On the anniversary of Nazi David Copeland’s third and most deadly nailbomb attack on London in 1999, we remember his victims; those who died in the Admiral Duncan pub in Soho and the many more injured there, and in Brick Lane and Brixton.

You can download Searchlight’s special investigation, published after his trial and conviction, here: https://we.tl/t-MAMfFhmh2A

And you can watch the BBC Panorama investigation, confronting the men who inspired Copeland to do what he did, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhf-NwlIVtc

     Photo: Alec Cave alias Wesley Russell

When Searchlight broke the news of a split in PA, some analysts saw it as “content creators” (staying with Collett and Towler) against “serious political activists” (defecting to Kenny Smith’s new Homeland Party).

Smith himself contributed to this impression, criticising Collett’s over-emphasis on the minor celebrities of online gaming and streaming.

Yet on April 29th one of PA’s leading young stars, Alec Cave (usually known under the alias Wesley Russell) became the latest defector to Homeland. Russell had been heavily promoted by Collett since summer 2021 and gave his first public speech at that year’s PA conference in the Lake District. Yet for some reason he has now lost faith with the leadership.

In his grandiose resignation statement, Russell wrote: “I am publicly announcing that I have stepped away and will no longer work with Patriotic Alternative.

“I no longer have faith that it is the vehicle to drive the serious change we need in this country to save our people.

“Frankly I am disgusted by the behaviour of the PA leadership over the past week. Specifically, but not limited to, in regard to the unrelenting untruths propagated by them to save the face of their now doomed organisation.

“The smearing of decent and hardworking people who I have known for years is unforgivable. The sheer amount of officers and dedicated activists, who were the backbone of the organisation, that have left PA cannot be understated.

“The damage which has happened within the organisation and the direction the leadership will take it means it simply cannot return to a healthy state with longevity; it is unsalvageable.

“I have no ill will to those who remain in PA but I encourage everyone not to stay oblivious as to what has happened. The PA leadership damage control and spin can only cover up the gaping holes for so long.

“I am not stepping away from Nationalism, far from it, and I will continue to play my part for years well into the future.”

He added: “I am pleased to announce that I will be joining Homeland Party.

“Homeland will not be a brand for an internet safe space nor a glorified social club. It intends to be a serious political force which can mobilise communities and give our people their voice back in the political arena.

“Homeland already has dozens upon dozens of the country’s most hard working activists onboard.

“If you want to be a part of a proactive movement which will bring about real change then join Homeland.”

Some of the worst “smears” against Smith and Homeland have been issued by his old enemy Nick Griffin and spread around the darker corners of the internet by a faction that split from PA two years ago. This earlier gang of dissidents included those who objected on “moral” grounds to Collett’s failure to act against self-styled alt-right intellectual Colin Robertson (alias Millennial Woes) following serious allegations of sexual harassment, some of which occurred at PA events.

Photo: David Hyden, so-called Independent candidate for Cannock South, on the campaign trail with fellow ex Patriotic Alternative activist, Connor Marlow, one of the leaders of the Homeland Party split.

British fascists remain confused and divided in their approach to electoral politics, even allowing for the large proportion who have always preferred bombs to ballots. But, as ever, there is a sprinkling of Nazis, fascists and far right activists to be found seeking the votes of the electorate.

The British National Party elected dozens of councillors and two MEPs in the millennium’s first decade but hasn’t fought a serious election campaign for years. No one was surprised to see that there were no BNP candidates in this year’s elections.

One party, or rather cash cow, which is running, is Britain First, whose leader Paul Golding learned the art of fleecing racists from former BNP fundraiser Jim Dowson. At least Britain First gives its donors something (though not much) for their money. In the run-up to these elections Golding promised dozens of candidates, but delivered only seven. Their big effort will again be in Salford, where Golding’s partner and party chairman Ashlea Simon is standing again in Walkden North, having taken 21.6% last year.

Paul Golding himself is standing in Dartford, alongside former BNP candidate Nick Scanlon who stood in Greenwich last year. Britain First claims to be ‘non-racist’ but has attracted an assortment of hardened extremists who have bounced around other failed factions and splinters on the far right. Scanlon was one of the leaders of a failed attempt to set up a British version of the European group

Generation Identity. Such affiliations cause no difficulties within BF, who are happy to preach ‘anti-

racism’ on their website while recruiting hardcore nazis such as veteran Chelsea football hooligan Andy Frain (aka ‘Nightmare’) who is paid to act as minder for Golding and Simon. BF has two elderly candidates in Bideford, Devon, but the remainder are isolated activists in New Milton (Hampshire), Hockley (Essex), and Altrincham (near Manchester).

Patriotic Alternative, which has eschewed electoral politics, has recently suffered a split with the breakaway Homeland Party eager to get out on the election trail again. One of their number, David Hyden, is running as an independent in Cannock South, Cannock Chase. But for the time being, they will largely have to be content with offering support to election candidates from other sectors of the fascist scene including some, but not all, candidates for the British Democratic Party.

This year’s main BDP campaigns are again for Jim Lewthwaite in Bradford and Julian Leppert in Waltham Abbey (Epping Forest). Leppert is aiming to be re-elected in the seat he won as a For Britain Movement candidate in 2019. For Britain was an Islamophobic party founded by the former UKIP leadership candidate Anne Marie Waters in 2017, backed by a handful of former BNP activists including Leppert, Eddy Butler, and former BNP filmmaker Tony Avery.

As well as Lewthwaite and Leppert, the other three BDP candidates this year all have BNP backgrounds. Chris Bateman, already a parish councillor, is standing in Basildon. Dave Haslett is fighting Saffron ward, Leicester. And Steve Smith, well known to Searchlight readers from his role alongside Butler in the notorious East End BNP during the 1990s, is standing (or more likely staggering) in Kursaal ward, Southend.

The once mighty National Front is now moribund, though it can boast that despite everything it just about outlived the BNP. This year there is just one NF candidate, Tim Knowles in the old Derbyshire pit village of Codnor (Amber Valley). That puts the NF on a par with micro-parties such as Patria, founded by ex-BNP organiser Dr Andrew Emerson, who is standing once again in Chichester, defying assumptions that he had given up politics following a string of feeble results.

The newest far-right outfit is the National Housing Party, which seems to be pitching for Tommy Robinson’s supposedly non-racist, EDL Islamophobes, though it also has ex-BNP activists on board such as Paul Rimmer in Liverpool and Gary Bergin in Birkenhead. The NHP has just three candidates this year, including its highest profile leader John Lawrence in Hollinwood (Oldham), Gary Bergin in Wirral, and Callum Leat in the Gloucestershire village of Dodington. NHP is typical of the confused kaleidoscope of Britain’s far right in 2023. Bergin and Rimmer found their way to the party via Waters’ For Britain Movement and the English Democrats (both claiming to be non-racist) despite their BNP roots.

For a short while about a decade ago, BNP dissidents including Eddy Butler had a brief sojourn in the English Democrats, tolerated by the EDs’ founder and funder, Essex solicitor Robin Tilbrook. That faction either moved on to the For Britain Movement (and subsequently other small parties) or quit. So Tilbrook is left with just a few true believers in his campaign for an English Parliament. There are only five ED candidates this year, including Robin Tilbrook himself and the perennial Bury candidates, husband and wife Steve and Val Morris. Two former ED candidates in Barnsley have defected to the smaller but more conspiracy-minded English Constitution Party.

Tilbrook had hoped to benefit from the collapse of UKIP, but the EDs seem well down the pecking order among pro-Brexit parties and splinters. By far the largest successor to UKIP is Reform UK, supported by Nigel Farage and some of his colleagues at the right-wing broadcaster GB News. They have 480 candidates this year including a full slate in Derby, where they had six seats on the outgoing council. Reform UK has recently recruited a few defectors from Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party, including several councillors in Amber Valley, another Derbyshire borough council.

Conspiracy theories (including anti-vaccination paranoia) are rife in UKIP-style politics, where some of the wilder anti-vaxxers find Reform UK leader Richard Tice too moderate. Some have opted instead for the more hardline ‘freedom’ campaigners in the Heritage Party (who have 65 candidates this year) and the Alliance for Democracy and Freedom (23 candidates this year). The ADF’s three Oldham candidates are all in Royton, where the party’s registered office is located. They include a former BNP activist, octogenarian Royton builder, Colin Burrows.

UKIP itself, now led by the very right-wing ex-Tory minister Neil Hamilton, has been reduced to just 48 candidates nationwide this year. It seems to have just one serious functioning branch, in the Bexhill-on-Sea area covered by Rother District Council, which accounts for ten of these candidates.

Although there is a wide range of far-right options for ageing fascists, one or two have chosen to go it alone. Former BNP County councillor Graham Partner, who was courted by the British Democrats, is instead standing as an independent in Coalville, Leicestershire.

Remembering Blair Peach 

On this day we remember Blair Peach, a teacher who was taking part in an Anti-Nazi League demonstration against a National Front election Meeting in the Town Hall in Southall, West London in 1979. Blair Peach was hit on the head and died later that day in hospital. The police investigation concluded that Blair Peach had been hit by one of six SPG (Special Patrol Group) officers.

No-one has been prosecuted for his murder despite years of campaigning.

Our thoughts are with Blair’s partner at the time of his death , Celia Stubbs.

Beleagured PA leader Mark Collett

The Patriotic Alternative split, revealed by Searchlight on Thursday, has hardened within the last 48 hours.

Last weekend seven regional organisers wrote to PA’s egotistical leader Mark Collett and his deputy Laura Tyrie (alias Laura Towler), supporting criticisms by their national admin officer Kenny Smith.

After failed attempts to mediate between the two factions with online conference calls on Monday and Tuesday, six of those seven have now resigned to join Smith in creating a new organisation, the Homeland Party. They aim to register with the Electoral Commission, something that Collett and Tyrie have persistently failed to achieve.

Smith claims the support of 32 PA officers (almost 60% of those who hold organising roles in the movement). He states that several regional PA bank accounts will be retained by the new Homeland Party rather than returned to PA, and that the same applies to a bank account which he ran for PA Services, as well as his own mail order business Claymore Books. Collett will remember that in 2008 his ex-leader Nick Griffin bankrupted himself in a failed legal action against Kenny Smith and others after a similar dispute over whether certain property belonged to the party or to Smith and his friends.

Collett’s many enemies inside and outside PA are sharpening their knives. Even Nick Griffin is having a good laugh at his former protege’s expense. Rival parties including the military-style National Support Detachment recently formed by Leeds PA rebel Alek Yerbury, and the British Democrats led by ex-BNP councillor James Lewthwaite, barrister Adrian Davies, and ex-MEP Andrew Brons, are hoping to pick up disillusioned PA members who reject both sides of the latest split.

The Homeland Party faction argue that the Collett-Tyrie leadership has not made sufficient progress towards turning PA into a serious political movement, rather than an online personality cult and business network, although Kenny Smith’s own fiancée Claire Ellis herself runs one of the best promoted of PA-linked businesses, Clean and Pure Soap, from their home on the Isle of Skye.

At first Smith seemed to have the backing of Steve Blake, Eastern England regional organiser, but in an online broadcast on Thursday night Blake endorsed Collett.

Searchlight has heard from some within the British nazi network who suspect that Blake might secretly still sympathise with his old friend Smith. At the end of 2007 Blake and Smith were two of the leaders of a BNP faction that attacked Collett as part of their split from Nick Griffin’s BNP. Some far-right veterans have not forgotten that this split led to leaking of the BNP membership list by one of Blake and Smith’s faction, and they fear similar “dirty tricks”.

Blake is one of the three directors of Patriotic Alternative Ltd, alongside Collett and Towler. One of the rebels’ main criticisms of PA is that opaque links between this limited company and the broader organisation have led to the Electoral Commission blocking PA’s registration as a party.

In the long tradition of nazi chicanery, these “comrades” don’t trust each other either to control finances, have access to databases of members’ addresses, or control appointments of branch and regional organisers.

The main rebels who have joined Smith and Ellis in forming the Homeland Party are:

Derbyshire-based Anthony Burrows, regarded as an expert on cybersecurity and Regional Organiser for East Midlands;

Connor Marlow, Regional Organiser for West Midlands;

Simon Crane, Regional Organiser for Scotland;

Jerome O’Reilly, a Cardiff-based graduate of Bath University and Regional Organiser for Wales;

Fraser Patterson, Regional Organiser for South West England;

Laurence Parsons, Regional Organiser for South East England.

So far, Collett seems to have kept the loyalty of his home region Yorkshire (where the RO is Tyrie’s husband Sam Melia), North East England, and London. Regardless of his own questionable loyalties, a large part of Blake’s Eastern England region supports the rebels, and North West England is also believed to be badly split.