Unity News Network (UNN) is a conspiracy theory website headed by David Clews, a former Conservative and Labour councillor in Renfrewshire, Scotland. 

Founded in 2018 by Clews and Carl Pearson, who was then UKIP’s Scottish youth leader, UNN built an audience by supporting the protest movement to free the anti-Muslim extremist Stephen Lennon (AKA Tommy Robinson) during his spell behind bars that year. The outlet’s following grew significantly after it began spreading conspiratorial content relating to the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time of writing, it has over 104,000 followers on Facebook, 90,000 on Twitter and 21,000 on Telegram. 

While Pearson is no longer involved in the project, under Clews UNN has adopted an increasingly extreme outlook. For example, the outlet has promoted the White Genocide conspiracy theory and described the West as being in the grip of “cultural Marxist degeneracy”. 

Clews has also established increasingly tight links to the UK’s extreme right, most notably speaking at the conferences of the neo-Nazi group Patriotic Alternative (PA) in 2022 and 2023. Regular UNN writer Niall McCrae also addressed the PA conference in 2024.

Clews has hosted PA leaders on UNN streams, as well as James Costello, a repeat guest who was jailed in November 2023 for eighteen hate crime offences. Other guests include the leader of the Homeland Party, Kenny Smith; the leader of the National Rebirth Party, Alek Yerbury; the former British National Party (BNP) leader Nick Griffin; Steve Laws, a fascist so-called “migrant hunter” turned ethnonationalist influencer; and the “mosque buster” Gavin Boby. Clews has also himself appeared on PA-related streams and other fascist shows. 

It is therefore unsurprising to find that the UNN chat on Telegram has been swamped with open antisemitism, other forms of racism, support for Hitler and far-right content more broadly.

Clews appeared to sink deeper into paranoia over the course of 2024, for example claiming after the general election: “Hope Not Hate have now taken over Number 10 Downing Street. A Bolshevik coup is taking place.” 

In the wake of his comments during widespread disorder last summer, Clews told his followers that HOPE not hate and Searchlight were coordinating press “hit pieces” and building a criminal case against him. Fearing his arrest, he fled the country, begging for donations from abroad before returning home to address the Traditional Britain Group (TBG) conference in October.