On Saturday May 10, 2025, the Traditional Britain Group will host a luncheon in London to replace its annual black-tie dinner. A veneer of cultural refinement will be retained but we may rest assured that the hard-right ideology has not changed. Searchlight previews the event and looks at the background of this far-right organisation
What is the Traditional Britain Group?
The Traditional Britain Group (TBG) was founded in 2001 by Merlin Hanbury-Tracy, the 7th Baron Sudeley, in collaboration with Gregory Lauder-Frost, a former officer of the Conservative Monday Club. The group emerged from earlier, now-defunct far-right and traditionalist networks that had attempted to exert influence on the fringes of British conservatism.
TBG positions itself as a defender of “traditional British values,” promoting monarchism, Christianity, and rigid social hierarchies.
While it couches its language in cultural preservation, its underlying rhetoric consistently targets immigration, liberalism, and egalitarianism
It has become a haven for reactionary thinkers, disillusioned conservatives, and proponents of ethnonationalist ideologies. While it couches its language in cultural preservation, its underlying rhetoric consistently targets immigration, liberalism, and egalitarianism.
Key figures in TBG history
- Gregory Lauder-Frost: Co-founder of TBG and its former Vice President. Once Foreign Affairs spokesman for the Conservative Monday Club, Lauder-Frost has long advocated for anti-immigration policies and has expressed admiration for pre-modern European societies. He remains a visible ideological architect of the group.
- Lord Sudeley (Merlin Hanbury-Tracy): The group’s original president until his death in 2022. A hereditary peer and published monarchist theorist, Lord Sudeley gave TBG an aristocratic gloss and helped forge its image as a “respectable” conservative club.
- Sam Swerling: A former Conservative councillor who has written and spoken at TBG events on Britain’s supposed moral and cultural decline. He has been a recurring voice defending traditionalist, anti-liberal views and railing against modern democratic norms. Now deceased.
- John Kersey: Now Vice-President of TBG, Kersey serves as the group’s public intellectual. A former musicologist turned educational theorist, Kersey brings a scholarly tone to reactionary themes, with writings that blend Christian traditionalism, critiques of democracy, and opposition to multiculturalism.
The TBG continues to operate through invitation-only luncheons/dinners and conferences in addition to maintaining a strong online presence on various social media platforms.
It retains transnational links to European New Right and Christian nationalist movements.
Secrecy, elitism, and the far right’s academic mask
The 2025 luncheon’s venue remains undisclosed, part of a deliberate strategy to shield the group from scrutiny and protest.
However, the venue appears to be a hotel in the West End close to major underground stations, one that has not previously been used by the group.
Professor John Kersey, a long-standing TBG figure and ideologue of reactionary conservatism, will serve as the keynote speaker.
Who is John Kersey?
John Kersey is emblematic of the modern far-right’s intellectual rebranding. A former musicologist and self-described educational reformer, Kersey operates at the nexus of traditionalist philosophy, pseudo-academia, and Christian orthodoxy.
As Vice-President of the Traditional Britain Group, he has become one of its most public faces — positioning himself as a defender of “Western civilization” while disseminating material that calls for a return to pre-modern hierarchies and ethno-cultural boundaries.
Kersey’s output often reflects the tropes of the European New Right: anti-modernism, a rejection of egalitarian values, and advocacy for parallel educational and social systems to insulate the “traditionalist” minority from progressive society.
He has spoken admiringly of historical monarchies and critiqued democracy as a failed experiment.
Kersey operates at the nexus of traditionalist philosophy, pseudo-academia, and Christian orthodoxy
Beyond the TBG, Kersey has contributed to far-right publications and has appeared alongside figures linked to identitarianism, ethnonationalism, and metapolitical strategy.
His scholarly tone masks a fundamentally exclusionary ideology, one that resonates with TBG’s broader project of rehabilitating reactionary politics under the guise of cultural sophistication.
The quiet voice of TBG
In the network of Britain’s far-right pressure groups, the spotlight often falls on charismatic figureheads and fiery ideologues. Yet, behind every “traditionalist” conference or event, there are the quieter operatives who manage the machinery of the movement. Edward Littlewood is one such figure.
Littlewood has served as a communications representative for the Traditional Britain Group (TBG). Though less publicly visible than the group’s founder Gregory Lauder-Frost, Littlewood has played a key role in shaping the group’s tone and public outreach.
His name is frequently attached to formal invitations, email campaigns, and digital communications that aim to polish TBG’s image for its followers—often portraying it as a genteel, intellectual club rather than the extremist platform it so frequently reveals itself to be.
Educated and articulate, Littlewood’s written communications project a veneer of civility, intended to make the group’s hardline ideology more palatable to a broader conservative audience. Invitations to events featuring speakers like Hungarian authoritarian sympathizers or apologists for the European far right have all passed through his pen.
Prestigious venues
That these events often occur in prestigious venues— sometimes complete with black-tie dress codes—should not distract from the nature of the discourse fostered within.
Though Littlewood maintains a low personal profile, rarely giving interviews or engaging publicly, his presence is felt in the group’s strategic decisions. His emails have defended controversial speakers and attacked what he terms the “cultural left,” framing TBG’s work as a necessary pushback against “multicultural subversion.”
In keeping with the Traditional Britain Group’s methods, Littlewood walks a careful line between overt extremism and respectability politics
He has also echoed Lauder-Frost’s positions on immigration and national identity, framing these within a “heritage” narrative that masks their exclusionary content.
In keeping with the Traditional Britain Group’s methods, Littlewood walks a careful line between overt extremism and respectability politics. But we would do well to keep an eye on such background figures.
History teaches us that the ones who organize, coordinate, and quietly disseminate ideology are often more consequential than those who shout the loudest.
Elite ambience, secret locations
As in previous years, TBG has refused to disclose the venue for its 2025 luncheon. This secrecy, ostensibly to protect attendees from harassment, is more accurately a measure to prevent exposure.
2025 Luncheon
Details: Saturday, May 10th in the West End
Timing: 1:00 for 1:30 p.m.
Ticket Price: £60 per head including a three course meal, a drink upon arrival and half a bottle of wine per person
Dress: Smart Casual
Please note: our usual attendee notification will be sent out first thing on Saturday morning now, due to some dirty tricks experienced recently by the far-Left. For those of good standing needing to know earlier: please contact us.
The group has faced repeated protests, venue cancellations, and damaging press revelations in recent years, prompting it to tighten control over communications and logistics.
Recent venue patterns reveal a clear trend: TBG favours prestigious hotels and clubs in central London, often booking under innocuous aliases or through intermediaries. Among the most notable:
- In 2023, TBG’s annual conference took place at the London Marriott Hotel Regents Park
- In 2022, the Thistle Marble Arch Hotel (now Amba) hosted a TBG event
- Other past venues include the East India Club, Army & Navy Club, and Royal Overseas League
- The 2024 annual conference was held at St Ermin’s hotel, Westminster, owned by the Marriott Group
The group’s 2024 Christmas dinner in Mayfair was disrupted after antifascist researchers identified the venue in advance. Activists staged a peaceful blockade, preventing entry and ultimately forcing the event’s cancellation.
Since then, venue details have been withheld until the final 24 hours, often communicated via encrypted email to pre-approved attendees only.
A broader strategy
While TBG presents itself as a conservative cultural salon, its real role is more insidious. It offers a platform for speakers who oppose immigration, multiculturalism, feminism, and even universal suffrage.
Its public-facing rhetoric — concern for heritage, tradition, and “Western values” — veils an ideological project aimed at eroding liberal democracy from within.
John Kersey’s appearance reinforces this mission. He provides the group with a scholarly façade, framing its regressive worldview in the language of intellectual inquiry and cultural guardianship.
Yet the underlying message is consistent: the modern liberal world is decadent, and only a return to rigid, ethnically bound hierarchy can save Britain.
Call to vigilance
The 2025 luncheon represents another effort by the far right to cloak itself in ceremony and respectability while spreading ideas of exclusion and reaction.
TBG’s continued use of prestigious venues, and its elevation of figures like Kersey, shows how deeply embedded elements of the far right remain in Britain’s social and institutional spaces.
Searchlight urges hotel chains and venue managers to vet bookings with care and uphold anti-extremism policies. As ever, we welcome confidential tips and documentation from members of the public who encounter these events or groups.
To report activity related to the Traditional Britain Group, contact Searchlight via our secure submissions channel.
