Fewer than a hundred far-right activists answered Patriotic Alternative leader Mark Collett’s call for a rally for “remigration” in Warwick yesterday, despite extensive online promotion.
Even so, PA was putting a brave face on it, with their featured speakers posting later that there had been “a great turnout”.
Held in the town centre, the gathering failed to meet Collett’s apparent expectations for a considerably larger mobilization. Even photographs and footage posted by PA itself depict a sparse crowd.
Collett himself arrived at the rally resplendent in the old donkey jacket that he has worn at such public events for the past twenty years.
PA, one of several small splinter groups from the failed British National Party, were opposed by 300-400 Stand up to Racism (SUTR) activists. Given other well attended anti-fascist events in other parts of the country this was an impressive achievement.
The fascists had pulled activists in from all over the country in a failed attempt to boost their numbers to something creditable.
David Miles from Sutton Coldfield was there, as were Robert McFarlane who had travelled down from Falkirk with a cuddly companion, and Jeff Marsh and James Allchurch all the way from south Wales.
Those helping to make up the pathetic numbers included activists from the openly neo-nazi British Movement and a group of five supporters of another unashamedly nazi group, Aryan Front, a recent split from White Vanguard.
They kept their faces masked throughout the rally and at the end displayed an “Aryan Front” banner.
But Collett et al won’t be happy with the ubiquitous nazi troublemaker from Merseyside, Ryan Ferguson, who overshadowed everything by getting into a punch-up with an Asian police officer, clutching the Aryan Front banner and flinging a pretty obvious nazi salute.
Ferguson is now out of jail for sending a string of hoax 999 calls, the latest of twenty or so criminal convictions. Within minutes of his arrival, he was confronted by police and told to behave.
In addition, there was a solitary miserable looking fascist wearing a red armband with a Mosleyite “flash in the pan” symbol. This symbol was used by both the British Union of Fascists (BUF) and post war Mosleyite groups.
The man was later arrested apparently on suspicion of wearing the symbol of a proscribed terrorist organization but later released.
Tony Martin, who still claims to “lead” the tiny group that still calls itself the National Front, also turned up.
True to form, he pestered people and ranted into his web cam about them. He was duly told by a police officer to stop trying to wind up the counter-protestors and get behind police lines on his side. “I’ve dealt with you before,” the officer said.
Also addressing the faithful from Mark Collett’s rather embarrassing Screwfix step stool was Steve Laws, the prolific Kent-based racist agitator, most recently a refugee from the Homeland Party. Both he and Martin hailed “great turnout” on X.
The final speaker was online agitator Hugh Anthony, who is desperately trying to establish himself as a grown-up on the far right. Only in PA’s ranks might that even be possible.
Throughout the rally Collett behaved like a secondary school teacher taking a bunch of unruly teenagers on a school trip.
He barked orders at people and even had to step in to rescue a photojournalist who had been cornered by a group of his boys, including Steve Laws.
After the speeches, Collett decided to take them all to the railway station. However, his friends quickly became bored and he brought most of them back to the rally area, leaving Tony Martin behind.
Breakfast time endurance
Collett and his class then descended on a nearby Wetherspoons, which had already had to endure many of them at breakfast time. Ryan Ferguson for one had kicked up about the venue not allowing flags to be displayed.
Ryan was heard to say to those at his table “Searchlight, Hope not Hate are nasty persons.”
Oh, dear. Sorry if we’ve upset you, Ryan.
