andy bell

It was almost exactly 40 years ago, in March 1983, that I wrote this article in Searchlight, describing a plot by a motley gang of far right wingers to “smash” the magazine. At the time we couldn’t reveal how we knew all about their schemes. Now we can – it’s the remarkable – and tragic – story of another Searchlight informant in Britain’s fascist movement.

When the article appeared, it was to the fury and bewilderment of those involved. Well, most of them. For what three of them didn’t know was that one of their number, Charles Hanson, the veteran nazi with a reputation for violence, was now working for Searchlight.

Hanson had approached Searchlight in 1981, contacting Gerry Gable at London Weekend Television where Gerry worked at the time. A nazi activist since his youth, Hanson had first joined Colin Jordan’s National Socialist Movement, but combined his political activities with a life of reasonably lucrative petty crime for which he had served a number of prison terms. Later, he had been a member of the National Front. 

When he first got in touch with Searchlight, he was undergoing a partial change of heart – he still held right wing views on a number of issues but was finished with the pathological racism of those he was associating with. And, with an eye to an opportunity, he had also realised that the copious collection of documents he held might have some value and he offered it to us for sale. We took him up on his offer. After that, however, he never asked for money again and all the subsequent work he dd for us was without any financial reward.

Then, for several years, he worked for Searchlight as a mole inside the far right. He joined the League of St George and became a trusted member. Occasionally he came under suspicion and at the Diksmuide nazi rally in 1982 he was confronted by a group of SS veterans and their minders. It turned out that a League of St George member he had fallen foul of had told them, with no evidence at all, that he was an informant. Hanson managed to talk his way out of it.

At Savitri Devi’s funeral, 1983. Hanson, facing camera, with C18 founder member Tony Williams (far right) who was later to inspire David Copeland, the London nail bomber

A year later he was one of the select few invited to attend the funeral of Savitri Devi, the nazi philosopher and ideological mentor to leading nazis like Colin Jordan. In 1990, he was instrumental in exposing an attempt to set up a branch of the Ku Klux Klan in the UK – a project involving amongst others League of St George boss, Keith Thompson, Ian Stuart Donaldson of Blood and Honour, and future Combat 18 activist Mark Atkinson.

In 1995 however, Hanson’s life spiralled into the darkest tragedy. He discovered that his second wife was having an affair with his son from an earlier relationship. Blinded by humiliation and rage he tracked them down to Bournemouth, waited for them and attacked them with a knife. His son, whom he actually intended to kill, ran off so Hanson turned the knife on his wife who died in a furious assault. At trial Hanson was sentenced to life imprisonment, with a minimum term of 13 years. Then, just five days later, his son who had given evidence against him died of a deliberate heroin overdose.

Hanson was used to jail time and settled down to do his sentence as a model prisoner. He has a good disciplinary record and he got stuck into education, earning several college diplomas, winning a number of awards for articles and essays on the penal system and penal policy, and editing a prison magazine. But he wasn’t done with the far right – even inside he carried on working for Searchlight. He befriended Combat 18 leader Charlie Sargent, then doing life for the murder of his C18 comrade Chris Castle. For a time, they were in the same prison but even when they were separated, they kept in regular correspondence.

Prison letters: from Charlie Sargent to Charles Hanson

When Hanson was convicted, the League of St George had published an article claiming that they had known he had been working for Searchlight for over 25 years. Of course they did. Just as nazis like British Movement leader Michael McLaughlin knew that Ray Hill was a “wrong ‘un” all along. Hanson had no difficulty in batting the allegation away entirely to Charlie Sargent’s satisfaction and from then on Sargent, still in regular contact with hardline nazis on the outside, was unwittingly a valuable source of information and gossip about what was happening in and around Combat 18 and elsewhere on the extreme right. Hanson produced detailed reports of his conversations with Sargent which he then arranged to have smuggled out to Searchlight.

Hanson also got close to Andy Frain, the C18 and Chelsea Headhunter thug who was at that time doing seven years. Frain was convicted after boasting to an undercover film crew that he had slashed a policeman’s face, leaving him needing 68 stitches. They met when Hanson was transferred briefly to Wormwood Scrubs for an operation on his ear and Frain boasted to him of receiving visits from members of the UVF. They kept in touch by letter after that. Like Sargent, Frain was easily seduced by Hanson’s violent record and spoke freely – all of it being fed back to Searchlight. Frain is still active and was most recently linked with Paul Golding’s Britain First until an acrimonious falling out last year.

Hanson after his release from prison

Charles, who died almost exactly 10 years ago, on Xmas Eve 2013, did 15 years in prison. The photo at the top shows him shortly after his release. He was a complicated character with a dark side which emerged horribly in 1995. But, as they say in the world of espionage, you take your informants as you find them, and that’s rarely as perfectly formed human beings. Interviewed on the BBC in 2012 he described his regret at “the horrendous nature and enormity” of what he had done and how he lived haunted by it. Charles had much in his life to make amends for but, to give him his due, he did at least try, and at no small risk to himself.

This article appears in the Winter 2023/24 issue of Searchlight