andy bell

A few weeks ago I described the 1993 investigation by Searchlight and ITV’s World In Action into the neo-nazi terror group, Combat 18. We exposed C18’s responsibility for death threats, beatings, letter bombs and arson attacks. On camera, C18 leader Charlie Sargent threatened me that I would get “a bullet in your head… that’s what’s going to happen to you”.

Here’s the inside story of how they tried to deliver on that threat.

Five years after the first World in Action/ Searchlight investigation into Combat 18 in 1993 – which ended with C18 leader Charlie Sargent threatening to have me shot in the head – we returned to the subject. Sargent’s was not an empty threat. It turned out he was well capable of murder. In 1998 he was in court, charged with killing of one of his C18 comrades.

And, though we didn’t know it at the time, he had been the driving force in a plot to murder one of the WIA journalists who worked on the first programme in 1993.

In the years following that programme C18 was split by a bitter internal feud. On one side were Charlie Sargent, his brother Steve and a few others who were milking the operation through the sale of tee shirts and white power music CDs. On the other, was a hardline faction around Will ‘Wilf the Beast’ Browning who wanted to take the group in the direction of fully fledged terrorism.

The feuding had started as a war of words between Sargent and Browning with each slagging the other off but escalated seriously in 1997, when Sargent and his mate, Martin Cross, murdered Chris Castle, a friend of Browning and one of his faction. Early the following year Sargent and Cross stood trial for murder, and we decided to make another programme.

It was to be a very strange ride.

Charlie Sargent

Browning’s hatred of Sargent and his desire to avenge his friend knew no limits. In fact, it even extended to him helping us make the programme. The man who, in an earlier World In Action about C18 and football hooliganism, had attacked a film crew with a screwdriver was now prepared to sit down with us to lunch. Many times, in fact: quite apart from revenge, Will certainly liked his food, especially when someone else was paying. This was all done, of course with the knowledge and approval of his London C18 comrades who, like him, were prepared to sanction almost anything to get back at Sargent.

Will Browning confronts WIA film crew – seconds later he attacked them with a screwdriver

Contact with Browning was through Nick Lowles (now CEO of Hope Not Hate) who was seconded from Searchlight to work with us. At that time, I was a producer with WIA and Nick and I were working together. It was at one of these lunches that, jokingly, I asked Browning “So, Will, am I on your Xmas card list now?” Browning, paused, looked up from his plate, fixed me with a stare and recited a south London address. “I don’t understand,” I said, puzzled. “That’s your address,” said Browning. “No, it’s not”, I replied. “Well, it’s the address of one of your blokes…”

Indeed, it was.

It was the address of Quentin McDermott, the Assistant Producer on the first WIA film about C18. “We were going to hit him,” said Browning. I said I didn’t believe a word of it. “So, you come out of the tube station” said Browning, “you go right, you take the first turning on the right. He’s on the right-hand side of the street at the end. Basement flat. Big lounge window. Red window frame. We were going to pop him through the window. Charlie wanted him hit. He ordered it.”

I again expressed scepticism, and then Browning told us a about a page from the electoral register which police had seized when his house was raided in January 1995 – how it contained Quentin’s address, how Sargent’s handwriting was on it and how it could be recovered from the trial exhibits of the race relations case where he and Sargent had later faced charges. And he went on to tell us what had happened.

“Basement No 52” – Charlie Sargent’s handwriting on the page of the electoral register

At the end of 1994, Sargent was still livid about the World In Action investigation and wanted revenge. They tried to track me down but couldn’t find me. So, they began to work their way down the production credits. Eventually they located Quentin. Sargent had given Browning the relevant page from the electoral register upon which, in his own hand, he had written “basement No 52”.

With Browning’s authority, we obtained that copy of the electoral register page from his solicitors, and it was exactly as he had described it. We had the writing examined by a handwriting expert who concluded that it was indeed Charlie Sargent’s handwriting.

Had Browning and Sargent not been raided in 1995, this appalling plot might have come to fruition. What the police had held in their hands after the 1995 raid was evidence that C18 was targeting a journalist who had been investigating them. But the police either didn’t realise what they had, or they just paid it no attention at all. Either way, their failure could have had disastrous consequences.

That story made up a significant part of the programme which we broadcast shortly after Sargent’s conviction and imprisonment for life in January 1998. We also showed how the authorities had allowed C18 to run, carrying out its campaign of arson and terror attacks because Sargent was working for Special Branch and providing them with information about the far right loyalist Ulster Defence Association, to which C18 was linked.

It wasn’t just Browning who, up to a point at least, was helping us along – but it would be some time later before C18 realised just how deeply we had penetrated their ranks.

During all this time when Browning was at the heart of C18 conspiracies and violent acts, he had a very small group around him whom he trusted totally. None was closer, nor more trusted, than Darren Wells. So bonded were the two men that when, in 1996, they became convinced that they were under police surveillance and that an armed police raid on Browning’s home was imminent, it was these two who sat up through the night with handguns and a crossbow, waiting. There, in a hail of gunfire, they would become martyrs in the war against ZOG (the “Zionist Occupation Government”).

As it happened, that raid never happened and by the time this latest World In Action programme was being broadcast, Darren had turned: he was now working with Searchlight.

Will Browning with Darren Wells at Chelmsford Crown Court when Charlie Sargent was on trial for murdering fellow C18 member Chris Castle

It had started after the Danish letter bomb campaign which featured in the first Searchlight/WIA investigation in 1993. When police thwarted the plot, Wells fronted a press conference where he all but took responsibility for the letter bombs on behalf of C18.

At this point he began to have doubts – he could see his life careering towards either death or a long time in prison for no real reason. And it was exactly that thought that recurred time and again as he sat through the night with Browning in his Bermondsey house in 1996, waiting for armed police to smash the door down. Then, the murder of Chris Castle the follow year clinched it.

When Browning began meeting with World In Action later in 1997, Darren always came with him. He and Nick Lowles developed an increasing rapport and before long Darren was speaking to Nick, and even meeting him, without Browning’s knowledge.

Darren was obviously disenchanted with “the life” as a wannabee neo-Nazi terrorist, and became increasingly open and honest, providing a priceless back channel to what was going on inside Combat 18, and indeed, inside Browning’s mind, while the programme was being researched.

In the end, he even gave an interview to the programme, with C18’s blessing, though some of them may have been taken a bit aback by the candour with which he described what had been going on within the organisation since its inception.

Handled by Nick Lowles, Darren was one of the most important moles Searchlight has ever run. In the end he moved abroad and started a new life. But for almost five years, his contribution to exposing C18 and stopping some of its more deranged plans was immeasurable.

For anyone interested, both the World In Action C18 films are here:

This is a slightly edited version of an article appearing in the latest (Summer 2023) issue of Searchlight