Reform UK’s Staffordshire County Organiser Has Links to Fascist Group

Gregory Davis - 16 01 25

David Hyden-Milakovic, of Cannock Chase, has worked with the neo-Nazi group Patriotic Alternative and posted antisemitic videos to a TikTok account.

A screenshot of David Hyden-Milakovic’s Facebook account.

As Reform UK seeks to mature into a fully-fledged political party, Regional and County Organisers will play a key role setting up constituency branches across the country, assisting the recently appointed chairs to staff their branches and help coordinate local election runs. 

Given their importance, one might imagine that the party would seek to fill these roles with responsible and squeaky-clean activists. However, this appears not to be the case, since the party has seen fit to appoint David Hyden-Milakovic as its Staffordshire Organiser. 

Hyden-Milakovic is an antisemitic conspiracy theorist who collaborated with the neo-Nazi group Patriotic Alternative to arrange an anti-migrant protest in Cannock on 11 March 2023. Flanked by PA flags and the national leadership of the group – including Sam Melia, later handed a jail term for incitement to racial hatred – Hyden-Milakovic delivered a speech raging against immigration and the supposed control of the British government by the World Economic Forum (WEF), a common focus for conspiracy theorists. 

Hyden-Milakovic (circled) at the Cannock rally, 11 March 2023. PA members Sam Melia (far left) and James Costello (bottom centre) have since been jailed for stirring up racial hatred. Picture: HOPE not hate

Soon after, Hyden-Milakovic went leafletting with core members of PA’s West Midlands branch to advertise another protest due to take place on 30 April.

Hyden-Milakovic (second from left) hands out leaflets with members of what was then PA’s West Midlands branch, 15 April 2023

This included Connor Marlow, then PA’s Regional Organiser for the West Midlands, who has previously posted a photo in which he throws a Nazi salute in front of an England flag (see below). It also included Tom King, a former member of Generation Identity UK, a group that promoted a form of racial segregation. King has celebrated Adolf Hitler’s birthday and declared in a Telegram post that “being at war with russia is officially better than having n*ggers”. 

Just days after this leafleting session, PA’s West Midlands branch defected almost wholesale to the new Homeland Party, and the planned demonstration fell apart after the fascist contingent were informed that they were not welcome by local organisers.

Connor Marlow, West Midlands Regional Organiser for the Homeland Party. 

As revealed by the anti-fascist research group Red Flare, Hyden-Milakovic has also operated a TikTok account under his own name in which he posted a string of highly-dubious looking videos. 

The account has since been deleted, but the thumbnails and hashtags used beneath leave little doubt that the content is antisemitic in nature; one appears to have the title “Jew’s [sic] own governments” while another has hashtags including “#prophacy #war #jew”

A screenshot of David Hyden-Milakovic’s TikTok account.

Hyden-Milakovic’s own family members appear to have distanced themselves from his views, with one relative taking to Facebook to express her disavowal:

“After my family have received concerned messages and phone calls I just felt the need to make it abundantly clear. We do NOT support the behaviour and beliefs of David, including anti semitic remarks, denial of the Holocaust, racism towards any other individual fleeing their own country for their own safety or any other extreme fascist views.”

Reform’s decision to allow Hyden-Milakovic to serve as Regional Organiser, which appears to have been made in early August, suggests that the party has yet to enforce the most basic vetting procedures  – even when recruiting officials who will have responsibility for vetting others in future. 

To make matters worse, Reform UK have already been forced to drop local election candidate Paul Carnell in Staffordshire after HOPE not hate revealed that he had spoken at the same PA demo as Hyden-Milakovic, as well as spread antisemitic conspiracy theories. 

The situation is made more worrying by the fact that the leader of Patriotic Alternative, Mark Collett, has suggested that his activists should attempt to covertly join Reform and push it further right from the inside. Speaking on a livestream shortly after the election, he said:

“Nationalists now, if they want to play a role on an electoral level, the best thing they could do if they’re not face-out, is engage in some kind of entryism of the Reform Party”

– Mark Collett, Patriotic Alternative

Whether Hyden-Milakovic joining Reform was part of this effort is not clear, but recruiting men of his views to organising roles in the party will almost certainly aid fascist entryism in the future. 

For more information on PA and the Homeland Party, read our report: The Fascist Fringe: Patriotic Alternative and its Splinter Groups

The Fascist Fringe: Patriotic Alternative and its Splinter Groups

HOPE not hate takes a look inside Patriotic Alternative, the UK’s most active fascist organisation, and its splinter groups.

READ THE REPORT

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