It is not necessary for you to tell me that violence breeds violence. We of the people have known. this longer than you have, and for my part I knew it ten years ago when nobody came dashing down from Washington to tell Diaz that to let the peasants live on grass would breed violence; or that shooting down those who asked for a few pence more a week would breed violence; or that feeding the lice on prisoners from one decade to another would surely breed violence.
Now when you see the workers with Winchesters in their hands you hasten to explain to us uneducated men that this will only breed more violence, and you say and I know that history proves you right. Only I would like to know where we should be if we throw away our guns and stood out there hat in hand bowing before the landlords and officers like we did before the revolution. My friends can answer for themselves — you know as well as I do where I should be — three feet under after dancing six feet over.
And you also know that men who are here have only to stop fighting and they will go to feed worms in the grave or lice in the jails or at the best go back to slavery, and this thought sometimes makes men more fierce than is their nature. But they are not barbarians as you think. Oh, I know, when you come here with cameras you salute me as if I were the President and address me out of my degree as General, but, when you are in New York, in your offices, with your drinks and your women, then you write to tell the world I am the most savage barbarian of them all. Isn't that so? But I am not so stupid as you think, and know just as well as if I had studied history that fighting provokes more fighting and blood, blood.
You tell me (President) Wilson deplores violence but I am not such a fool as to ask you if in that case (General) Pershing has gone to work in the fields. I understand the futility of violence better than this Wilson, for I was flogged and saw my brothers starve and be shot down when he lived in a big house with servants and was told he was a Christian. If I had not known this as a boy I might have been so great a criminal as to join the state army and by now be one of Carranza's generals whom nobody tells violence is unvirtuous.
Enough, we know violence breeds violence, what I would like to know is how peace may breed peace? For my part I think when there are no masters and no slaves, when there are governments issuing orders indeed and churches decrees, but nobody obeying them, when all who wish land and liberty may have it, and those who want to oppress have no arms then and then only, peace will breed peace.
Emiliano ZAPATA
From Black Flag Vol. 1, No 8,
June 1970
"Leave it to the experts…"
"I have now given the names I have acquired to be checked out by British/ French security services, especially the French and German connections and the South American stuff is being checked by Geoffrey Stewart-Smith's institute. He has strong CIA links. (1), I may try somebody in the Israeli Foreign Office that I know for some checks on Kelly. It is now a time for waiting for a feed-back and also further checks here."
"I have attached a number of documents including the transcript of Kelly's interview with World in Action. It goes without saying that I would like this kept strictly secret."
('Strictly secret': one of a series of reports on other journalists which London Weekend Television researcher and Searchlight Publishing Chairman Gerry Gable prepared with a little help from "the experts").
* * *
In January 1964, three young men (2) were convicted at Highbury Magistrates Court for breaking and entering with intent to commit a felony, after attempting to steal private papers from the self-proclaimed "mild fascist" historian David Irving. Despite the fact that one of them was unemployed and the other two gave their professions as "electrician", they were represented in Court by a Queens Council and £1,000 bail was put up by a businessman, company director Leslie Jacobs of Clapton. One of the three was additionally charged with stealing a GPO identity card which he used in the burglary: his name was Gerry Gable. Council for the defence told the court, "they hoped to find material they could take to Special Branch". (3)
Twenty years later the same Gerry Gable, reviewing Stuart Christie's Investigative Researcher's Handbook (which had included profiles of two leading right-wingers as examples of how to go about an investigation), dismissed the book with the scathing admonishment to "leave it to the experts".(4) We think our readers should be made aware of just which "experts" Mr. Gable has in mind, and why it is that Searchlight reacts so curiously whenever anyone outside their select circle dares step onto their jealously guarded territory of investigating the extreme Right.
Born in January 1937, Gerry Gable is a former member of the Young Communist League (YCL), and stood as Communist Party candidate in the Northfield ward of Stamford Hill, north London, in 1962. He was also linked to the Zionist 'antifascist' 62 Group nominally led by Harry Bidney (manager of the Limbo Club in Soho) — formed by veterans of the anti-Mosley 43 Group (basically a CP set-up) who thought the group had grown 'too liberal' — to counter the antics of Colin Jordan, John Tyndall, and the revived neo-Nazi movement of the early '60's. The 62 Group (mostly supporters of the Beginite Herut organisation, a political successor to the Irgun Zvai Leumi terrorist group) specialised in direct action, infiltration, dirty-tricks, and 'black-bag' jobs (burglary). Gable has retained an endearing affection for 'black-bag' jobs, as a means of gathering information on target individuals, ever since.
Searchlight
Parallel to the activities of the '62 Group, a small anti-fascist journal was founded in London to monitor the activities of Jordan, Tyndall & Co. The journal was called Searchlight. Amongst its early editors were Labour MP's Reg Freeson and Joan Lestor (both subsequently Government Ministers for Housing and Foreign Affairs respectively). Searchlight's "research director" was Gerry Gable. The journal ceased publication in 1967, but Gable, Maurice Ludmer (a veteran Communist and anti-fascist), and others stayed together as Searchlight Associates, in order to go on providing 'research material' on the extreme Right to journalists and broadcasters. In 1974 Gable and Ludmer collaborated in the production of a pamphlet detailing the background and nature of the National Front: A Well Oiled Nazi Machine. The instant success of the pamphlet (it sold out in a few weeks), helped by the wave of concern awakened on the Left by the seeming advance being made by the NF (and incidentally, the re-emergence of 'anti-fascism' as a bandwagon for groups like the SWP to use for their recruitment drives), prompted Searchlight Associates to resume publication as a regular journal. The pilot issue of the new Searchlight appeared in February 1975, with Maurice Ludmer as its editor. Ludmer and Gable were also amongst the first sponsors of the Anti-Nazi League.
Since then Searchlight has built up an impressive reputation for investigative reporting, and has done pioneering work of genuine value in exposing the activities and international links of fascist organisations. But the political expediency of a perceived identity of interest in the short-term, in the cause of 'anti-fascism' just as in 'anti-communism', is apt to lead one to work with some strange allies. In Searchlight's case, opposition to the 'extremists' of the Right has opened up the door to the extremists of the centre, for whom Right and Left are equally perceived as a threat to 'democracy'.
"Strictly secret"
Not only has Gable admitted, as part of his defence in the 1963/4 burglary trial, that he hoped to supply information to Special Branch on David Irving, but a confidential memorandum written by him to his producers in London Weekend Television (where he worked until recently as a researcher/presenter on the London Programme: he is now trying to work his ticket with an alleged 'heart condition') on 2 May 1977 gave clear, hard, evidence that he has also engaged in a two-way traffic of information with the security services of several countries, and acted as a conduit of misinformation for MI5 against fellow journalists, and socialists. The memo was the subject of an article by Duncan Campbell and Bruce Page in the New Statesman in February 1980. Gable has never successfully refuted the information contained in the article. When Campbell and Page went down to LWT's offices to confront Gable with the evidence and demand some answers, Gable simply cleared his desk and fled, refusing to talk to them. This is in marked contrast to his previous meeting with Campbell, whom he took out to an expense account lunch during the 'ABC' Official Secrets case to pump him for information he could pass on to his friends in Special Branch.
The memo, written by Gable followed, he says, a lunch with a Security Service employee in May 1977. The nature of the official material received and recorded by him — mixed with large amounts of random gossip — indicates that much of it was coloured by phone-tap information and informer's reports. It consists almost entirely of libellous untruths about a group of 'target' individuals — the 'ABC' Official Secrets defendants, American deportees Philip Agee and Mark Hosenball, and several of their acquaintances. In certain respects, material from Special Branch had been deliberately falsified to mislead Gable and his employers. The timing of the memo showed clearly an intense interest on behalf of MI5 in manipulating events surrounding the Agee/ Hosenball case and the beginnings of the 'ABC' prosecution.
"Kelly is the KGB man…"
The person most frequently, and libellously, mentioned in its pages was not directly involved in either case: Phil Kelly, a journalist acquainted with both sets of accused men. Kelly was around this time one of the victims of a number of burglaries and thefts in London which were clearly designed to gather information and documents rather than valuables (Gable's proven speciality, as witnessed by the Irving trial…)
Admitted to be one of a series, the memo was headed "Agencies" presumably a reference to Gable's information sources (named, apart from MI5, as the CIA, French and German security, Stewart-Smith's FARI institute, and the 'Israeli Foreign Office'). It mixes up a few accurate facts with half-truths, and constructs upon them a series of fantasies, linking the Young Liberals with Cubans, Palestinian and German terrorists, various contributors to Time Out, members of the London Co-Op, and the KGB, into a deadly, all-encompassing conspiracy. Gable also asserts that an "eye-witness" who "had infiltrated the Palestinians and some left groups" (and is apparently well known to him) has backed up his claims. There is a remarkable similarity between information received by Special Branch when they stopped Kelly at Heathrow Airport in 1970, and the "eye-witness" story re-told by Gable in 1977. The implication must be that Gable was at least aware of a Special Branch or MI5 informer amongst left-wing groups and remained quiet about it.
Gable wrote: "The arrest of Campbell / Berry and Aubrey has caused a civil rights row, but according to my top level security sources, they inform me in strictest confidence that for about four years Campbell/ Berry/ Kelly and others have been systematically gathering top-level security material. Campbell, who claims to have only an interest in technological matters as far as the state is involved, had done four years detailed research into the whole structure of the other side of not only our Intelligence services but those of other NATO countries. He has also gone to people who work on top security contracts and started off by asking them about open commercial work their companies do and then gradually asked them for information on top secret work, including that on underwater detection hardware, which he clearly knows is beyond the pale."
"Politically it appears the group have no guiding light or line, but Kelly is the KGB man who reaps the goodies gathered by other people…"
"The security service accepts that once the real nature of this case begins to emerge they expect people like Jonathan Aitkin (the Tory MP, who has expressed support for the ABC) will fade away fast. The security service accepts that a number of decent people have signed up to support these people on civil rights grounds and also they unofficially accept all the shortcomings of the act they have been held under, but they say they are sure this has gone beyond the bounds of Press Investigation."
In the last few words of the memo Gable wrote: "I have now given the names I have acquired to be checked out by British/ French security services…it is now a time for waiting for a feed-back and also for further checks here." The feed-back never came of course, because the whole story was really just black propaganda.
The Infiltration Game
Searchlight obtains much of its information from imaginative use of the telephone, 'black-bag' jobs (of the sort Gable has been convicted for), snippets of gossip and information blackmailed out of vulnerable fascists eager to protect some guilty secret or other (usually of a sexual nature), and selected tit-bits fed to Gable from his "top-level security sources". The value of a great deal of the material they print is arguable. Often it is slanted to achieve other ends than simply 'antifascism'. Gable has recently lent himself to a series of manoeuvres, allying himself with former members of the Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB) who had joined the Libertarian Alliance, aimed at seizing control of the Alternative Bookshop in Covent Garden (a pivotal influence within the LA) and ousting Chris Tame (who has recently also come under fire in the pages of Searchlight) in what they hoped would be the resulting split.
On the rare occasion when they do print information from genuine anti-fascist infiltrators (two people, independently, during our researches expressed bewilderment at Searchlight's lack of interest in information gathered on fascists — in one case through a successful infiltration of the NF — which was offered to them), it is subject to a curious process of 'editing' before being published. Birmingham Communist Dave Roberts, who provided Searchlight with much of their information during the mid '70's, is a case in point.
Amongst the information passed to Searchlight in 1976 by Roberts (who was subsequently disowned by Gable after Maurice Ludmer's death), was the revelation that David King (a Birmingham Nazi known to have close links with the so-called "Column 88") had told Roberts in prison that he suspected fellow fascist Peter Marriner of being in touch with Special Branch. Marriner, a long-time Nazi activist in Birmingham, then local organiser for the British Movement and said to be involved with "Column 88", achieved notoriety when he was exposed as a fascist infiltrator of the Labour Party, International Socialists, and other left-wing groups during the Ladywood bye-election. Searchlight subsequently printed a long expose of Marriner's activities, but only after the local press had already picked up the beginnings of the story and blown Marriner's cover as election agent to Labour MP Brian Waldon and his successor, John Severs. Nowhere in Searchlight's coverage of the Marriner case was there any mention of a Special Branch connection. Marriner told the Left he was infiltrating the Right. He told the Right he was infiltrating the Left. If he was also in contact with Special Branch, just who was infiltrating who? And why, after they published so much else of the information gathered by Roberts, did Searchlight balk at exposing a leading Birmingham Nazi as an agent of the Special Branch? Interestingly enough, another of the defendants in the Irving burglary case with Gable in 1963, Manny Carpel, was jailed for 2.5 years in April 1981 after setting fire to a printing works in Sussex which printed fascist literature. Carpel described himself during the trial as a freelance journalist working for Searchlight. His defence lawyer, Leonard Krickler, claimed on Carpel's behalf that his client had helped the Special Branch in the past in the Midlands and Birmingham.
Plausible Denial?
Gable's role in all this is open to speculation. He may be the naive tool (and fool) of the Special Branch. More probably, he appears in the classic role of "plausibly deniable" agent, used by "the experts" to do the dirty work which his "top level security sources" would rather not grubby their hands on. It is documented fact that Gable has been passing information to Special Branch, MI5, and foreign security services for 20 years; acted as a conduit for misinformation and 'black' propaganda between MI5 and the media (aimed in at least one case in affecting the course of criminal proceedings against fellow journalists); and concealed the existence and activities of at least one Special Branch or MI5 infiltrator inside left-wing groups.
We can not really shed any tears about Gable employing unscrupulous methods against fascists; but his activities in other directions give us cause for concern. We are entitled to ask Mr. Gable, when he scolds those who ruffle his feathers, to just which "experts" we should leave the task of investigating those who threaten our well-being: MI5, Special Branch, CIA, Mossad? It is also necessary to ask those genuine anti-fascists amongst the Searchlight staff and contributors, whether they are in fact aware of Gerry Gable's activities on behalf of his "top level security" chums? If they are and continue to have any dealings with the man, then we would have cause to question their motivations also. With "experts" like Gerry Gable, who needs fascists?
Sniper
Footnotes:
1 Besides having served as advisor to the British Military Voluntary Force which unsuccessfully tried to send mercenaries to the Congo, Biafra, and Southern Africa, former Tory MP. Geoffrey Stewart-Smith is the editor of East West Digest (an anti-communist rag sent free to all MP's), and director of the Foreign Affairs Research Institute (FARI). From a small beginning in 1966, by 1981 it was able to host an international conference which received a message of goodwill from President Reagan. FARI acts as an umbrella group for the Coalition for Peace through Security (CPS), located in the office above FARI at 27-31 Whitehall, which has also housed Freedom Communications International (yet another rabid anti-communist set-up) of whom Stewart-Smith is the director. Foreign Affairs Publishing Co. is a major publisher of right-wing books in England. The East West Institute/ FARI maintains close links with British, Dutch and American Intelligence.
2 Gerry Gable, Manny Carpel and David Freedman.
3 Evening Standard, 28 November 1963.
4 Searchlight, No.96, June 1983.
From Anarchy 36, 1983
This article, despite being regularly referred to as the first occasion when the connection between Searchlight and the state's political police was blown, has not been reprinted until now.
Wanted
Reliable Webmonkey to help with turning bulletins into HTML for the KSL site. Ideas and examples to: info@katesharpleylibrary.net
P. Yerril & L. Rosser Revolutionary unionism in Latin America: the FORA in Argentina
Best introduction, and probably the most accessible work on the Argentine Workers' Regional Federation.
ASP, 1987. 48p, ill. 21cm. pamphlet £1.50
Simon Ford The realization and suppression of the Situationist International; An annotated bibliography 1972-1992
A list of books by and about the crazy gang.
AK Press 1995. 149p, 21cm. 1-873176-82-1 book £7.95
Available — as are a whole host of other titles — from the KSL and there are always more coming. Check our Publications page or write for more details.
KSL BM Hurricane London WC1N 3XX
KSL PMB 820 2425 Channing Way Berkeley CA 94704 USA
Justice For Mark Barnsley
In the Hands of the Enemy: Mark Barnsley's Struggle for Justice
ISBN 1-873605-89-7
illustrated paperback, 92 pages, £6
"I was not a prisoner, merely;
I was an Anarchist in the hands of the enemy."
Alexander Berkman, Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist.
"The law should be used as just another weapon
in the government's arsenal, and in this case
it becomes little more than a propaganda cover
for the disposal of unwanted members of the public."
Brigadier Frank Kitson, Low Intensity Operations.
These two quotes kick off the new book from the Justice for Mark Barnsley Campaign. Anyone who's read their first pamphlet ("Beaten up, fitted up, locked up") will know the basic facts of Mark's case: attacked by a drunken gang of students while out for a quiet drink with a friend and one of his children and framed by the police, he is now serving a twelve year sentence.
As John Barker says in his excellent introduction, that sentence is a sure sign that mark was the victim of a state conspiracy: why else would he get so long for a crime which would normally mean two or three years, if not probation?
This book is an illustrated collection of articles by mark and a wide range of his supporters, from activists and fellow prisoners to family members. Repression and resistance are recurring themes in this book — but none of it is dry-as-dust legal theory or comic-book sloganeering: we see how the parts of the repression industry stick together, and the practical meaning of solidarity in a situation where militants face a maximum of force, almost in isolation.
The critical articles on what prison conditions are — and what our rulers are planning for them to be — mean this book is indispensable for anyone who believes in a freer or fairer society. Anyone who believes in revolutionary change would learn a lot from this book: this is not just a warning of what the state can (and will) do, but also an inspiring account of revolutionary principles in action.
Available from the KSL or direct from the publishers:
[Cheques or Postal Orders made payable to 'Justice for Mark Barnsley'.]
Justice for Mark Barnsley
PO Box 381, Huddersfield, HD1 3XX
Final word: due to inflation, Bash the Fash is now £2, but worth every penny!
The Stuff of History
You will hopefully have noticed that we appeal for supporters of the library to send us material. Obviously we want people who publish anarchist books or newspapers to donate them to us; likewise people who find relevant works that we don't have. However, there's a lot more to it than this: to have an in-depth view of the activities of the anarchist movement (and of it's portrayal) we also need the following kinds of material:
It also helps if these are put in context — if you send a leaflet, tell us (if you know) when and why it was produced, how many were handed out etc.
All of these things on their own are only a small part of the big picture but by keeping your eyes peeled you can help make sure that we do have the proof to show what was going on. It's where proof is missing that movements 'disappear' from history. If we don't look after our history who will?
Juan Gomez Casas Dies
by Mitch Miller
It is with great sadness that we learn of the passing of former underground militant, first post-Franco Secretary General of the CNT-AIT and prolific writer and historian Juan Gomez Casas in Madrid, Spain.
Many English speaking anarchists and anarcho- syndicalists will best remember the authoritative work of Gomez Casas The history of the FAI.
According to the National Committee of the CNT-AIT, Juan Gomez Casas was born in Burdeos in 1921. In 1936 Gomez Casas joined the main youth organisation affiliated with the CNT-AIT, Juventudes Libertarias (Libertarian Youth).
Upon the fascist defeat of the Revolution, Gomez Casas eluded imprisonment and joined in the clandestine struggle against the Franco regime. In 1947 he was elected as the Secretary General of the Juventudes Libertarias del Centro in Toulouse, France. Upon his return to Spain he was arrested and sentenced to 30 years in jail. He was freed from prison in 1962 and then worked as an antique painter, a trade he learned in prison.
Amazingly, with no formal education, he wrote many books, including The history of Spanish Anarcho-syndicalism, The history of the FAI and other historical books that are considered classical texts and are referred to today. Gomez Casas even translated into Spanish the classic book Moby Dick.
Those of us who were active in supporting the underground CNT-AIT, and the then emerging above ground organisation in the mid to late 1970s, will remember Gomez Casas in many ways. Aside from being a prolific propagandist he was the first above ground CNT-AIT General Secretary from 1976-1978. Here in the United States the former Libertarian Workers Group (now W.S.A. NY-NJ) had many occasions to correspond with Gomez Casas and to establish a relationship with the above ground CNT-AIT inside Spain.
Gomez Casas's long revolutionary life began to wane due to illness in 1999.
We celebrate Juan Gomez Casas's life and all the rich contributions he made to both the growth of the Spanish anarcho-syndicalist movement and to the intellectual growth and understanding he taught us through his many writings.
Footnote: According to the CNT-AIT's obituary, Gomez Casas wrote for the folowing publication: Cambio 16, Castilla Libre, CNT, Espoir, Frente Libertario, Historia Libetaria, El País, Sindicalismo, Solidaridad Obrera, Tierra y Libertad de México, Umbral, La Voz Confederal de Rubí etc.
He edited the CNT-AIT's principal organ "C.N.T." (1980-1981). Was the author of: Anarquismo y federalismo (Madrid 1983), Los anarquistas en el Gobierno (Barcelona 1977), El apocalipsis (Madrid 1969), Autogestión en España (Madrid 1976), Los cruces de caminos (1984), Cuentos carcelarios (Madrid 1968), Los desheredados del tío Sam (Madrid 1968), España 1970 (Toulouse 1970), España ácrata. Inventario al día (Caracas 1976, con C. Rama), El frente de Aragón (1973), Historia del anarcosindicalismo español (Madrid 1968), Historia de la FAI (Madrid 1977), Las horas decisivas de la guerra civil, Nacionalimperialismo y movimiento obrero en Europa hasta después de la Segunda Guerra Mundial (Móstoles 1985), La política española y la guerra civil (1974), La Primera Internacional en España (Madrid 1974), Relanzamiento de la C.N.T. 1975-1979, con un epílogo hasta la primavera de 1984 (Madrid-París 1984), Situación límite (Madrid 1975), Sociología del anarquismo hispánico (Madrid 1988), Sociología e historia (Madrid 1973).
Gomez Casas, under the pseudonym, Benjamín wrote many diverse prologues and introductions for books on the theme of anarchism.
Source: Workers Solidarity Alliance. (US section, IWA)
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