|
|
 |
| |
Anti facists Gerry and Sonia Gable |
Shining example of Searchlight
IT was a chatty, gossipy silver wedding anniversary party on Saturday but no one seemed to want to bring up the subject the couple cannot normally stop talking about once they get started – the far right in Britain.
Both of them, Gerry Gable and his wife Sonia, I suppose, must be high up on the hate list of the British National Party – he as publisher of the anti-fascist magazine Searchlight, she as deputy editor.
I could have mentioned the BNP but something held me back. Perhaps I knew it would spoil an afternoon of drinks, reminiscences and jokes in a splendid Kentish Town restaurant, especially with Gerry who has been pursuing the far right for more than 50 years with the single-mindedness of a Witchfinder General.
So, I rang Gerry at his east London home on Tuesday and that’s when I discovered he is a man the far right need to reckon with.
Brought up in Hackney, Gerry, once a building worker, later a mature university student with an MA in criminology, he edited Searchlight in the 80s, and then found himself in demand as a researcher for TV channels.
He was a man who managed to investigate Britain’s secret extremist groups with such forensic dedication that his services were soon sought by both the Ted Heath and Harold Wilson governments of the 70s. Heath, it seemed, wanted the inside dope on the Monday Club, a right-wing think-tank run by MPs of his own Tory party.
Gerry must have the biggest data bank on the activities of the far right both in Britain and in Europe.
But I didn’t ask him about it. It wouldn’t have been of any use as Gerry is a man who is trained to bury secrets.
He was about to embark on his present work for a committee attached to Scotland Yard when he suddenly pulled himself up sharply, and said: “I don’t want to say too much about this, just say I am an advisor, along with several other people, the police confidentially work with.”
He did tell me, however, he had been able to provide the police with “intelligence” on the gay bar bombings in Soho that helped the police send the perpetrator to jail.
He did – surprisingly – tell me that he provides information for the Home Secretary Jack Straw, a man whom he clearly admires.
By appearance and manner he’s not a bit like George Smiley, the M15 chief in the spy thriller Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, but there’s something about him that made me think of the character Smiley and the shady, murky world of our intelligence services.
Enlarger than life photos
VIVIENNE and Henry got together as students because they shared a passion – photography.
Well, it was a bit more than that. Actually, according to the way Vivienne describes it, it started when Henry became interested in her “enlarger” at home.
I joked about how it reminded me of the old chat-up line: “Why don’t you come and see my etchings!”
I met the Collinses, who live in Hampstead, at the opening on Thursday of a wonderful exhibition of photos by a master of the craft, 97-year-old Wolfgang Suschitzky, at the Chambers Gallery in the Barbican.
Vivienne has been a friend of Wolfgang’s since she started working with him on documentaries in the 1950s. By then, slightly to her parents’ dismay, Vivienne, still a student at London University, had become infatuated with the camera.
It was at the same university that she met Henry, a student at Middlesex Hospital medical school. Both followed their careers – she in documentaries, he as a family doctor in different parts of London – but in retirement their love of photography still shines through.
Staying upbeat on summit
I HEAR that last night (Wednesday) the Camden Town home of film director Franny Armstrong was the venue for a pre-Copenhagen summit party.
You may recall Franny was behind the climate change film The Age of Stupid, starring Pete Posthlewaite, and was recently saved from being mugged near her home by London’s Conservative mayor Boris Johnson.
I hear her parties are legendary – as she takes a pew behind an upright piano and plays all night long, while her friends do renditions of their favourite songs.
Let us hope she is still in the party mood in a couple of weeks time when we will see just how far our politicians have got trying to thrash out a deal on carbon emissions in Denmark.
Rivals reunited
WHATEVER happened to that old mischief-maker Piers Wauchope, the former Tory leader in Camden who missed the spoils of Labour’s landslide defeat at the 2006 council elections because he couldn’t defend his own seat?
He left the borough, never to be seen of again. Not quite. Piers is back with a new book: Camden – A Political History, to be released very shortly. After much chinwagging with old rivals, his work records, as he puts it: “How Labour lost its way and won and found its way and lost.”
I’ve seen a sneak preview. You can almost here Piers’s voice popping out of the pages. Wry as ever, his retelling of power struggles and forgotten gossip sparkles – but expect a few old sores to be reopened.
 |
 |
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
