White Vanguard attack on Freedom bookshop sparks solidarity demonstration

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In brief

• Far right figure Tommy Robinson has been convicted of harassing 2 Daily Mail journalists. Robinson, real name Stephen Yaxley Lennon, was convicted at Southwark Crown Court of harassment causing fear of violence.
• Patriotic Alternative (PA) held their annual conference in a village in Nottinghamshire. 
• Key activists in Turning Point UK were filmed by an undercover Al Jazeera team that showed them discussing hiring loyalist paramilitaries to conduct contract killings for them. 
• Far right “auditor” Anthony Barnes (AY audits) was detained in France after a confrontation he initiated with migrants in Calais. 
• Freedom, a left wing anarchist bookshop in East London, was picketed by White Vanguard, a neo Nazi youth group. 

Podcast

For those who are involved in anti-fascism there is often a feeling of always being on the defensive. One moment you are blocking a far right demonstration, the next you are defending an accommodation for refugees. The pattern is a familiar one: the far right announces a demonstration, organises a mass picket or, increasingly in recent years, breaks out in a riot. The left then responds with a counter demonstration, unity rally or some other kind of action. Always responding to the far right creates the feeling of always being on the back foot. 

In the coming months we’re going to host more episodes like this, interviewing organisers of projects addressing the social conditions that give fuel to the far right, as well as broader community building campaigns. 

For this episode of the RF podcast Alex is joined by Al and Louise of the Brighton Says Yes campaign to discuss the campaign to keep refugees in Brighton. They discuss the detailed plan the campaign has written to accommodate refugees in the community, the need to force a new relationship between anti-racist and anti-fascist movements, why an increasingly repressive government shouldn’t block organising and more. 

White Vanguard

On Saturday 31 October the neo-nazi youth group White Vanguard staged a brief picket outside Freedom, an anarchist bookshop in East London. Fifteen black clad men wearing balaclavas exited from a nearby underground station, and walked to the alley down which Freedom is located. Outside the shop WV leader Dylan Young delivered a speech and at least two members of the group performed nazi salutes. The group were there for no more than ten minutes and quickly went back to the same underground station from which they had emerged. The speech later appeared on Eagle Media 88, a WV associated account on X, spliced up with footage of the riots in France, screenshots from Freedom’s new site and clips of the group walking around London. 

White Vanguard’s action was certainly designed to intimidate. In his speech, Young said the group stood against the “anarchist, communist, Jews and zionists”, claimed that Freedom was planning on organising riots like the ones that are happening in France and said the shop was “anti-west’ and ‘anti-white.” Beyond the words, that the gang was masked and at least outwardly aggressive is clearly threatening. Although it seemed like the group had solely intended to record a speech and leave, the group did try to intimidate passersby before making their escape.

In previous newsletters we have discussed the breakdown of distinctions between the mainstream right, far right and fascist right. This remains true, although WV shows there are some limits. The group’s extreme neo-nazi politics means it can make few alliances, the most prominent of these being Mark Collett’s Patriotic Alternative. In 2024 Red Flare exposed WV’s first leader, Kai Cunningham, as a member of Reform who had spoken at East London Reform branch meetings. Cunningham was quickly ejected from the party after it emerged that he had called for a national socialist government on an Instagram livestream. Nationally the group remains small, especially compared to the Patriot Platform network or far right political parties like Restore.

It is in their rhetoric and style of action where you can draw clear comparisons with proscribed terror group National Action. Like NA, White Vanguard cultivate an aggressive image, are explicit in their fascist politics and cultivate close bonds within the group. They also have displayed some of NA’s tendency for internal strife. Cunningham, the first leader of the group, was ejected from leadership in September following suspicions he was a police informant. In the end, NA was proscribed for pushing the rhetoric too far - when they celebrated the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox by tweeting "only 649 MPs to go!" White Vanguard will have to be careful not to go the same way.

How should the left respond to these kinds of actions? Far right attacks on the left have been rare, but are increasing. In the 1990s Freedom was attacked two times by the far right and has suffered two arson attacks suspected to have been carried out by the far right. In 2018 far-right activist Vinnie Sullivan was chased away from Bookmarks, a socialist bookshop. Stand Up to Racism stalls and meetings have been targeted by UKIP and Turning Point UK.

One response is political. On Saturday 7 November 100 people gathered for a solidarity demonstration in Altab Ali park, named after a Bangladeshi textile worker who was murdered by the far right in 1978. Another response is to investigate and expose White Vanguard members, many of whom remain anonymous. The group remains small nationally and there is still a price to pay for membership of an explicitly neo-nazi organisation.

Elsewhere

Steven Yaxley-Lennon (known as Tommy Robinson) has been convicted of harassing two Daily Mail journalists. In August 2024, the Daily Mail and Mail Online had published photos of Yaxley-Lennon on holiday in Cyprus, accusing him of "stoking race riots from his sunbed". He responded with a series of posts on X targeting the journalists, publishing photos of them outside their houses, and on a phone call to Jacob Dirnhuber told him “I am coming to get you”. Yaxley-Lennon has been granted bail until his sentencing on 16 December. Harassment causing fear of violence can carry a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, or more if racially or religiously aggravated.

Jack Ross, CEO of Turning Point UK (TPUK), a former Conservative election candidate and a consultant in party leader Kemi Badenoch’s office as recently as last year, was caught on camera discussing the cost of hiring contract killers. Ross told an undercover reporter: “They can just kick the fuck out of someone. That’s a certain amount. They can start cutting people’s faces up, that’s another amount. And they can stab someone. They can shoot someone. They can kill someone.” Al Jazeera reported that Ross introduced their reporter to a violent criminal from Glasgow with links to the paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force. In 2024 Red Flare’s report on TPUK documented members’ involvement in far-right street violence and showed members of the group’s Direct Action Team (of which Ross was a member) offering to sell each other weapons. When approached at the time by Novara Media, the Conservative Party refused to comment, though Badenoch has described the new revelations as “shocking”.

Patriotic Alternative (PA) held their annual conference in a village hall in Nottinghamshire. Speaking alongside the PA regulars were Canadian podcaster Jeremy MacKenzie and Stefan Rutland - longstanding PA activist and host of the now-defunct neo-Nazi podcast The Absolute State of Britain, still referred to in PA’s report by the pseudonym Yuro.

On 22 October, around 20 masked far-right activists tried to force their way into a Socialist Workers Party (SWP) meeting in Glasgow. They were prevented from entering and eventually gave up. The next day, over 100 men representing the group Alba Defensor (Defend Scotland) assembled in formation for a silent protest outside Edinburgh Castle, echoing similar demonstrations outside the Scottish Parliament, and in Glasgow outside the Cathedral and the Daily Record offices.

Ashlea Simon, formerly of Britain First and now leader of All for England, has been arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to commit criminal damage. Simon has spent months publicising properties in Greater Manchester she believes are houses in multiple occupation (HMOs) being used to target migrants, and a number of homes identified (wrongly, in some cases) as HMOs housing migrants have been vandalised. Local Manchester newspaper, The Mill stated that by the middle of October, 40 reports of criminal damage had been made (mostly in Salford), with police treating most of them as racially or religiously aggravated. A number of people have been arrested as part of the police investigation, including a 13-year-old boy, and now Ruben Brito of Prestwich has become the first person to be charged in connection with the attacks.

Thomas Moffitt (aka ‘Young Bob’) spent a lot of October and early November getting arrested by UK police, chased by French protesters and complaining about it all on social media. In early October, Moffitt was involved in various fracas around counter-protests and local kickback to Restore Britain canvassing for the Holborn and St Pancras by-election in North London. He claimed to have been arrested and in social media posts later in the month, said that police used ‘intimidation tactics’ by turning up at his family’s house to investigate his ‘reporting’. In early November, he was arrested for affray after an incident outside UCL.   

Far right “auditor” Anthony Barnes (AY audits) was detained by French Police after travelling to France to harass migrants on the 29th October. Barnes initiated a confrontation with a group of migrants by threatening them and then running away when they defended themselves. Barnes was held in French custody for 24 hours after being arrested with 4 others. He was sent to court the next day.