Reform UK national director Adam Bounds tried to recruit members to a “physical resistance group” for “gorillas by night tactics” and promoted far-right and conspiracy theory content.
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HOPE not hate has identified a now-deleted account on the messaging app Telegram as having belonged to Reform UK’s Adam Bounds.
Bounds, from Cheshire, has been involved in Reform (and its predecessor, the Brexit Party) since 2019, when he was a regional campaign manager. He has since risen through the party’s ranks to take on a key role as national director, responsible for its voluntary wing operations.
In messages sent to a public Telegram chat in August 2021, Bounds tried to recruit members to “a physical resistance group” he was building up.
Bounds explained, “got to keep the powder dry until the time comes then we switch to gorillas by night tactics” – an apparent reference to guerilla warfare, which involves the use of small, attacking, mobile forces.
The Reform staffer told his prospective recruits that “we need to be clever about it”, before writing: “Shouldn’t even be postin [sic] about [i]t tbh but I need to gain numbers”.
In the same Telegram group, Bounds identified himself as “the campaign manager for the county of Cheshire for the Reform UK party”.
He also shared a link to a separate chat for those wanting to join his physical resistance group.
It’s not just Bounds’ activity on Telegram which raises concerns.
The Reform staffer also had an account on Twitter (the social media platform since renamed X), in which he promoted a variety of extreme far-right and conspiracy theory content.
On the since deleted account, Bounds shared numerous posts by Steve Laws, an ethnonationalist “influencer”, who has been closely linked to the neo-Nazi Patriotic Alternative and served as the fascist Homeland Party’s South East organiser earlier this year.
In August 2021, for instance, Bounds promoted a post by Laws, in which the ethnonationalist shared a link to an article by Scottish newspaper The National and huffed about “outrage” over “some people climbing a mountain and doing a banner drop”.
The banner in question was one by Patriotic Alternative, which the neo-Nazi group had displayed at the top of Ben Nevis.
Just as the Reform staffer took an interest in Laws, he also regularly amplified content by the conspiracy theorist David Kurten, leader of the far-right Heritage Party.
Bounds shared a post by Kurten in January 2022, in which he urged his followers to “KEEP ON resisting the NWO” – a reference to the New World Order conspiracy theory, which holds that a secret global elite are pulling the strings of world events.
“No test. No track. No trace. No mask. No jab. No app,” the Heritage Party leader added in the post.
Bounds didn’t only promote conspiracy theories on Twitter, he voiced them too.
In March 2021, he posted:
“It’s time to #takebackcontrol of our lives. No masks, ‘jabs’ or distancing required! It’s a bad flu, people have used to try and implement massive societal change! We must #Resist”
The same month, he also wrote: “The jabs experimental, the governments gone rogue”. In October 2021, he referred to “globalist CON-socialists on a mission set by @WEF and their @Davos Clique,” before asserting: “They want to reinvent capitalism resetting it to communism”.
Bounds additionally shared posts by Laurence Fox, leader of the far-right Reclaim party, and Calvin Robinson, a far-right political commentator and evangelical priest.
He called Robinson a “warrior of truth”, thanking him “for standing up and saying what needs to be said”, in a post in October 2021.
In May 2021, Bounds received praise from David Bull (now Reform’s chairman) for his work on the party’s 2019 European election campaign, who wrote that he was “instrumental in our success”. The affection was mutual. In a post earlier the same month Bounds thanked Reform for “giving me a political home”.
After last year’s general election, Nigel Farage promised that “those ‘bad apples’ that have crept in will be gone”.
But Bounds is yet another so-called “bad apple” having worked for Farage’s party since the election.
HOPE not hate has previously revealed that Reform’s head policy advisor, Simon Marcus, has voiced outlandish theories regarding the Covid vaccines, the climate crisis and people’s support for Ukraine; that Reform’s ‘donor manager’ James Catton said “we need to deport 10m people” and promoted racist and extreme far-right content on social media; that Reform’s (now former) director of campaigns Michael Hadwen has supported Enoch Powell; and that Reform’s director and treasurer Charlton Edwards has amplified conspiracy theory and far-right posts on social media.
So, what does Farage reckon to a senior Reform official planning a “physical resistance group” for “gorillas by night tactics”, at the same time as promoting far-right content and conspiracy theories on Twitter?
HOPE not hate contacted both Bounds and Reform for comment. Neither responded.
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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…
