This weekend’s Homeland Party annual conference offers pretty thin pickings when it comes to speakers. We mentioned earlier about two foreign fascists – from Germany and Poland – who will decorate their platform.

But, apart from party functionaries and the odd local councillor, the only speaker of interest is Garreth Falls. Who? you might reasonably ask. Well, he’s the oddball chairman of the Northern Ireland People’s Party and describes himself as a “consultant medical herbalist”. He also has a background in the Methodist Church. NI People is led by a West Belfast ‘community activist’, Tony Mallon, a former SDLP member who became an ‘anti-wokeist’ and Covid conspiracy theorist. 

The rest of the Homeland panel is a predictable round up of racist and anti-semitic party functionaries and leading activists:

Ant Burrows, a Homeland parish councillor who is also the party’s nominating officer; he was previously East Midlands regional organiser for PA.  He had a shotgun licence withdrawn at the request of the police because of his far-right views. The court was told that when asked on Twitter to “describe your politics with four people” he posted photographs of Adolf Hitler and former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. 

Jerome O’Reilly, the Homeland treasurer, who will introduce the party’s ‘financial plan’. He’s a former Patriotic Alternative activist with an obsession about ‘international Zionism’. He leapt to the defence of the notorious James Allchurch, aka Sven Longshanks, recently jailed for two and a half years for inciting racial hatred.  

Dave Gardner, who is treasurer of Forfar Community Council in Angus, Scotland, and displays robust anti-semitic and holocaust-denying views online under the name of Gordon Freeman.