The Traditional Britain Group holds its annual get together next weekend, and its panel of speakers includes one or two interesting characters, given how TBG likes to present itself as an upmarket far-right offering which has had government ministers address it in the past.
Most notable this year is Rhodri Philipps (above), aka 4th Viscount St Davids, who will speak on “a project (in partnership with TBG VP Robin Tilbrook) to hold officials legally accountable for the harm that they have done to Britain and the British people”. Tilbrook, of course, doubles up as the leader of the English Democrats, which is in an electoral alliance with UKIP, and was the funder of neo-Nazi Patriotic Alternative candidates in July’s general election.
Phillips, who was also a speaker at a TBG social in December, is highly qualified to talk about harm, and has in the past been held very accountable indeed for harm that he did: specifically, harm to anti-Brexit campaigner, Gina Miller. In July 2017 he was convicted of sending malicious communications after posting on Facebook that he would pay “£5,000 for the first person to ‘accidentally’ run over this bloody troublesome first-generation immigrant”.
He was also convicted for offering £2000 to anyone who would “carve into pieces” a man who had been reported in the press as having turned down a five-bedroom council house for his family of eight.
Philips was jailed for 12 weeks. Gina Miller had to employ professional security for herself and her family as a result.
Also due to address TBG this year Unity News Network activist David Clews (above), who fled abroad recently when he thought he might be arrested for inciting violence during the August post-Southport riots. Even by TBG standards, Clews is a ridiculous crank and it’s rather surprising that TBG will promote him. But then he is very much part of the far-right pro-Moscow propaganda axis of which TBG is a key UK component.
TBG is a well-funded far-right group at whose events right wing conservatives rub shoulders with members of further-right extremist and fascist groups. Jacob Rees-Mogg was guest speaker in 2013 (pictured below, with TBG founder Gregory Lauder-Frost) despite being warned by Searchlight about what TBG was. He later said this had been a mistake.
Other speakers this year will include Dr Niall McCrae, a climate change denying fanatic, and Professor Ed Dutton, aka The Jolly Heretic, who has written books on racial differences, ‘woke eugenics’ and feminism. In the latter he equated feminists to modern witches. Attendees will be disappointed, though, to learn that Harald Kujat, an 82-year-old who served in Luftwaffe and was from 2002-2005 chairman of NATO Military Committee, has had to pull out through ill-health. He is another pro-Putin propagandist.