Steve Laws is a prominent “migrant hunter” activist from Kent; another who has attempted to rebrand himself as a journalist and “concerned citizen”. He is a former member of the now-defunct anti-Muslim party, For Britain and a failed UKIP candidate in the Southend West by-election, quickly became a leading figure in the “migrant hunter” movement around 2020.

Laws, a painter and decorator by trade, began as one of a number of activists who spent their time filming, harassing and intimidating refugees, asylum seekers and migrants. However, unlike Amanda Smith and Alan Leggett, for example, Laws was rarely to be seen heading to temporary migrant accommodation to find targets for his content. Instead, historically Laws was more focused on the Dover coast, filming arrivals and monitoring numbers, though not in any formalised sense. Laws’ regular content production and prolific Telegram usage helped him to quickly grow an online following, with over 10,000 subscribers to his YouTube channel.

Online, the substance of Laws’ social media output is indistinguishable from figures and groups across the far right. His obsession with immigration and migrants has led him to repeatedly use dehumanising language such as “invaders” and “swarms”, and he has been vocal in his support for the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory. Laws’ frequent ethnonationaliststyle outbursts lead him to regularly post about his desire for mass deportations of migrants. He has also concocted a conspiracy theory that the Government is concealing the actual numbers of migrants arriving in the UK through the Channel Tunnel.

Laws has garnered a close relationship with the fascist organisation, Patriotic Alternative (PA). This manifests in several ways, such as: appearing on podcast streams with avowed PA supporters and PA’s leader, Mark Collett, posting sympathetic messages online towards PA and its methods (such as describing its members as “sound”), showing support for PA member James Costello (imprisoned in 2023) and, most notably, speaking at PA’s conference in October 2022 alongside a propagandist for a pan-Nordic, militant nazi organisation that is banned in Finland. More recently, Laws has been seen to champion the PA-splinter group, The Homeland Party.

Like so many others in his area of the movement, Laws has come into contact with the law on more than one occasion. In 2020, he was found guilty of taking a dinghy without the owner’s consent. He appealed this decision in late 2021 (the court discontinued the case in March 2022). In 2021, Dover Harbour Board also filed an injunction against Laws, Alan Leggett (AKA Active Patriot), and others, for unauthorised dockside filming. Whereas some of his co-defendants agreed, Laws refused to sign an undertaking to stay away from the docks and opted for a further court hearing.

In a big boost, Laws was reinstated to Twitter in 2023, hitting 50,000 followers in September. Laws’s YouTube channel, however, saw a marked reduction in video output, with those posted generally steering further away from anything resembling Dover monitoring and towards anti-migrant content more broadly. This included a longer-form “documentary” called “The Invasion”, a collection of clips from the public domain stitched together by Laws with extremely low production value and a soporific voice-over commentary. Similarly, Laws produced a twenty-minute, undercover documentary from migrant camps in north France. In it, Laws focused predominantly on refugee and asylum seeker NGOs working in France, who he believes are “facilitating illegal immigration to England”.

March 2023 saw the Laws-led demonstration in Dover, to which around 100 far-right activists mobilised with reports of brief clashes with police. Laws himself gave a speech, along with former-PA activist Alek Yerbury. Laws was present again in Dover in September, this time at a minuscule demonstration alongside National Front leader, Tony Martin. Laws spoke at another small demonstration in October, a “Stop The Boats” protest in Westminster he organised with Alek Yerbury. Despite the small attendances at these demonstrations, Laws remains a major player in the “migrant hunter” scene.