Darren Wells, C18 and Searchlight

Date: 20th May '02

Name: Peter

Country: England

Many of you would have seen last night's (Sunday's) "Hooligans" programme on BBC2. Most of the show went over well trodden ground (jerky camera shots of Stone Island sweaters throwing bottles and shouting, "Come On Then !".....Yawn !). What did spark my interest, however, was the revelation of C18 head-honcho Darren Wells had been informing on his erstwhile chums to Searchlight magazine for years. This fact was conveniently left out of Searchlight's Nick Lowles's book on C18 "White Riot". This revelation seems to throw up more questions than answers. Like his predecessors Tim Hepple and Matthew Collins, Wells seems not to have had a "road to Damascus" conversion to anti- racism (such a thing would have been welcome) but still seems to be a thug and a bigot who was fully involved in directing violence while he was on the Searchlight pay-roll. He has now been set up with a cushy life abroad, presumably at Searchlight's expense. Can somebody please tell me how a magazine, which has a tiny circulation, can afford to set up it's numerous assets with lives abroad once they've served their purpose ? Unless, of course, Searchlight is a mere conduit; handling people on behalf of a larger, richer (government ?) agency. If Searchlight would come clean and reveal their exact relationship with the State then I would have no problem. Searchlight, however, presents itself as "radical" and still enjoys credibility among the wider Left.
Maybe the oft repeated theory that C18 was, to all intents and purposes, controlled by the State since just after it's inception was true after all. No wonder Gable was running around every TV news studio during Copeland's bombing campaign stating that C18 couldn't possibly be responsible. If they were then questions could have been asked of Searchlight about it's Siamese twin relationship with C18.

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