Neo-Nazis and ethnonationalists have infiltrated local groups protesting government plans to house asylum seekers across three RAF locations in Bicester, Barnham and Wethersfield.
Residents protesting the accommodation plans are of a broad political spectrum, opposing on a range of environmental, ethical, economic and social reasons. Some, however, object on explicitly anti-migrant grounds, and it is these individuals who have come to dominate the narrative.
Representatives of Reform UK, Restore Britain and yet more extreme groups have seen local protests as an opportunity to spread racist rhetoric and present their group as the fix-all solution.
At HOPE not hate, we believe that anyone engaging in the discourse around large accommodation sites in their areas deserve to be fully informed.
Who is on the stage?
Who is holding the microphone?
Who exactly are they standing next to at a protest?
RAF Bicester: Patriotic Alternative and Auditing Duos
Adam Worley, a member of the neo-Nazi group Patriotic Alternative, was seen filming content at the local demo in Bicester on 12th July. The footage was later uploaded to a Patriotic Alternative YouTube account.
Flanking Worley and also armed with cameras were the auditing duo Paul Dunbar (DP Audits) and Ryan Brooks (BrooksReports). Dunbar gave a speech at a Bicester protest on 12th July, in which employed an analogy from The Lord of the Rings: “This is the Shire and they’re letting the orcs in.”
Dunbar has established himself as a professional annoyance, yapping relentlessly at police officers, counter protesters, hotel staff and security. Last April, Dunbar was exposed for sending rape threats to the family of an anti-fascist activist. In a video where he was confronted, he did not deny the existence of the emails, but claimed they had been “misconstrued”. How, exactly, one could misconstrue these messages is not clear.
Both auditors have collaborated with the notorious neo-Nazi Ryan Ferguson on several occasions, including breaking into hotels housing asylum seekers. Dunbar has recently began sporting Meta glasses, through which he films content of various asylum seeker accommodation across the country.
Finally, Britain First’s Paul Golding has also been filming in the area, claiming to care so much for a town whose name he can’t pronounce properly (it’s ‘bi-stuh’, not ‘by-sester’). Bicester is one of a long list of proposed asylum accommodation sites visited by Britain First; Golding routinely makes video content at these locations, but rarely engages with the local community to understand their reasons for objecting to the site. Instead, he steeps his arguments in the same old racist rhetoric.
RAF Barnham: Brexiteers and “Burn the bloody boats”
At RAF Barnham, more ethnonationalists in the form of Norfolk pair James Harvey and Sydney Jones have blended into the crowds, interviewing locals. Harvey and Jones led local protests in Norwich over 2025 against the use of the Brook Hotel and Park Hotel as asylum accommodation sites.
Harvey has a strong track record for racist hate, having previously been banned from X for hateful conduct. He has been forced to apologise for Holocaust denial, and was charged in the summer of 2025 for racial hatred after he referred to residents of a hotel as “foreign filth”. Harvey has more recently used his platform to promote and campaign for Restore Britain.
Both Harvey and Jones promote “remigration”, a euphemism for a form of ethnic cleansing of all non-white people living in England. This, according to Jones, means that Britain must “deport millions”.
Furthermore, former Brexit Party founder Catherine Blaiklock gave a speech laced with racist hatred. She said: “We want [“illegals”] rounded up. We want them taken out. Send them back!” Blaiklock further argued that all flights to Pakistan should either be cancelled, or made into one-way journeys to prevent travellers from returning. Like many others, she used her speech to support her party of choice: “Restore is our last hope.”
Mark Buckton, the Restore candidate for the Police and Crime Commissioner election, has also taken to the stage in Barnham. This was not only to promote his own party, but to also make an odd promise: Buckton would “back, to the fullest extent, any officers who are complained about on the basis of any protected characteristic”.
This would mean Buckton would not just ignore, but actively fight against, any sort of complaint against an officer for racism, sexism or ableism, among many other protected characteristics.
The co-option of discourse around the accommodation sites was summed up by a local elderly man who spoke towards the end of the demo. What began as a speech about the local area and the proposed site, ended with him suggesting that the navy “put petrol in the sea, set it alight, and burn the bloody boats”.
RAF Wethersfield: Antisemitism and Restore Britain
In Braintree, a local anti-migrant organiser known as FreeSpeechShell hosted Shayne Wiskin. This was an unfortunate choice. Wiskin is a Restore Britain activist and former local election candidate for the London Borough of Newham. He regularly posts far-right content, including most recently an AI generated photo of Lionel Messi as an antisemitic caricature.
Wiskin’s social media is packed full of conspiracy theories. He refers to the European Union as “the devil’s playground” and claimed that the UK was “controlled by Fabians… Masons… Jesuits, whatever they’re fucking called, Zionists”. In the same video, he goes on to claim that the term “British” was “made up by satanist paedophiles that represent Israel”.
In another recent post, he responded to a post regarding the UK Home Office appointing members of the public to decide asylum appeals with “Where the fuck is the IRA when you need them.”
The threat from within
Concerns about asylum accommodation sites are not in themselves far-right; many express doubt over the suitability of facilities, pressure on local infrastructure, or the ethics of keeping large groups of people in what are effectively camps.
However, the far right have overtaken these broader community concerns, pushing an anti-migrant agenda to the forefront of the discourse. In turn, many of those who oppose the sites for other reasons are having their voices drowned out or co-opted by those whose concerns lie with promoting their political party, not the local area.
People have the right to know the authentic views of those hosting their local protests, and not to be fooled into thinking that they speak with the local area’s interests in mind.
Prefer to listen? Click the play button to hear the audio version. Harry Shukman Reform UK is staffed by oddballs and enigmas, but none odder…
