Gerry Gable, legendary anti-fascist campaigner dies at 88

Gerry Gable was born in the East End of London to a Jewish mother and Anglican father and retained a deeply felt, lifelong pride in his Judaism. A communist from his youth, Gable joined the Young Communist League and later the Communist Party and worked as a runner on the party’s Daily Worker newspaper, eventually becoming a communist trade union organiser. But he left the party in the 1960s, when he discovered its anti-Israel bias. He said at the time: “I have first and foremost always been a Jewish trade unionist.”

He then became involved with the influential, militant anti-fascist organisation 62 Group in the 1960s, which developed in response to fascist street hooliganism and was funded partly by the Jewish Aid Committee. Gable gathered intelligence for the 62 Group, and infiltrated far-right and neo-Nazi organisations, which he did not hesitate to confront in his attempts to create a coherent defence policy for the community.

These were the birth-pangs of Searchlight, founded by Labour MPs Reg Freeson, Joan Lestor and Jewish activist Maurice Ludmer, with Gable acting as research director. The then quarterly magazine focused mainly on the British far right, exposing racism, antisemitism and fascism in the UK, but it soon extended its remit to other countries.

After Freeson’s appointment to a ministerial role in the British government, he stood down in favour of fellow MP Lestor, but no further issues were published at the time.

Gable, Ludmer and others remained as Searchlight associates and published a pamphlet in 1974 entitled A Well Oiled Nazi Machine, in response to the rise of the National Front. The exposure gave new impetus to the group and helped raise sufficient funds to re-launch Searchlight in its new monthly format. Its pilot issue appeared in February 1975, with Gable as editor and Ludmer as managing editor.

The two were among the first sponsors of the Anti-Nazi League and Searchlight became closely linked with CARF, the Campaign Against Racism and Fascism, which also published a magazine in London. In 1979 the two bodies briefly merged until CARF decided that Searchlight’s focus was too heavily angled towards antisemitism, rather than anti-black racism.

Following a pause after Ludmer’s death in 1981, Gable resumed his role as editor of Searchlight, which he held intermittently until March 2025, its 50th anniversary issue. The print edition folded but it continues to post stories and investigations online.

However, the role of Searchlight and its associated Searchlight Educational Trust came under an attack instigated by the British National Party over allegations that the trust’s political activities were incompatible with its charitable status. The Charity Commission of England and Wales ruled in 2003 that the Educational Trust had over-extended these political guidelines, but no action was taken against Searchlight magazine.

Gable earned his reputation for dogged determination in November 1963  by gaining access with two others into the Hornsey flat of the historian and Holocaust denier David Irving, pretending to be GPO telephone engineers. He and another man were convicted of burglary and fined £20 in January 1964, with Gable being fined an additional £5 for the theft of a GPO pass.

In 1984 Gable was commissioned by the BBC to research claims of right-wing extremism in the Conservative Party for a Panorama programme, Maggie’s Militant Tendency.

Claiming that his research was based on information earlier published in Searchlight, Gable accused two Conservative MPS, Neil Hamilton and Gerald Howarth, of being secret extremist Nazi supporters, an allegation that incurred libel action against the broadcaster. The BBC had to pay the two men’s legal costs. They were awarded £20,000 and in a later edition of Panorama, the BBC made an unreserved apology to the pair.

But it was under Gable’s leadership that Searchlight’s collaboration with BBC TV‘s investigation into the British National Party led to one of his greatest coups – a programme named Spy Story, which led to the arrest of eight BNP members.

There was more controversy to come. In 1989 Private Eye magazine was forced to pay substantial damages to Reginald Gulliver-Buckingham, a member of the military police, after falsely claiming that he had plotted to abduct and murder Gable.

At the beginning of the 21st century Searchlight joined forces with two other anti-racist bodies, Stop the BNP and Hope Not Hate, in their anti-fascist campaigns. But after splitting from the latter body, Searchlight focused on publishing its research and intelligence gathering, supporting direct action against various fascist demonstrations organised by such groups as the English Defence League in 2012.

In 2011 Gable was awarded an honorary doctorate by Northampton University for his lifetime’s achievement in defending liberal democracy and combatting racism and fascism. The university has also become a digital resource centre for Searchlight’s extensive archive.

Gable’s legacy extends beyond his defence of the Jewish community. As an independent adviser to the Metropolitan Police’s Hate Crime Independent Advisory Group, he was also on the London board of Tell Mama, which combats anti-Muslim hatred.

Many organisations paid tribute to him. Mark Gardner, chief executive of the Community Security Trust, has previously praised his “utterly unique contribution to the fight against fascism, racism and antisemitism”. On his death, the CST praised Gable as a “towering figure in the fight against fascism, racism and the far right in Britain”. Searchlight described him as “one of the most important figures in post-war anti-fascism, not just in this country but also internationally”.

Other tributes came from the Board of Deputies; Nick Lowles, the CEO of Hope Not Hate, who expressed his sadness at Gable’s passing; Jeremy Newmark, leader of Hertsmere Council; and Paul Nowak, general secretary of the TUC, who noted his pivotal role in exposing the tactics and funding of far-right groups.

Gerry Gable is survived by his wife, Sonia.

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Gerry Gable: born January 27, 1937. Died January 3, 2026.