Patriotic Alternative (PA)’s regional organiser for London, Nicholas Hill, known by the online pseudonym “Cornelius”, took a convicted child sex offender to one of the fascist party’s “family friendly” hikes in Kent this October.
The party’s deputy leader Laura Melia recently described the neo-Nazi organisation as “very family-orientated” and claimed there are “a lot of women and children who attend [PA’s] events”.
James Shand, a close friend of PA’s London organiser, was jailed for 21 months in 2016 and put on the sex offenders register for ten years after admitting attempting to meet up with a girl under 16 to commit a sexual offence.
Shand previously worked for Hill’s PC Pitstop business in Cumbria. In messages posted in PA’s London region Telegram chat, Hill claims to have “converted” Shand, who is known by the online pseudonym, “DynamicBoy18”.
Shand drove Hill to a hike organised by PA’s South East regional organiser Theo Wilmot in Wateringbury, Kent on 17 October 2020. Shand brought a large remote-controlled toy car to the event.
On Twitter Shand followed PA’s leader Mark Collett prior to his ban and still follows deputy leader Laura Melia, far-right hooligans Pie and Mash Squad, and “Cornelius” (Nicholas Hill). Shand has also replied to tweets posted by Collett.
Who is Nicholas Hill?
Hill is a 50-year-old business owner, former Liberal Democrat candidate for Lewisham council and longtime resident of Catford in south London.
Hill’s early political life was dominated by mundane local politics. After having stood unsuccessfully as a Liberal Democrat council candidate in 2006, Hill campaigned to remove speed bumps and against a reduction in the number of PCSOs in Catford.
Hill’s political outlook changed after a former lodger attacked him with a meat cleaver during a psychotic episode in 2016. Hill cites this as a pivotal moment in his radicalisation and describes himself as a “first generation immigrant survivor”.
Hill briefly joined UKIP and is visible in two pictures taken at an organising meeting of UKIP’s Greenwich and Lewisham branch, shared on the group’s Facebook page in November 2018.
By mid-2019, Hill had become involved with the UK and Ireland branch of ethnonationalist youth organisation Generation Identity (GI) and was using the online pseudonym “Cornelius”. Hill is pictured at a GI conference in London during July 2019.
In October 2019, Hill attended the annual conference of the Traditional Britain Group, a far-right networking and pressure group, at the Charing Cross Hotel in central London, alongside other supporters of the incipient Patriotic Alternative.
Hill has been involved in PA since the group’s inception, having organised the group’s London Christmas social in December 2019. By early 2020, Hill and a small group of PA supporters were meeting fortnightly in south London prior to the imposition of coronavirus restrictions.
Over summer 2020 Hill began planning extensively for PA’s Indigenous People’s Day action, which ended disastrously for his London group according to one disaffected former member.
Hill owns part of three business registered in Egremont in Cumbria, including a computer repair shop. Hill’s e-commerce business is linked to the sale of drug paraphernalia (despite Hill having described substance abuse as “a manifestation of an inner weakness”).
A former director of Hill’s business runs a website selling rolling papers, grinders and smell proof bags. In 2017 Hill registered the trademark “DankProof” for this former business partner. Dank is a slang term for high quality cannabis.
Until recently Hill attended Sunday service at St John the Evangelist, an Anglican church in Bromley. He was listed as a member of the church’s board of trustees although the church told VICE he has left the position.
In addition to his activity as PA’s London organiser, Hill maintains EuropeanFreedom dot org - a website dedicated to highlighting supposedly “anti-white” statements made by Jewish politicians, academics and public figures - alongside a website that promotes Holocaust denial.
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