andy bell

The history and practice of anti-fascism


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  • The Music of Terezin

    I’ve written before about Terezin, or Theresienstadt, the concentration camp ghetto near Prague where Czech Jews – including the cream of Jewish and Czech cultural life – were incarcerated by the Nazis before being transported to Auschwitz and death. Two years ago the BBC broadcast a day of music of Terezin from the Barbican. Fifteen… Read more

  • Ilse Weber, 1903 – 1944. Poet and writer, murdered by the Nazis

    Ilse Weber, 1903 – 1944. Poet and writer, murdered by the Nazis

    This month marks the anniversary of the birth of Ilse Weber, born in January 1903, an accomplished poet, songwriter and writer sent to the Terezin concentration camp in Czechoslovakia in 1942, and murdered in Auschwitz two years later.. Her eldest son, Hanus, was one of the children rescued from the Nazis by Nicholas Winton and… Read more

  • Terezin – memorialised in music

    Originally posted online 24 January 2022 Holocaust Memorial Day falls this week, and the BBC’s contribution, yesterday, was an extraordinary day of music at the Barbican Centre, music written in Nazi camps and wartime ghettos by Jewish composers. Most were held in Terezin, or Theresienstadt as the Nazis called it, just north of Prague in… Read more

  • Infiltrating a right wing plot to “smash” Searchlight – the inside story

    Infiltrating a right wing plot to “smash” Searchlight – the inside story

    Forty years on – the inside story of how we infiltrated a right wing plot to “smash” Searchlight Read more

  • Your tour guide is a wanted terrorist…

    Your tour guide is a wanted terrorist…

    How a Searchlight investigation into a tour guide company first exposed links between the National Front and London-based Italian fascists wanted for terrorism Read more

  • British  Movement – Our part in its downfall 

    British  Movement – Our part in its downfall 

    The last of my articles about the exploits of anti-fascist super mole Ray Hill. This time – how he engineered the collapse of British Movement, then the UK’s biggest openly neo-Nazi organisation. Read more

About Me

I’ve been an active anti-fascist since 1974, working for Searchlight magazine from 1975 till 1989. From 1983 till 1989 I was its editor and co-wrote ‘The Other Face of Terror’, with Ray Hill, the celebrated Searchlight infiltrator into the European neo-Nazi movement. After that, and for the next 20 years, I worked as an investigative journalist with ITV’s World in Action and the BBC’s Panorama. I blog about the history and practice of anti-fascism, especially in the UK.

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