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 Democratic 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. Activities Members of other more open far-right movements were recruited into Column 88's ranks, with membership limited to those seen as the most extreme. Indeed, A.K. Chesterton, who had established the National Front, wrote in one of his final letters to John Tyndall expressing his concerns that NF members were becoming involved in Column 88. In the late 1970s, the organisation allegedly carried out several bomb attacks on left-wing British organisations, including the Socialist Workers Party, the Anti-Nazi League and the left-wing Housmans bookshop, where the pacifist and anti-racist magazine Peace News was published. Many suspected that this group were behind the arson attack that destroyed the Albany Empire in Deptford, south London in July 1978 during the Rock Against Racism campaign. Other bomb attacks that it was reported to have carried out included those against targets as diverse as the homes of Conservative Party members and transmission towers whilst the group also claimed a series of arson attacks on Jewish-owned businesses. Column 88 first came to public attention in 1975, when the regional British newspaper, the Western Daily Press, published accounts of Column 88 members training, in Savernake Forest, Wiltshire, with elements of the Territorial Army. This led to a question being asked, by a Member of Parliament, in the House of Commons, and to other reports in British newspapers, such as The Guardian. The British anti-fascist magazine, Searchlight, also published articles about Column 88 in May 1975,