Nazi hoax flops

| Thursday, 21 October 2004 Source: Searchlight

A hoax press release claiming to be issued by Unite Against Fascism has been sent to trade unions and others. It contains a seriously libellous attack on Searchlight's publisher Gerry Gable and Nick Lowles, a leading member of the Searchlight team.

A copy was emailed to the UAF on Monday 18 October purporting to come from a sender at Trinity Mirror, publisher of the Daily Mirror and Scottish Daily Record.

It claimed that the police had raided and arrested Gable and Lowles over the previous weekend and seized Gable's computer.

The Metropolitan Police are investigating the hoax and it is also in the hands of Searchlight's lawyers. We have agreed with the UAF not to disclose the nature of its lies.

A number of trade unions that support Searchlight and the UAF have been in touch to say they think this is a British National Party hoax intended to damage the reputation of both organisations, while also attempting to embroil the Mirror and Daily Record, which recently published a hard-hitting exposé of the BNP in Scotland.

BNP activists recently attempted to set up an assault on Gerry Gable when he spoke at a trade union meeting in Barking and Dagenham in the run-up to the Village ward by-election, in which the BNP candidate failed to take the seat. Nazis also spied on Gable when he attended a Black History Month event and spoke later the same evening at a meeting of the London Board of the Commission for Racial Equality at the TUC on 18 October.

Searchlight would like to thank the UAF for its immediate action in this matter and all those anti-fascists who have sent messages of support.

The BNP is clearly getting rattled by the recent press exposures of its criminal activities especially in the Daily Record and London Evening Standard. The fascist party has also been hit by the decision of HSBC Bank to follow Barclays in closing down the BNP's bank accounts.

All journalists and anti-fascists should be vigilant against any more nazi hoaxes.