| Urban Hat€monger ? |
11-09-2006 04:32 PM |
Searchlight, Red Action, and other commentators on both the left and right, including journalist Larry O'Hara, have speculated that C18 was created by the British internal security service MI5 to discredit the BNP while acting as a honey trap, or sting operation, designed to attract the most violent Neo-Nazis in the UK into a single organisation, where they could be monitored more easily. Some commentators also suggest that it was used by MI5 to infiltrate Loyalist paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland.
In 1998, the leader of C18, Charlie Sargent, an alleged Special Branch informant, was sentenced to life imprisonment for the 1997 murder of another member of the group.
During in-fighting, in a programme broadcast on 6 April 1999, members of C18 cooperated with a documentary crew from the Granada Television's World in Action in an effort to show that they had been infiltrated, and in some cases controlled indirectly, by the security services. This revelation effectively ended the organisation and, although a small group of people still identify with the name, they are largely inactive; however, no evidence has ever been produced to substantiate the allegations that Charlie Sargent was an informant, or that C18 itself was set-up by, or manipulated by, either MI5 or Special Branch. Some former supporters and members of C18 regard such suspicions and allegations of State involvement as themselves the product of MI5 disinformation, designed to divide C18 internally, a tactic which would seem to have worked.
Between 1998 and 2000, in dawn raids, dozens of Combat 18 members in the UK were arrested by the police on various charges in several operations conducted by Scotland Yard in co-operation with MI5. Those arrested included Steve Sargent (brother of Charlie Sargent), David Myatt, Andrew Frain, Jason Marriner, and two serving British soldiers, Darren Theron (Parachute Regiment) and Carl Wilson (1st Battalion, The Queen's Lancashire Regiment)[1]. One of those whose house was raided in this period was Adrian Marsden who later became a councilor for the British National party [2]. Several of those arrested were later jailed - these included Frain (seven years) and Marriner (six years).
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