Patriotic Alternative: Decline and crime on the Nazi fringe

Patriotic Alternative, the UK’s main neo-Nazi group, is in disarray. We expose PA’s inner workings, including resignations, extreme associations and links to the broad anti-migrant movement

For almost seven years, Patriotic Alternative (PA) has been a mainstay of British neo-Nazism. However, the group – which is populated by ex-BNP stalwarts, internet-addicted antisemites and ex-members of a terror group – is in undeniable decline.

PA has never recovered from a series of splits, most notably to the new Homeland Party, in 2023. Few former members have returned after the subsequent demise of Homeland, with many instead joining Rupert Lowe’s new vehicle, Restore Britain.

While Restore presents a more credible route to mainstream influence, young extremists now have several more hardline, energetic and better-organised options available. Some of PA’s own key activists now split their time between these vehicles; for example, ex-East Midlands organiser Matthew Darrington is heavily involved in his local Restore branch in Newark-on-Trent, on top of running the militant Active Clubs Midlands network.

The loss of other key figures – by imprisonment, death or resignation – has left many branches rudderless. Welsh organiser Jeff Marsh is the most damaging recent loss; the convicted football hooligan quit after threatening James Harvey at a protest in Nuneaton in March. Marsh, a former Welsh Defence League leader, was crucial to PA’s street activism. While he remains on the fringes of the group, the loss of his organisational talents partly explains why the regular protests promised at the start of 2026 have stalled.

Abandoning “optics”, leaders Mark Collett and Laura Towler are instead trying to strengthen links to the broader fascist fringe. For example, PA’s recent protest in Tamworth, Staffordshire mustered extremists from several neo-Nazi groups in its annual attempt to co-opt “Indigenous Peoples’ Day”. However, while PA once marked the date by coordinating stunts across the country, it is now reduced to several dozen fascists milling about a Midlands town centre. 

This included 10 black-clad activists from White Vanguard, a group Collett has attempted to take under his wing – to the annoyance of much of the membership. However, the leaders of the militant group failed to show, making various implausible excuses after HOPE not hate exposed its inner workings the day before the demo.

Resurfacing in the British Movement (BM) delegation were a number of ex-PA activists alongside veteran neo-Nazis. This includes Jon “Benny” Hill from Oldham, a former Combat 18 activist who fought for apartheid in South Africa with the paramilitary Afrikaner Resistance Movement. He went on to co-found the Racial Volunteer Force (RVF) in 2002. Styled after loyalist paramilitaries, the RVF published step-by-step guides to building explosives and encouraged followers to torch synagogues and mosques. Hill received four years behind bars for race hate offences in 2005. 

Daniel Sturrock, from Penicuik in Scotland, also made his unwelcome return. Sturrock has cycled through numerous extreme right outfits over the last 12 years, including the National Front, Blood & Honour, the Scottish Defence League, Right Wing Resistance and now the BM.

Since 2023, PA has attempted to piggyback on local anti-migrant campaigns with varying degrees of success. For example, another group to grace the Tamworth demo was the West Midlands Resistance (WMR), an anti-migrant outfit that includes Mandy Preece, a PA activist from Cannock. 

Preece has also targeted Long Eaton, Derbyshire, where roughly 30 activists and locals unfurled a “White Lives Matter” banner outside an asylum accommodation site earlier this month. Present were the attention-seeking duo Harry Jackson and Ryan Ferguson, who caused commotion by throwing straight-armed salutes with a PA-branded banner outside a vape shop. 

Moreover, the Kent Nationalist Movement, which has organised a series of marches over the last year, is run by two PA-aligned activists, Harry Hilden and Dean Phillpott.

The pair, who were present at the Tamworth demo and the PA camp last month, have serious criminal offences to their names; Hilden has served time for gang-related violence, while Phillpott’s record includes a brutal unprovoked stabbing and possession of a gun. They also have links to Britain First, Remigration Now and Restore Britain. 

Notably, PA has also made some inroads in Scotland, where an active and extreme anti-migrant movement has emerged under the banner Unite the Clans (UtC, previously Aberdeen Against Illegal Migration). 

Spearheading PA’s efforts are the oddball Richard McFarlane, previously convicted of sending homophobic abuse to Nicola Sturgeon, and Joseph Finnie, a former BNP candidate in Glasgow who passed through the British Freedom Party and British Democrats before landing in PA.

McFarlane carts his PA banners to protests across Scotland, and addressed a 500-strong event in Glasgow last month that saw masked protestors throw Hitler salutes, clash with counter-protestors and rub shoulders with convicted loyalist terrorists. 

PA has also recruited Geoffrey Farquharson, a UtC organiser convicted in 2016 for sending death threats to a Labour MP. Farquharson was involved in the dismal attempt to relaunch the Scottish Defence League, an overtly fascistic cousin of the English Defence League, in Edinburgh this month.

Of course, many of those marching with McFarlane’s banners will have little knowledge of PA. As with Britain First, PA branding and slogans are taken as part of the lexicon of the anti-migrant movement, rather than signalling fealty to the organisation. This keeps the PA name alive in the press, but does not appear to be driving recruitment in a significant way. 

One indicator of PA’s fortunes will be its national conference in October. However, there is a palpable lack of enthusiasm, both internally and externally. PA has little to offer beyond Collett’s repetitive online commentary, which, in a very crowded field, no longer moves the needle. 

Ethnonationalist ideas and language are arguably more popular than ever before. PA’s core public messaging – that white Brits are being “replaced”, and that “remigration” is the solution – are now enshrined in Restore policy, and commonplace in the anti-migrant movement more widely. PA may be in decline, but not because the far right is diminishing; but because it is closer to the mainstream than ever before.