Monthly Briefing: Patriotic Alternative protest in Warwick

In brief

• Patriotic Alternative held a protest in Warwick, attracting around 100 fascists including masked members of Aryan Front.
• Activists from across the far-right have endorsed Reform Britain, a political party led by Great Yarmouth MP Rupert Lowe.
• Tommy Robinson has left Britain for the USA. His supporters have again been asked to donate him money, while he continues to lead a lavish lifestyle.
• Britain First held a ‘March for Remigration’ in Manchester, which was disrupted and rerouted by larger crowds of anti-fascists.
• "Britian's strictest headteacher" Katherine Birbalsingh has appeared on two far right podcasts, we covered the story exclusively here.

Patriotic Alternative

On 7 February, Patriotic Alternative (PA) held a protest in Warwick calling for ‘remigration’, unusual in being announced in advance. The event brought about 100 fascists from across the country. Those present included members of the British Movement and new groupuscule Aryan Front, the ever-present and seig-heiling Ryan Ferguson and Tony Martin, leader of the atrophying National Front (NF). The speakers included PA leader Mark Collett, deputy leader Laura Towler, Steve Laws, Ian Holloway and Hugh Anthony. Holloway was one of the few local attendees. The protest was countered by several hundred anti-fascists. 

Having previously endorsed tactical voting for Reform UK, and encouraged a strategy of entryism to drag the party further to the right, Collett has been effusive in recent weeks in his support for Rupert Lowe MP (formerly of Reform) and his new party Restore Britain. For Collett, Lowe is “undoubtedly the greatest post-war MP and would make a wonderful prime minister”. While acknowledging that Reform, Restore and Ben Habib’s Advance UK will likely split the nationalist vote, Collett has argued that anyone who wants to campaign for remigration is going to back Lowe. Restore has also attracted the support of X owner Elon Musk, who posted, “It will win. It must win. To Save Britain.”

After Warwick, PA have announced they will hold another demonstration in Nuneaton on 28 March. Promotional material for the demonstration includes the logo of Steve Law’s Remigration Now project, cementing Law’s alignment with PA since his split with Homeland. 

On his Patriotic Weekly Review livestream, Collett has hosted white supremacist content creator and host of Red Ice TV Henrik Palmgren, fascist YouTuber Hugh Anthony, American neo-nazi Warren Balogh and architect of the alt right Kevin DeAnna. Collett also released a retrospective on the Warwick demonstration with Steve Laws and Laura Towler and discussion of Restore Britain.

Homeland

The Homeland Party’s activity remains minimal as it continues to reel from last summer’s split, with many of its most active members leaving, whether for Steve Law’s new initiative Remigration Now or lately Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain.

The party opened the month posting a picture outside Warwick Combined Court in response to the trial of two Afghan men for the abduction and rape of a child. On 9 February, activists including party chairman Kenny Smith put posters up on the London Underground to “mark the 40th anniversary of Poems on the Underground”. The posters were to “replace woke ideology” and carried messages that “spoke to our people”. On 13 June, members of Homeland from the North Yorkshire branch met up to “discuss the current political landscape”. Homeland activists have conducted litter picks in East Yorkshire, Aberdeen and in the town of Arrochar in the west of Scotland.

Kenny Smith posted that the party had “launched its new officers portal and a host of new officers have been appointed”. This included a Regional Organiser and according to Smith, two of said officers are “ex BNP and UKIP councillors”. On the same day, the party posted about a “remigration conference” which will be hosted by the Norway Democrats on 13 June 2026. The Norway Democrats hosted Smith at the previous conference last year. On their social media outlets, Homeland have trailed a new remigration policy to be announced at the start of March.

Tommy Robinson

Bedfordshire Police have warned Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (known as Tommy Robinson) after his name appeared in an Islamic State aligned magazine. Yaxley-Lennon released audio on X of an officer from Bedfordshire Police in which Yaxley-Leenon was warned that a call to commit violence against him had been published in Yalghar, a publication of Islamic State Khorasan Province. The officer reminded Yaxley-Lennon that “because of this information it doesn’t authorise you to carry weapons [or] take any pre-emptive action against others.” After Yaxley Lennon requested a copy of the magazine the officer said that the content was likely proscribed under the Terrorism Act. A spokesperson for Bedfordshire Police confirmed the call as genuine and stated that “he was provided with safeguarding advice and support in line with our standard procedures.”

Yaxley-Lennon has wasted no time in raising money from the incident. On 13 February he posted: “I have now left the country, I need time to work things out for my safety and the safety of my family. I will probably have to relocate them. I will update you when I can.” In the days after, subscribers to Urban Scoop’s mailing list received three separate donation appeals. One email, sent on 17 February, begins: “We all need to protect Tommy and his precious family right now. After checking our records, it seems you haven't had the chance yet to help Tommy and his family.” Despite recently claiming an inability to pay legal costs to schoolboy Jamal Hijazi due to bankruptcy, Yaxley-Lennon leads a lavish lifestyle. He has frequently travelled abroad for holidays and wears expensive designer clothing. Yaxley-Lennon’s son has posted clips of lavish Miami accommodation for him and his father, as well as poses with private jets and limousines. 

Yaxley-Lennon has drawn headlines during a tour of the USA after visiting the State Department as the guest of Joe Rittenhouse, a senior adviser to the Consular Affairs bureau. The State Department told the BBC that Yaxley-Lennon’s visit was “in an unofficial capacity.” Over a number of years Yaxley-Lennon has developed strong ties to figures in the Trump administration and with activists in Christian nationalist, zionist and far right movements. On 26 February he posted that the trip was about “making alliances and friendships.” He has conducted interviews with Jordan Peterson, reactionary YouTuber Tim Pool, conspiracy theorist and former general Mike Flynn, founder of Rebel Media and long time ally Ezra Levant, as well as producing on the street vox pop videos and vlogs. In 2025 Yaxley-Lennon met with Israeli diaspora minister Amichai Chikli on a similar trip.

Yaxley-Lennon has appeared in the latest release of the Epstein files. In an exchange with Trump ally Steve Bannon he was described, derisively, as “cheap @ any price.” In an article for the Jerusalem Post, which showed signs of AI generated text, Yaxley-Lennon denied communicating with Epstein and downplayed Epstein’s ties with Israeli intelligence services. 

Britain First

On 21 February, Britain First (BF) held their ‘March for Remigration’ in Manchester. Although BF attracted the best part of a thousand people (including a phalanx of live streamers), their plans were disrupted by larger crowds of anti-fascists with many BF supporters failing to reach the main protest or peeling off before it had reached its destination. A coalition of anti-fascist groups had met under the banner of ‘Resist Britain First’ and managed to delay and reroute the BF march. Others assembled at the Stand Up To Racism (SUTR) protest at Piccadilly Gardens. Leader Paul Golding blamed “extreme police sabotage” for their disappointing day out.

Earlier in March, BF held two protests in the West Midlands, outside a purported sharia court in Nuneaton and outside a Holiday Inn hotel in Tamworth that is housing asylum seekers; both times, the protestors only numbered around a dozen. BF supporters also joined a hotel protest in Bridgwater, Somerset.

UKIP

The UK Independence Party (UKIP) held a ‘Christian’ march through Ward End in Birmingham, processing with wooden crucifixes and swinging incense. There were fewer than 50 protestors and they were outnumbered by anti-racists, including members of local Christian and interfaith groups.

Around three times as many UKIP supporters attended their rally in Hull on 28 February, though they were again outnumbered by the opposition.

Elsewhere

In the Gorton and Denton byelection in Greater Manchester, right-wing party Reform came second with 29%, an increase of 15% on their previous showing, but significantly less than the Green Party’s 41%. The only party further to the right, Advance UK, received 0.4% of the vote share, or 154 votes.

On 14 February far-right protestors, gathered under the banner of ‘Poole and Bournemouth Patriots’, protested outside the Royal National Lifeboat Institution's (RNLI) headquarters in Poole, Dorset, accusing the RNLI of providing a ‘taxi service’ for channel migrants. About 50 protestors were opposed by a counter-protest numbering 130 people.

The following day, around 30 members of Bristol Patriots attacked an anti-fascist fundraiser gig in Easton. Wearing masks and balaclavas to conceal their identities, and some carrying weapons, they attacked anti-fascists on the street and attempted to force their way into the venue. They were repelled by occupants of the pub and locals; police also arrived on the scene and intervened. This isn’t the group’s first attempt to intimidate their politcal opponents; in December they attempted to attack another fundraiser gig in the city centre and in January confronted a march in support of imprisoned hunger strikers in South Gloucestershire.

In Manchester, known far-right activists including ‘auditor’ Chris Wellington aka English Ned, as well as Iranians in favour of regime change, attempted to gain entry to a Stop the War Coalition meeting.

A man who converted blank-firing pistols into live guns and sold them to criminals while stockpiling weapons for a ‘race war’ has been jailed. Thomas McKenna, whose personal collection of weapons included homemade grenades, had sent anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant messages, writing to one contact, “We just kill them all”.

Nicholas Gilpin, a 23-year-old from Buckinghamshire, has been jailed for terrorism offences. Counter Terrorism police found documents on his electronic devices with instructions for how to kill with close-combat weapons and how to make firearms, explosives and chemical weapons, alongside racist and antisemitic texts.

A 16-year-old boy from Northumberland has been found guilty of belonging to the banned neo-Nazi organisation The Base, as well as possessing and sharing terrorist publications. A police raid of his house uncovered a range of weapons and Nazi paraphernalia. 

International

In Lyon, France, a stronghold of the far-right, activist Quentin Deranque died in hospital after a group he was part of fought with anti-fascists. Far-right activists had amassed to oppose a scheduled talk by Rima Hassan, a French-Palestinian MP of the left-wing party La France Insoumise (LFI) and a frequent target of the French right. ‘Feminist identitarian’ group Collectif Némésis have claimed that Deranque was providing security for their counter-protest, and the far-right have tried to disseminate the idea that he was an innocent attacked by a mob of anti-fascists. This claim has been complicated by the emergence of video footage showing Deranque as part of a fascist group, armed, masked and dressed in black, approaching and confronting a similar-sized group of anti-fascists.

On 21 February around 3000 people marched in Lyon to commemorate Deranque. The rally was organised by Aliette Espieux, a supporter of Rassemblement National (RN) and wife of violent neo-Nazi Eliot Bertin. Calls have come from the political centre to the far-right for the criminalisation of anti-fascist networks, in France and further afield. We hope to soon share more in depth analysis of the situation.

A court in Cologne, Germany, has passed an injunction preventing the country's domestic intelligence service from referring to the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party as a "right-wing extremist" group, a classification that had been announced last May. The initial judgement announced that “the ethnicity- and ancestry-based understanding of the people prevailing within the party is incompatible with the free democratic order”, and the designation granted the state enhanced surveillance powers. The court has not announced when its final ruling will be released.

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