For a few brief months, the Homeland Party was the largest and most energetic fascist group in the UK, before imploding as quickly as it emerged. Where have its activists gone?
Last week, the Homeland Party website went down, following the deletion of its social media accounts in September.
The party – which split from the neo-Nazi Patriotic Alternative (PA) in 2023 – insisted that its victory was “inevitable”. We were told that it would surpass the successes of the British National Party (BNP) and ultimately realise “remigration”, the ethnic cleansing of all “non-whites” in the country.
The group ballooned to 1,400 members last April, before a series of scandals, factional spats and abysmal election results soon turned its young acolytes against the leadership. Several mass exits followed, and while it remains a registered party, it has been effectively dead for months.
Last we heard, Homeland leader Kenny Smith was homeless, paying himself a generous salary while hopping between hotels. He and other party officials have now retreated, shamefaced, from the scene.
However, others have dispersed across the far right, from populist parties to militant neo-Nazi sects. For much of its young membership, Homeland was an entry point into organised far-right politics, and they have taken the experience (and baggage) of Smith’s party into the wider scene.
Below, we survey the scattered debris of the Homeland Party.
Unsurprisingly, many ex-Homelanders have flocked to Restore Britain, the far-right party led by Rupert Lowe MP. Restore uses authoritarian, ethnonationalist messaging similar to Homeland but boasts far greater resources and reach. Its launch as a political party in February instantly rendered Homeland redundant.
Steve Laws, arguably the main architect of Homeland’s rise and fall, is the best-known ex-party figure to join Restore – a dalliance that lasted just six months (more on Laws later). Meanwhile, his sidekick Sam Wilkes (AKA Zoomer Historian), a former member of Homeland’s national council outed by HNH last year, remains wedded to Lowe’s party, despite its manifold contradictions.
Aside from Laws, the ex-Homelander who has most damaged Restore’s reputation is Dundee activist James Munro. In 2023, we exposed Munro as a member of the Scottish Nationalist Society, a militant neo-Nazi group, before joining PA and then Homeland. After we revealed his links to Restore, his local branch organiser attempted to expel him, only for the leadership to intervene and protect him. Images of the Hitler-saluting activist have subsequently troubled the pages of several papers.
Moreover, the fascist micro-celebrity Callum Barker, who turned on Homeland after receiving a whiff of attention during the Epping hotel disturbances last summer, is now a key figure in Restore’s highly active East London/West Essex branches.
The London branches contain several other ex-Homelanders, including Sam Sibbons and Nick Scanlon, both previously of Generation Identity UK. We have previously filmed Scanlon, who also has a past in the BNP, PA and Britain First, using a string of racial slurs. Others include John Casey (AKA John Landells), Homeland’s former North London organiser, and ex-party activists Mackenzie Hoad (also of Remigration Now) and Eugene Forbes (previously of Britain First).
Notably, several of Homeland’s central figures have recently washed up in Lowe’s party. Former treasurer Dan Gale, former East Midlands organiser Tom Batten, and core activist Kevin Carrick were photographed leafleting with Restore in Bolsover this month.
Gale, unpopular even within Homeland, has previously claimed that “Jewish power is the first and most urgent question to be dealt with”, while Carrick has a history of posting scantily-clad selfies for his fellow fascists to rate on Telegram.
Meanwhile, Chris Gilmartin (AKA Alex Fairfax), who was previously an officer in both PA and Homeland’s West Midlands branches, wrote in August that he is “still an active Restore member and intend to remain so”. We have previously written about Gilmartin’s disturbing online activities, including recording audio in which he simulated the rape of another chat group user in graphic detail.
Steve Laws heads the only significant Homeland splinter group, Remigration Now (RN), which launched last September and campaigns for the “total remigration” of people with “non-white” heritage.
Many RN members followed Laws into Restore, including Francis Alexander (AKA Man of the Dissident Right). We have previously exposed the Croydon-based ex-Homelander as the operator of an X account dedicated to raping and cannibalising the corpses of ethnic minorities.
RN is adminned by Annie Gerrard Hobson (AKA Remigration Ruby), previously of Homeland’s policy team. Earlier this year, she and her partner Dan Mount ferried RN activists by minibus from Kent to fascist demonstrations in the Midlands.
Homeland founding member Simon Shepherd, previously a PA contact in West Yorkshire, also joined RN at its launch, as did former Dorset organiser Claire Small, who has since gone on to dabble in the openly neo-Nazi British Movement. Others include Bryn Jones from Grantham, Lincolnshire, who has also joined Active Club England, a fascist martial arts training group.
Kai Stephens, a young fascist who facilitated the collapse of Homeland, has attempted to lead an exodus to the British Democrats, a dusty BNP splinter. He has since been appointed Norfolk branch organiser and promised to blow the cobwebs off the party, updating its branding and online operation in a bid to appeal to younger activists.
He also represented the party in the Clacton by-election in August. “We are waging an all-out metapolitical war against Nigel Farage and the mainstream centre-right establishment”, he claimed, before receiving 132 votes (0.4%).
One of the few ex-Homelanders to follow Stephens into the British Democrats is Billy Green (AKA Billy Jameson), previously of PA and the New British Union, a Mosleyite cosplay society. The Norfolk-based fascist spearheaded Outpost Media, a little-read blog through which he and other former Homeland figures, including ex-treasurer Jerome O’Reilly, dispensed their wisdom. The site is now dormant.
Some of the most extreme ex-Homelanders have gravitated towards the National Rebirth Party (NRP), a repository for fascist oddities. This includes Daniel Hitchcock, who has also cycled through PA and White Vanguard, and now serves as the NRP’s North West regional organiser.
Others include Phil Morris, the NRP’s Preston organiser, and Alexander Wakefield, now an NRP organiser in Chelmsford, Essex. The unstable young ex-Homelander Luke Malkin (AKA Luke Baddeley) heads the NRP’s new youth branch.
Luke Jahn, best known for clashing with police in Southampton while dressed as an Edwardian time-traveller, also joined the NRP last year.
However, the heavy drinker has since left the party and is living with Jared Allpress (AKA Hail), leader of Aryan Front and its continuity group, Aryan Racial Order, in Yorkshire. Jahn is involved in the National Socialist Collective, a militant neo-Nazi umbrella group that was exposed by HNH earlier this month.
Matt Evans (AKA Matt Alexander), Homeland’s West Midlands organiser, was among the last out the door. The theatrical fascist appears to be gravitating towards PA; he attended both the neo-Nazi group’s demonstration in Tamworth in August and its national conference this month.
Finally, spare a thought for Mike Lynton, once touted as a future leader of Homeland. “We’ll be taking it from here”, he told the party conference last October, as it nosedived into the ground.
The politically promiscuous activist, who has a past in Generation Identity and UKIP, has since soiled his reputation with a series of social media meltdowns. However, he continues to shop himself around and has been spotted at meetings with the NRP, Restore and anti-migrant protests over the past year. There are rumours that he has moved into even more extreme territory.
Homeland was briefly a key force on the extreme right, but, like so many fascist micro-parties before it, ultimately proved another dead end.
Upon its launch, we flagged that few far-right splinters outstrip their parent group, with many collapsing soon after formation. This outcome seemed especially likely with Homeland, the brainchild of Kenny Smith, a man who has now caused crippling rifts in three of Britain’s largest fascist groups.
Homeland is now buried, while PA limps on in diminished form. Its legacy on the extreme right is largely one of organisational destruction and squandered energy.
Nonetheless, while some ex-members may abandon activism altogether, others now operate under new banners, and some of its networks endure in Restore, Remigration Now and the militant fringe. This is partly why echoes of Homeland’s messaging are discernible in the wider far right today.
Homeland failed to last as political organisation, but its collapse does not mean its networks or ideology have disappeared entirely.
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