Deportation flights fail to take off
The first flight deporting illegal migrants to Rwanda was cancelled minutes before take-off after last-ditch legal rulings. The government is challenging a decision by the European Court of Human Rights which blocked the flight and is threatening to withdraw from the European legal framework. The government is also planning to scrap the Human Rights Act.
June also saw the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act, which imposes greater restrictions on the right to protest and undermines human rights, come into law.
British neo-Nazi Alex Davies, who co-founded banned terrorist group National Action (NA), was jailed for more than eight years. Despite the demise of NA, British society should be vigilant to ‘lone wolf’ attacks by neo-Nazis according to Professor Matthew Feldman.
Four members of a “fascist” cell, who used a Telegram channel called Oaken Hearth, were jailed for sentences of twelve, ten, six and three years respectively. The group had tried to 3D print a gun and were convicted of a range of firearms and terrorism offences.
In the middle of June, the fascist party Patriotic Alternative (PA) held a hike where members of their North East, North West, West Midlands and Yorkshire regions scrambled up Helvellyn in the Lake District, prompting outrage in the local media. The following weekend saw their East Midlands region visit Kinder Scout in the Peak District.
The trial of James Allchurch, better known Sven Longshanks, owner of the online neo-Nazi radio platform, Radio Albion (formerly Radio Aryan), was delayed by a strike. Allchurch has been accused of distributing racist and anti-Semitic podcasts. His defence barrister took part in a strike over pay, only the second time barristers in Britain have ever taken such action.
Former English Defence League leader Stephen Yaxley-Lennon told a court he had spent £100,000 on gambling while receiving donations from supporters.
In the Wakefield by-election, Britain First got 1.1%, outperforming other far-right parties.
Drag queen story hate comes to Britain
The British far-right has started targeting drag queen storytellers, accusing them of sexualising children. This appears to be instrumentalising homophobic and transphobic hatred and an import from America. Fascist party PA has produced a leaflet titled ‘Stop Drag Queen Story Hour’ which its members have been distributing around the country. The leaflets were branded as “laughable” by one drag queen who had been targeted.
Far-right British conspiracy theorist Paul Joseph Watson, who has over 1 million Twitter followers and nearly 2 million YouTube subscribers, promoted conspiracies about Coeur d’Alene Pride days before it was targeted by the American fascist group Patriot Front.
The anti-abortion Christian Right group Citizen Go led a campaign, supported by transphobes, to cancel a touring theatre production aimed at bringing sex education to family audiences. More than 40,000 people signed a petition against the show.
Byline Times reports that a charity linked to Hungarian leader Viktor Orban and the American Koch brothers wants to “take over” British schools and is “using the idea of free speech to promote pro-Russia narratives about the Ukraine war in schools and universities”.
The plight of Liverpool supporters who were attacked by police in Paris at the Champions League final was used by the French far-right in elections, according to the Metro.
American soldier Ethan Melzer pled guilty to attempting to murder members of his army unit by leaking information to neo-Nazis in an attempt to facilitate a deadly Jihadist attack. Melzer had been a member of the Order of Nine Angles (O9A) since at least 2017 and infiltrated the US army on behalf of the group, claiming court documents. O9A was founded by British neo-Nazi David Myatt and several former members of NA are believed to adhere to the philosophy.
Ray Hill, a former British National Party (BNP) candidate, who earned the second highest vote of any BNP candidate, passed away in May 2022. Hill had been a successful anti-fascist infiltrator in far-right groups after rejecting fascist ideology in the late 1970s, after seeing evictions of non-white settlers in South Africa under apartheid.