Patriotic Alternative (PA) is a neo-Nazi group launched in September 2019 by Mark Collett, a former leading member of the British National Party (BNP). PA quickly became the most active far-right group in Britain and established new activist networks across the country. 

PA has since lost momentum. A series of splits — not least to the Homeland Party in 2023 — and the imprisonment of key activists has damaged both capacity and morale. 

PA tried to rebrand as a “white civil rights” organisation, but more recently has abandoned attempts to appeal to the general public. Instead, it is trying to consolidate its place as the UK’s primary extreme right institution, with extensive links both domestically and internationally. 

Ideology and Strategy 

Aiming to unite isolated fascists into offline communities, PA quickly gained recruits from across the splintered British far right. The group connected ex-BNP stalwarts with alt-right social media personalities, veteran Holocaust deniers, politically inexperienced young fascists and several former members and associates of the now-proscribed neo-Nazi terror group, National Action (NA) into new regional and national networks.

PA’s primary aim remains “community building” among white nationalists, so that “when the storm breaks, our people can stand together and form a shield wall”. To this end, branches regularly meet for activities such as litter picking, hikes and camping trips. PA is also closely linked to The Woodlander Initiative, a far-right landbuying scheme aiming to build a “parallel” society for the far right and conspiracy theorists.

PA engages in various forms of traditional political organising, online activism and media-baiting stunts to spread its core message. At the heart of PA’s ideology is the “White Genocide” myth, the notion that Jews are subversively orchestrating a demographic shift in order to destroy “indigenous” Brits. However, the group has traditionally downplayed its most extreme elements, particularly its antisemitism, when dealing with the public, claiming to simply be “raising awareness” about “demographic change”. 

PA is unable to contest elections due to its repeated failure to register as a political party. Instead, it supports candidates from other fascist vehicles or resorts to dirty tactics to influence elections, including distributing misleading leaflets made to appear as Labour or Conservative campaign literature but designed to discredit the major parties. 

In 2024, the group stood a lone activist as an independent at the local elections, and four PA activists stood as English Democrat candidates at the general election following a pact between the two groups. Collett has since dismissed elections as “a waste of time, money and resources”, instead advocating for fascist entryism into Reform UK in order to “steer that party from within”. 

Despite this, in November 2024, PA activists successfully registered the Identity Party while hiding their allegiance to PA. Collett later claimed that this was a ploy to reveal the Electoral Commission had unfairly scuppered PA’s own applications, which, they claimed, were virtually identical to that of the Identity Party. However, HOPE not hate analysis of the documents – released under freedom of information laws – shows that PA had in fact introduced errors with each application, despite the Electoral Commission’s efforts to help them.

PA also draws from the playbook of the alt-right, the loose, tech-savvy white nationalist movement to which Collett previously attached himself, and is orbited by various fascist social media personalities. Banned from most mainstream online platforms, PA depends on poorly-moderated alternatives, most notably Odysee and Telegram, on which extremism can flourish more freely. 

PA aims to capitalise on hot button issues to foment a sense of white grievance. This includes targeting temporary asylum accommodation sites and, in 2022, campaigning against Drag Queen Story Hour, a series of storytelling sessions for children at public libraries, in order to push its conspiratorial anti-LGBT+ outlook. In 2024, PA attempted to fuel feelings of injustice in the wake of the legal crackdowns that followed the summer riots, calling for the end of “two-tier policing” in the hopes of amplifying notions of “anti-white” discrimination.

Fault Lines 

Despite its high output and considerable media coverage, the group’s growth has stagnated. There are several apparent reasons for this loss of momentum.

Firstly, PA’s neo-Nazism is radioactive to many on the far right, let alone the wider public. Collett himself has a long history in fascist politics and carries much baggage. As HOPE not hate has repeatedly revealed, PA has accommodated and promoted former members of the proscribed group National Action, a fact that has gained PA much negative attention. 

The jailing of key activists under race hate or terror-related charges has also been damaging. These include James Costello, James Allchurch and Kristofer Kearney, who all were sentenced to years behind bars in 2023. The most notable is Sam Melia, husband to deputy leader Laura Towler and the de facto third in command of the group, who received a two-year sentence in March 2024. He was jailed for offences relating to his fascist propaganda network, the Hundred Handers, which was first exposed by HOPE not hate in August 2020. 

These cases, coupled with the group’s known links to NA, have done much to spread fears that PA could be proscribed. In March 2024, PA was named as a group that promotes “neo-Nazi ideology” in the previous government’s definition of “extremism”. In the wake of an undercover BBC documentary in 2025, which included numerous violent comments from members, Dame Sara Khan has led calls for a new law that would enable PA to be banned as a group that is “creating a climate conducive to terrorism”. This fear has made PA toxic to many. 

PA has also struggled to retain activists, many of whom have lapsed into inactivity or defected in frustration at its endless social events and online streams. Others have been forced out amid bitter disputes, often with Collett himself.

PA’s structure renders it vulnerable to splits. Branches act with considerable autonomy, and the national rank-and-file gather only a few times a year, fostering significant gulfs between regions and a disjointed understanding of strategy and purpose.

Splits

The first splinter occurred in July 2021 when a cluster of activists, mostly in the Midlands, formed the Independent Nationalist Network (INN). Next, a handful of former Scottish activists launched the Highland Division in October 2022. Both groups dissolved after achieving little of note. More significant was the desertion of the Leeds-based activist Alek Yerbury in February 2023, who now heads his own political party, the National Rebirth Party (NRP). 

However, by far the most consequential rupture occurred in April 2023 when national admin officer Kenny Smith led a group of disgruntled officers to form the new Homeland Party. Smith took with him some of PA’s best-known figures, most of its regional organisers and its Scottish and West Midlands branches almost wholesale.

The split ostensibly owed to a dispute over the strict vetting procedures enforced by Smith, while Smith claimed that Collett prefers online content creation to registering as a party and engaging in local politics. However, Collett and Smith were on opposite sides of the BNP civil war in the 2000s and their recent alliance has always seemed precarious. 

A further blow came in January 2025, when a significant chunk of PA’s North West branch, which had been by its most active, jumped ship to the openly neo-Nazi British Movement.

These schisms have been demoralising, denting PA’s output, undermining its leadership and providing alternatives to which future defectors can turn. 

“White Civil Rights”

Collett, a former spin doctor for the BNP, has attempted to turn PA’s legal issues to their advantage. Downplaying Melia’s extremism and portraying him as a martyr for “free speech” garnered considerable coverage among the wider far right, and PA was able to raise almost £70,000 to “support” Melia and Towler, as well as far smaller sums for Allchurch and Costello (less than 15% and 5% of Melia’s windfall respectively).

Following the summer riots of 2024, Collett and Towler rebranded PA as a “white civil rights” group. This enables the pair to fully abandon the pursuit of party status and instead focus on their main strengths — spinning white victimhood narratives for money.

In doing so, Collett is following a path previously trodden by the American white supremacist David Duke, one of Collett’s main ideological influences and most frequent online collaborators, who rebranded the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan as a modern “white civil rights” group in the 1970s. Similarly, Nick Griffin — Collett’s primary political mentor — resorted to marketing the BNP as a “civil rights organisation” following its crushing electoral defeat in 2010.

PA’s main campaign since announcing this new direction is fundraising for the families of “political prisoners”, i.e. those incarcerated for participating in the widespread disorder and rioting of the summer. 

Prospects

Following Homeland’s collapse in 2025, PA has re-established itself as Britain’s central extreme right group. It has largely abandoned attempts to appear moderate to the public and instead firmed up support among the fascist fringes, making minimal effort to obscure its neo-Nazism and establishing links to extreme right groups throughout the UK and beyond. Over the last year, it has consolidated links to White Vanguard, the Active Clubs, Remigration Now and more. The return of Melia, Allchurch and other key figures may also see a boost in activism and provide some much-needed energy. 

While PA continues to exploit anti-migrant sentiment, its potential for growth is limited by its blatant extremism. As such, our concerns about PA relate less to its potential for growth but rather to its future direction. 

HOPE not hate, anti-fascists and media organisations have repeatedly exposed a dangerous and potentially violent degree of extremism within PA. Since the collapse of the BNP 15 years ago, a militant style of politics has spread into the UK’s fascist fringes, the most notable proponent of which was National Action, a group that casts a long and troubling shadow over PA. The possibility remains that a more overtly violent splinter, or individual acts of violence, may stem from the group.

PA has reinvigorated British fascism, and in one way or another, its ripples will continue to be felt on the political margins for years to come.

For more information on Patriotic Alternative, read our report: The Fascist Fringe: Patriotic Alternative and its Splinter Groups