the 1980 Bologna railway station massacre
but has perhaps even more stupidly accused him of murdering two people
in Britain since. Needless to say Mr Fiore remains at liberty in
Britain and has even returned to his native Italy on occasion.


Most ordinary people don't have the resources or the time to resort to
the civil law when magazines lie gratuitously and grossly about them,
and some people, not just BNP members, are easy targets. But even BNP
members and supporters can be libelled; at present Gable is being sued
by one such supporter following allegations of paedophilia. Another is
suing over allegations of financial impropriety.


Gable's lawyers are back in court next week to hear a complex two day
application concerning privilege. It remains to be seen if Gable and
"Searchlight" are able to defend either of these two current cases
successfully, probably on some legal technicality. It does not remain
to be seen that whatever their outcomes, the magazine will be hit
severely by costs.


Bear that in mind before you donate a penny to fighting the mythical
Nazi menace. 


Alexander Baron 
Sydenham 
London 


April 19, 2006