Searchlight remembers Leon

Gerry Gable | Tuesday, 11 March 2008 Source: Searchlight

Leon was a regular fixture at the Jewish Museum in North London, running sessions for visitors from around Britain and across the world.

A tiny man but a giant, he was in the front line when tens of thousands of anti-fascists marched on the old BNP headquarters in Welling, southeast London in 1993. Only the courage of Julie Waterson of the Anti Nazi League, who stepped in the path of a police riot squad truncheon that was about to strike Leon, then aged 83, prevented him suffering serious injury and possibly death. Julie suffered a very nasty injury to the head.

Leon marched with us when Searchlight linked up with Anti-Fascist Action in the 1980s to stage a Remembrance Day march to the Cenotaph in opposition to the National Front, which to this day annually besmirches the memory of those who gave their lives fighting fascism. We were joined by representatives of thousands of trade unionists, MPs, people of all faiths and the gay community.

The night that the nazi terror group Combat 18 attacked Leon’s home in Ilford – real heroes attacking a man in his eighties – they phoned me to scream, amid abuse: tonight we could not get you, you Jewish bastard, so we are going to get your friend, who escaped the gas chambers but cannot escape us. By the time the police got to Leon, his house had already been attacked. He never wavered, never flinched, just kept on warning future generations until time finally took its toll.

We salute you and the memory of your murdered wife and son. The fight goes on, it is our duty.

Gerry Gable and everyone at Searchlight