Senior Nazi arrested
01 May 1993
Eddie Whicker, a member of the National Front (NF) and recently exposed as a leader of the violently fascist Combat 18 (C18), has been arrested and charged with possessing firearms with intent to endanger life. Whicker was arrested at the beginning of June and did not apply for bail.
The arrest followed a police raid on the Crown and Cushion public house in Perry Bar, Birmingham, where two men were detained in possession of seven semi-automatic handguns and two hundred rounds of ammunition. One of the men, named Mcrudden, had Loyalist connections and is from Belfast, the other is from Camden in North London. Whicker was picked-up by police in south London the following day and charged.
Although based in London he has recently been spent a great deal of time in the Midlands and in the April 1992 general election he stood as the National Front candidate for Birmingham Hodge Hill where he received 370 votes, slightly less than 1% of the total.
During May the television programme World in Action exposed the recently formed fascist paramilitary outfit C18, in which Whicker was revealed to be a key figure. The membership of C18 is made up of familiar names, many of them associated with the British National Party, and they have appeared in a public role stewarding a series of meetings by revisionist historian David Irving.
They have also been involved in a series of covert activities, attacking Black and community groups. These included arson attacks on the Freedom Bookshop (the latest attack took place at the end of May and caused considerable damage) and the Morning Star newspaper in London. They have also targeted newspaper sellers from the Anti-Nazi League, attacking them with iron bars and causing several serious injuries.
The World in Action programme also alleged that C18 had extensive contacts with the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), the sectarian Loyalist paramilitary group that was recently banned in northern Ireland, but is still legal in England. While contacts between the far-right and Loyalists are well documented - a large number of Loyalists turned-out to support a BNP attack on a Bloody Sunday commemoration as recently as January - evidence of more sinister gun-running activities have been harder to come by.
Whicker's arrest offers confirmation of right-wing involvement with Loyalist paramilitaries in their campaign of sectarian assassination. It also raises questions about the direction in which the weapons were moving given the extensive evidence of the large quantities of weaponry reaching the Loyalists from South African sources. (see Statewatch vol 3 no 2).
Times 2.6.93; Birmingham Evening Mail 4.6.93.