Great Britain | 10/31/2021

Great Britain 2021 October

Key Developments

 

The Traditional Britain Group (TBG), which brings together a broad audience of far-right figures, held their annual conference in central London on 23 October. Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg once attended one of their dinners, a previous conference has been addressed by anti-Islamist Anne-Marie Waters and neo-Nazis like Mark Collett and other leading figures in Patriotic Alternative (PA) regularly attend TBG events. The conference was addressed by Gunnar Beck MEP and Stefan Korte from Alternative für Deutschland (AfD).

At the end of the month fast-growing fascist party PA held their largest event to date, with nearly 250 people attending their Northern national conference held outside Kendal in the Lake District, which went ahead despite the venue being disclosed by Red Flare. The month began with PA’s harvest festival event, which saw fascist activists give food to homeless people and the vulnerable. In the South West PA’s regional group paid a visit to a sovereign citizen camp for veterans outside Bath, which has previously been raided by counter-terror police and is home to a number of conspiracy theorist former soldiers.

PA’s conference in the Lake District was addressed by Paul Stevenson from Northern Ireland, who has risen to online prominence in American fascist circles through a show hosted on the US-based Republic Broadcasting Network. Other speakers at the event were either long-standing PA activists or minor content creators who have been loyal to Collett.

Collett has faced criticism for blaming the recently murdered David Amess MP for his own death in a video published on his Bithcute and Odysee channels. Towards the end of the month Collett hosted Piers Corbyn, the conspiracy theorist brother of former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, on his weekly livestream where they discussed the ‘Jewish question’. Two American activists also appeared on Collett’s show in October, Warren Balogh from the National Justice Party and the pseudonymous Nam, founder of “The Mannerbund”. The first stream of the month featured Dan Eriksson from Europa Terra Nostra as a guest.

Former Britain First deputy leader Jayda Fransen, now leader of the British Freedom Party has claimed she will stand in the by-election to be held following the killing of Amess.

Activists from Britain First visited a hotel in south Hertfordshire, which is being used to temporarily house Afghan refugees waiting to be given permanent homes. The Guardian reported that in recent weeks Britain First claims to have made more than a dozen unsolicited visits in recent weeks to hotels housing Afghan refugees in areas including Telford, Stoke-on-Trent and Colchester. For Britain has also been targeting such hotels.

In Scotland, a 24 year-old, who police came across in a fashwave Telegram group chat, was found guilty of terrorism for plotting to attack an Islamic centre in Scotland. Police who searched his home found a cache of weapons and manifestos written by Brenton Tarrant and Anders Breivik. The youth had claimed on Telegram to have written to Breivik. In Glasgow a member of Proud Boys Britannia was found guilty of multiple rapes, having attacked one woman three times in 24 hours and biting her head.

A neo-Nazi thug who ran a Telegram channel in which he glorified Hitler admitted racially abusing two men in Torquay town centre in February of this year. The 42-month jail term of a man who ran far-right Telegram groups and posted videos celebrating the Christchurch mosque attacks, which he described as a “game-changer”, was increased to five years by appeal judges. A teenage neo-Nazi was found guilty of preparing for acts of terrorism and disseminating terrorist publications was jailed for at least 11 years.

Former English Defence League leader Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, also known as Tommy Robinson, has had a busy month. In October Yaxley-Lennon was given a five year stalking order for harassing a journalist, addressed the Pegida 7th anniversary protest in Dresden and went viral after workers at a restaurant in Milton Keynes refused to serve him.

American far-right provocateur Andy Ngo tweeted from the anti-trans LGB Alliance conference which was held in central London during October. Prior to the conference Boris Johnson sent the LGB Alliance a letter congratulating it on its “incredible hard work”.

Anti-vaccine activists stormed an NHS hospital to serve bogus legal papers to staff in Colchester, Essex, generating a significant amount of publicity for their action.