Leadership
The group's miitary commander was Major Ian Souter Clarence who had served in the Black Watch during the Second World War before becoming active as a supporter of Arnold Leese. Stories about him stockpiling weapons had been known to MI5 from as early as 1946. He organised a number of camps to provide combat training to Column 88 members. One such camp, held in November 1975 in conjunction with the League of St George, was reported in the well known UK anti-fascist Searchlight magazine where those in attendance included Brian Baldwin, a prison officer from Manchester, and Peter Marriner, the head of the British Movement in Birmingham.
The overall leader however was Leslie Eric Lutz Vaughan, a veteran of the British National Party and its paramilitary wing Spearhead. Vaughan was, according to Ray Hill, close to Anthony Reed Herbert in a professional capacity (Herbert being a lawyer and Vaughan a private investigator) and the work Vaughan put Herbert's way ensured that Column 88 played a leading role in Herbert's British Democratic Party. Indeed, following a World in Action report in 1981 detailing British Demoractic Party attempts at gun-running Vaughan and Column 88 temporarily went into abeyance for fear of becoming implicated. Other leading members included Joe Short, who had been involved in David Myatt's National Democratic Freedom Movement, Graham Gillmore, a mercenary and NF member and David Myatt.
Read more about this topic: Column 88
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