Searchlight the printed magazine is bowing out after half a century in continuous publication. It was launched with a February 1975 cover date, and the 50th anniversary issue is out now.
The new magazine was in part the reincarnation of a (very) occasional newspaper of the same name, launched by some of the people who had gathered the intelligence for the paper and had just kept doing so despite publication having ceased.
Countering the rise in Britain of the National Front
To a large extent the magazine was aimed at countering the rise in Britain of the National Front – not just a party garnering support from the country’s many racial and religious bigots but one that had blatantly nazi overtones. It was all getting too much like early 1930s Germany for people of good will to make the same old mistake of turning a blind eye and hoping the extremists would quietly fade away.
It’s hard to imagine that anyone who was involved in putting together that first issue would have dreamt for a moment that the magazine would still be around 50 years later. Not least because everyone was determined that the nazis themselves would not still be around 50 years later. Alas! If only life were that simple.
We certainly did see off the National Front – along with our comrades in the Anti Nazi League, Rock Against Racism and many other spirited organisations – but the far right has a knack of reinventing itself, sometimes into new parties that experience electoral success, such as the British National Party, UKIP and, currently, Reform UK.
Whac-A-Micro-führer
That side of politics is also inherently unstable (see the last week’s rift between Reform’s Rupert Lowe and Nigel Farage for a good example). If you think The Life of Brian’s satire on groups such as the People’s Front of Judaea is only applicable to the far left, think again. The nazis are capable of morphing into a fragment of a splinter of a schism at the drop of a Bratwurst. Focus too narrowly on an NF or UKIP and you’ll find that mini-groups with their own micro-führers have sprung up beyond your peripheral vision. It’s like playing Whac-A-Mole while wearing blinkers.
“If it’s so never-ending,” you’ll probably be asking us, “then why are you throwing in the towel?” And the answer is that we’re not. Not a bit of it. Searchlight will continue, just not as a ‘dead tree’ magazine. The world has changed immeasurably since 1975. Communications back then were (seen from today’s vantage) very slow indeed.
A monthly printed report on far-right activities and anti-fascists’ counter-organisations felt pretty nimble back then. But in the age of more-news-every-minute social media, a printed magazine format feels more like it’s moving at the pace of a Pleistocene great sloth crossing a tar pit.
Searchlight marches on, but now as an online-only publication – here, on our website, and for shorter items via Facebook, Twitter/X and Bluesky
So Searchlight marches on, but now as an online-only publication – here, on our website, and for shorter items via Facebook, Twitter/X and Bluesky. And it doesn’t end with what you see today, because in very few weeks we will be relaunching this site with a much improved look and navigation facilities. It promises to be a spectacular upgrade. Watch this space.
The 50th anniversary issue has, by now, landed on the doormats of contributors and subscribers, but copies are still available at Buy Magazine.
Our biggest ever issue
It is our biggest ever issue, at 72 pages, and covers all of the highlights of our long battle against racism and fascism. All of the five former editors who are still alive (two, sadly, are not) share their memories, and there are features on milestones in our history, colleagues including Stieg Larsson (who was for many years a Searchlight correspondent) and, perhaps most exciting of all, our most celebrated ‘moles’.
Some of these, such as Ray Hill (who kiboshed a nazi bomb plot), are more or less household names – at least in anti-fascist households! Others less so. And some are in such deep retirement that we can still only write about them under their agent codenames. Though don’t expect to read anything about our many current day moles, informants and whistleblowers. They remain, of course, very much under cover.
As a taster of the issue, we are reproducing a concise summary of Searchlight’s history written for the final issue by the celebrated playwright David Edgar, who has been a friend of the magazine since its launch, and often a contributor.
Find his overview at 50 years and counting: Searchlight’s Past, Present and Future.
