Searchlight has monitored the domestic and international far right for over 40 years. During this time we have provided newspapers, news groups and television companies with up-to-date information, intelligence and analysis on the activities of far-right extremists. We believe we are a much trusted and reliable source of information.
We wish to draw your attention to an article that appeared in the Irish Daily Star on or about 5 June this year and a follow-up article that appeared on or about 15 June in the same newspaper by the same journalist, John Coulter.
We wish to repudiate the unsubstantiated claims made in these articles that there is any mass drive for recruitment or otherwise by the minuscule British People’s Party (BPP) or that we in any way concur that such groups are trying to hijack the 12 July parades.
It is our informed opinion, through investigation and research into the far right in Northern Ireland, that the BPP has nowhere near the 40 members in Northern Ireland quoted in the article, nor is there any tangible evidence to suggest that any of the other organisations named even exist. We have previously made such representations to Mr Coulter, seemingly to no avail.
We are very disappointed that such prominence has been given to these baseless claims as it only gives the oxygen of publicity to warped individuals at what is a time of great opportunity for reconciliation in Northern Ireland. We therefore wish to dissociate ourselves from these articles.
Searchlight will continue to monitor the very real danger of extremism and fascism in Northern Ireland, but we wish to make clear that it most definitely does not come from any of the groups or organisations named in the article published by the Irish Daily Star.
Searchlight
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