On Saturday 1 March, roughly 250 Britain First (BF) activists gathered in Nuneaton, Warwickshire for the party’s “March for Remigration”, a last-ditch attempt at claiming support from the street movement aligned with imprisoned anti-Muslim activist, Stephen Lennon (AKA Tommy Robinson).
On Monday 3 March, 48 hours after the rally, BF’s leader Paul Golding appeared jubilant in an email to supporters, writing that Nuneaton “was a great success with a great turnout [his emphasis]”.
However, while 250 was more than BF’s two previous national events in Tamworth and Lichfield, alarm bells will be ringing that, having begun promoting the rally two and half months earlier and placed huge emphasis on it, such a small number made the trip.
In addition, Golding’s braggadocio in the run-up to the event has been his undoing, as many of the claims made via email and social media to supporters about the day did not materialise. This ought to embed scepticism from supporters towards future events.
Finally, the revelation that BF spent £18,000 on various items for the poorly attended four-hour rally will cause alarm among supporters, suggesting at the very least shocking financial mismanagement on the part of Golding and BF’s treasurer and co-leader, Ashlea Simon.
Furthermore, HOPE not hate has identified the company from which BF hired the giant TV screen used on the day. Having received an invoice for an identical enquiry to that of BF’s – Golding shared the supposed BF invoice with supporters via email – we were puzzled to have received a quote which was nearly £1,800 cheaper than that allegedly supplied to BF. Whilst BF went to supporters to fundraise £5,500 for the cost of the screen, we were quoted £3,714 for the exact same package.
The “March for Remigration” began with a procession – led by Golding and Simon – from the train station through to a nearby carpark, taking the rally directly past counter-demonstrators who made their feelings well-known throughout the event.
As usual, BF deployed the tactic of having supporters carry multiple flags during the rally. As Golding himself revealed to our undercover researcher, this is a conscious move to distort people’s perceptions of the number of protest attendees: “Two hundred could turn up. Give them flags, it looks like a thousand”, said Golding to our researcher candidly.
However, as the march reached the rally point, with the awaiting screen, stage and portaloos, it became clear that the numbers were well-down on what Golding had been hoping for, with the sparse attendees making the car park appear very empty indeed.
In contrast, the huge stage and screen set-up loomed over the crowd. And from that stage, the last hour and half of the day saw Golding, Simon and Greg Locke — a minor evangelical preacher from Tennessee — give speeches. Golding showed a pre-recorded lecture that depicted him superimposed over rolling fields, interspersed with images of the Bayeux Tapestry and the Industrial Revolution. As Golding droned on, many began to drift away.
However, as the last booming cry from Golding echoed around the increasingly empty Nuneaton car park, questions about the event began to mount up.
As with all Britain First activity, the Nuneaton “March for Remigration” presented yet another opportunity to lean heavily on supporters for financial donations.
In the first half of February alone, Britain First sent out at least 10 fundraising emails. Some of these contained invoices for security details, as well as ones for the cost of a giant screen and an event “package” consisting of a stage, fencing and toilets.
On 31 January, Golding made an initial estimate of how much his shopping list was going to set his supporters back:
The cost of hiring a huge stage, a loud sound system, an army of security officers, hundreds of feet of metal fencing, a dozen portaloos, 1,000 flags with poles, a contingent of photographers and cameramen with drones, and much, much more, is going to cost around £10,000.
Paul Golding
£10,000 is a huge sum for a party to fork out when it has struggled to muster even 100 people to one of its last two national rallies. But by 25 February, Golding was claiming he needed the BF faithful to cough up even more: “The total [his emphasis] costs for this event are around £18,000”, £5,500 of which was claimed to have been spent on the screen alone.
However, anyone who attended the Nuneaton event may be curious to know that the mobile screen rented by Golding and Simon is usually much cheaper — typically around £1,800 less — than the cost BF quoted to its supporters in its fundraising emails.
HOPE not hate has identified the company that hires out the 22 square-metre screen that BF used as Big TV, from Bradford in Yorkshire. Having confirmed the company, we made an enquiry about an identical set-up as the one paid for by BF supporters for the Nuneaton rally. This included the screen, edit suite, generator, technician, delivery and collection for an event an identical distance away from Big TV’s offices.
BF claimed to have paid £5,500 for the package, whilst our identical one came to just £3,714, a puzzling difference of £1,786.
Elsewhere, the party said it used £4,000 of supporter donations to pay for the security company run by the former English Defence League (EDL) activist, Andrew Currien (AKA Andy Saxon).
Currien was previously jailed for his part in a racist brawl in which a man was crushed to death with a car. Elsewhere, a supposed £6,300 was paid to another company for the delivery and collection of staging, toilets and fencing.
HOPE not hate has written extensively about the dubious BF money-generating operations, much of which has irked its supporter base. Indeed, as our undercover reporter found when he was inside BF, there is much rancour within the party about the constant requests from Golding for money. We revealed one period in which Golding repeatedly pressed supporters for an urgent £2,000 for a set of 10 camcorders to film party actions. These never materialised, but that same month Golding jetted off to Pattaya, Thailand for a luxury holiday.
Britain First began promoting its “March for Remigration” through Nuneaton as far back as 16 December 2024, giving leader Paul Golding ample time to rally the troops.
This extra run-up was sensible, given the dismal turnout at BF’s two previous national protests. In October, just 50 turned up in Tamworth, a place of prior BF activity which has included a focus on the branch of the Holiday Inn, used to house refugees and migrants. This hotel was subjected to an arson attempt during the 2024 racist riots.
Golding managed to coax even fewer into travelling to the Staffordshire town of Lichfield at the end of November 2024, with roughly just 40 making the trip. Some, however, may only have been lured by the promise of the Christmas afterparty at a bar in Sutton Coldfield.
Golding had talked a big game before Nuneaton. On 6 February, in an email to supporters, he predicted the protest would be “one of the most spectacular patriotic events in recent times”, and then in another on 18 February that “we are looking at holding our biggest street march ever”.
Golding had also inflated the specifics of the day itself, claiming: “We have an international speakers list, a huge stage and sound system, a giant screen to play videos and enough flags to equip the British Army”. Ultimately, the only overseas speaker to appear was the aforementioned US pastor, Greg Locke.
Put simply, the Nuneaton rally was a shambles. The dwarfing of the meagre number of activists by an absurd stage and screen set-up is an apt metaphor for the state of Britain First as it exists, or struggles to, in 2025.
At the close of the event, Golding boomed a reminder to the remaining stragglers that their next rally would be in Birmingham, indicating a return to the party’s roots – fruitless provocation for attention. We should expect this event to not go ahead, though this is unlikely to stop Golding and Simon from shaking down BF supporters regardless.
With Tommy Robinson still in prison, Nuneaton presented an opportunity for Golding to manoeuvre into the space left by the better-known activist, and to pick up the baton of a street-oriented rabble rouser with one eye on the ballot box.
Ultimately, the rally will go down as yet another failure for Golding and Britain First, a clear sign that — despite having two and half months to gather a crowd — the numbers are simply not there. This is doubly the case when considering Golding’s claims that the BF membership stands at 25,000, something that must now be understood as a blatant fiction. With much internal grumbling about the incessant fundraising from supporters, and Reform UK entirely outmuscling BF on the electoral front, the future looks bleak for one of the perennial underachievers on the British far right.
A dismal turnout is one of several concerns facing leader Paul Golding after another poor national event, as we identify a puzzling discrepancy around the…
