The New British Union (NBU) is an attempted revival of Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists, headed by Gary Raikes, a former British National Party and Britain First. 

Launched in 2013, the organisation adopted blackshirt uniforms and the “flash and circle” symbol of the BUF, attracting a small collection of extremists and oddballs. The NBU had an inauspicious start, however, after its Gloucestershire District Officer, Clive Ceronne, received four and a half years behind bars for an arson attack on a mosque that June. 

The NBU, which has failed to meet its initial goal of becoming an electoral force, continues to regularly change strategy, voicing its intention to register as a political party while also arguing that fascism cannot win at the ballot box. 

The latter position came to the fore in May 2023 when a journalist from The Mail on Sunday filmed Deputy Leader Clive Jones expressing support for “lone wolf” tactics at one of its meetings. The exposure prompted the organisation to change the names of its branches, from “cells” (which was considered too terroristic-sounding) to “units”. 

The group also received press attention in 2022 when HOPE not hate revealed that Tory councillor Andy Weatherhead (AKA Andrew Beadle), who represented Hythe West on Kent County Council, was previously a senior member of the group.

The NBU’s extremism and clear fascist aesthetic has drawn small numbers of young activists to its ranks, although these rarely stay for long. In recent years, it has made a renewed push towards its younger audience by using Instagram to recruit members, restarting its video channels and creating a TikTok account.

However, with many larger and more energetic fascist groups currently active in the UK, the NBU is an irrelevance even on the extreme fringes.