A bank robber, a knife attacker and a child sex offender: Bristol’s dismal “March for Unity”

Far-right politics has always attracted violent thugs and criminals eager to blame immigrants for violence and criminality.

This hypocrisy was wholly evident at the Bristol Patriots “March for Unity” last Saturday. Tensions ran high in the build up to the event, after two dozen masked thugs ambushed a local anti-fascist gig in February. However, only 40 activists materialised last weekend, who were dwarfed by 200 counter-protestors and a heavy police presence.

Despite the rhetoric of the event – which claimed to be “united against extremism” – a range of fascist and neo-Nazi groups were represented. This included a leading Homeland Party organiser and the remnants of White Vanguard, a militant group that, as HOPE not hate revealed, suffered a catastrophic split in December. Its splinter group – Aryan Front – had also advertised its attendance before pulling out, receiving publicity without the effort of turning up.

The White Vanguard contingent included Jay Barlow (AKA Glenn), from Ware, Hertfordshire. Barlow is also a member of the Active Club network, a fascist combat training group preparing for race war. He has a history of violence, including a conviction for grievous bodily harm in 2018 after a knife attack in a supermarket, for which he received four years behind bars, and further convictions for possession of a knife and racially aggravated harassment in 2024. 

Barlow was previously associated with Britain First, an anti-Muslim outfit to which Nigel Murfin from Bideford, Devon, currently belongs. Murfin, a member of Britain First’s thuggish “Defence Force”, was fined twice in 2019 and 2020 for threatening a woman. 

Murfin now postures as an “auditor”, a growing trend whereby activists flock to protests and asylum accommodation sites to provoke left-wing activists, migrants, and/or security for social media content.

Several such figures orbited the protest last weekend, including Mark Sinclair (AKA Freedom Dad), a self-described “citizen journalist” who is also aligned to the East Belfast Night Watch, an anti-migrant vigilante group. Sinclair is a former member of the Ulster Volunteer Force, a banned loyalist paramilitary, and served 17 years behind bars for a string of bank robberies. More recently, he racially abused a Chinese person on route to the Unite the Kingdom rally last September.

Sinclair’s countryman William Walker, a former councillor for the Democratic Unionist Party, also made the journey last weekend. Walker was sentenced to 100 hours of community service in 2023 after admitting two counts of attempted sexual communication with a child. Walker had pretended to be a younger man online as he sent two apparent children sexual messages. He had actually contacted decoy profiles run by a “paedophile hunter” group.

Rubbing shoulders with convicted sex offenders is nothing new for the neo-Nazi nuisance Ryan Ferguson. The Merseysider’s titanic ego propelled him to protests across the country last year, and he snatched headlines yet again in Bristol by repeatedly shouting “Heil Hitler” at a Jewish man from behind a police line.

As we have previously reported, Ferguson was jailed for racially abusing a black football player in 2024, and again last year for making false 999 calls. In July, he announced his allegiance to National Action, a banned neo-Nazi terror group; he has also established a relationship with Jack Renshaw, a former member of National Action, was imprisoned in 2019 for plotting to kill an MP, an attack averted due to information received by HOPE not hate. Renshaw is also a convicted paedophile, having groomed two boys aged between 13 and 15.

One of the few locals present was Tony Sherratt, who was jailed for 13 months in 2019 for driving so “enormously intoxicated” that he could not even remember crashing. Sherratt was pursued through Bristol in a stolen car, doing double the speed limit, driving on the wrong side of the road, jumping red lights and eventually writing off the vehicle. 

The Bristol Patriots have since attempted to distance themselves from “other groups who were invited to the march by certain individuals within our community”, continuing that “some of the content currently circulating online […] does not represent what Bristol Patriots is about”.  

The group has since suspended its Facebook page, writing: “Stay tuned. Change is coming.”