Patriotic Alternative, the UK’s largest neo-Nazi group, is rebranding as a “white civil rights” organisation and has raised £14,500 to “support the families” of convicted rioters. But where exactly is this money going?
Five years after its launch, Mark Collett, the leader of Patriotic Alternative (PA), announced a shift in his organisation’s direction.
Despite its early successes, the fascist group has spent years grasping for a clear purpose. PA’s repeated failure to register as a political party has left it without a meaningful metric of success, and many erstwhile supporters have lost faith in the leadership, growing frustrated with the group’s aimless activities or alienated by Collett’s titanic ego. These were decisive factors in a series of damaging splits last year, including a mass defection to the new Homeland Party in April.
PA is also reeling from the jailing of several key activists under race hate or terror-related charges, most notably Sam Melia, husband to Deputy Leader Laura Towler and the de facto third in command of the group. Melia received a two-year sentence in March 2024 for offences relating to his fascist propaganda network, the Hundred Handers, which was first exposed by HOPE not hate in August 2020.
Collett, a former spin doctor for the British National Party (BNP), has spied an opportunity in this. Downplaying Melia’s extremism and portraying him as a martyr for “free speech” has garnered considerable coverage among the wider right — and captured the attention of Elon Musk.
Notably, PA has also raised almost £68,500 to “support” Melia and Towler, as well as much smaller sums for two other members convicted of race hate offences, James Allchurch and James Costello (15% and 5% of Melia’s windfall respectively).
Arguing that electoral politics is “a waste of time, money and resources”, Collett and Towler are instead rebranding PA as a “white civil rights” group. This enables the pair to fully abandon the pursuit of party status and instead focus on their main strengths — the advancement of self-pitying narratives of white victimhood for money. “To draw an analogy”, wrote Collett in his customary understatement, the plight of “nationalists” today is “like the Vietcong going up against the might of the American military — except maybe worse.”
Whilst Collett has claimed that the group is “do[ing] something that ethno-nationalists have never done before”, he is in fact following a path well-trodden by extremists.
This includes the American white supremacist David Duke, one of Collett’s main ideological influences and most frequent online collaborators. In the 1970s, Duke rebranded the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan as a modern “white civil rights” group, adopting a “kinder, gentler” public image. Duke would eventually serve time for misdirecting Klan funds to pay for his own home improvements and gambling problem.
Similarly, Nick Griffin – Collett’s primary political mentor – resorted to marketing the BNP as a “civil rights organisation” following its crushing electoral defeat in 2010, a move that did little to slow the collapse of the group.
Notably, PA is attempting to fuel a sense of injustice among the wider right in the wake of hundreds of expedited convictions of those involved in the riots and disorder this summer. The group has raised almost £14,500, a sum it claims will be donated to the families of these “political prisoners” and victims of “two tier” policing.
So far, the sole official beneficiary of the fund is Lewis Carver, a man who hurled objects at police during the Hull riot, one of the worst in the country. Carver, who left an officer with facial injuries, is incarcerated in HMP Hull alongside Melia.
Despite promises of “full transparency”, precisely how the remaining funds will be allocated remains shrouded in mystery, a fact that has caused unease within sections of the PA membership. The only information on the campaign page itself states that “funds will be received by Laura Melia”.
One wonders whether PA will hand any cash to John Honey, a supporter of the group who has claimed that he has “been to a few PA marches”. Honey is currently serving four years and eight months for violent disorder, racially aggravated criminal damage, causing criminal damage to nine vehicles and three counts of burglary during the Hull riot. This included looting a branch of the cosmetics shop Lush and a savage group attack on three Romanian men.
PA has, so far, neglected to launch any official fundraiser for its own members and associates currently behind bars for terror-related offences. This includes Kristofer Kearney, one of PA’s best known online propagandists and the group’s erstwhile national “Fitness Officer”. Kearney, a former member of the now-banned nazi terror group National Action, received four years and eight months for sharing terror-related material in June 2023.
Likewise, the families of PA-linked Ashley Podsiad-Sharp, Alex Davies and Elliott Brown have not benefited from PA’s generosity. Unlike Melia and Costello, PA has staged no protests outside their prisons in their name.
As momentum continues to shift towards the sleeker Homeland Party, it seems unlikely that PA’s new direction will bring about the boost it so desperately needs.
For the time being, Collett has resorted to personally ringing members to boost attendance of the group’s annual conference, due to take place in the Midlands on the 19th of this month.
For more information on Patriotic Alternative, read our report: The Fascist Fringe: Patriotic Alternative and its Splinter Groups
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