NICK LOWLES and JOE MULHALL

NEW EVIDENCE has emerged linking Stephen Lennon to a clothing company which, according to its latest accounts, has over £350,000 of assets.

Casual Basement is an online clothing company specialising in high-end Italian fashion, such as Stone Island and CP menswear, clothing most associated with football hooligans. The company regularly advertises on clothing worn by professional boxers and MMA fighters.

Lennon has repeatedly denied a link to the company, but new evidence strengthens our belief that he has a financial interest in it.

In 2018 and 2019, Lennon posted up several videos promoting the clothing business and encouraging his supporters to buy from the company. While he was to later claim that he was just helping out a friend, many people were not convinced.

Now, HOPE not hate has obtained a voice recording where Lennon admits to having been involved in setting up a clothing business and, separately, a video where he is selling goods to a friend and then locking up the Casual Basement warehouse himself. These bits of information, coupled with the testimony of four people with first-hand knowledge of Lennon’s business dealings, mean that we are absolutely confident that he is involved in the clothing company.

Causal Basement is the trading name of Designer Labels Direct Int. Ltd (DLDI), a company that was set up in October 2018 by Karen and James Benton. It was registered to a business address in Shoreditch, east London.

On 14 November 2018, DLDI changed its registered address to Bramingham Business and Conference Centre on Enterprise Way in Luton, the same address as six of Lennon’s companies. Five days later, on 19 November 2018, the registered address was moved back to Shoreditch. Karen and James Benton declined to comment on their ownership of DLDI and any possible connection to Lennon.

Casual Basement now operates out of a warehouse on an industrial estate in north Bedfordshire, very close to a property Lennon claimed he has rented in the last few years. It was previously based at Enterprise House, Wrest Park, Silsoe, a stone’s throw from where Lennon used to live.

In its last filed accounts (year to 31 October 2022), the company listed its assets at over £580,000, with capital and reserves at £254,000.

Several high-profile boxers and MMA fighters have promoted Casual Basement, including highly rated former world champion Jordan Reynolds, who has won all seven of his professional fights.

In January 2021, ownership of DLDI was taken over by Samville Ltd, a company run by Andre Samson, arguably Lennon’s oldest and closest friend. In his book Enemy of the State, Lennon writes about how he and Samson bought a Porsche when they were teenagers.

Around the early years of the EDL, Samson and Lennon were directors of Maximum Trading Ltd, which declared its business as “development and sell real estate”, though at slightly different times. Years later, Samson worked for Lennon at Rebel Media, the right-wing Canadian outfit, where he was paid £3,000 a month.

Samson, then operating under the name Andre Major (believed to be his mother’s maiden name) left Rebel at the end of January 2018, a week before Lennon himself packed it in. Andre Samson has denied that Lennon had any financial stake in the company. “I am 100% owner of my business and I can categorically confirm that Stephen Lennon has no financial interest in my business and never has,” he told HOPE not hate.

Stephen Lennon has also denied any connection to Casual Basement.

However, these denials appear to be contradicted by Lennon’s own actions and boasting. In November 2018, he performed a livestream from the Casual Basement warehouse, where he claimed that he promoted the company to his supporters in return for free clothes.

Andre Samson played down his connections to Lennon, but in fact had been working for Rebel Media. Emails and WhatsApp messages obtained by HOPE not hate prove that Samson, who went under the name Andre Major, was a crucial part of Lennon’s operation. A photo of Andre Major and Lennon together in the Rebel Media office prove that Major and Samson are one and the same person.

The new evidence seals the deal. In a recording first published by Clown World, a former associate of Lennon’s but now an arch critic, Lennon boasts to Lucy Brown about helping to set up a clothing business.

“I’m actually fucking working in this clothing business we’ve set up,” Lennon says laughing. He goes on to explain that he has to be at the clothing unit to let the electrician in before heading into London to meet his solicitor.

This recording was from early 2019, just weeks after Casual Basement had been formed.

HOPE not hate has also obtained a video of Lennon selling some Stone Island and CP clothes to a few men and then personally locking up the Casual Basement warehouse.

This additional information confirms what HOPE not hate has heard from several people, including the former partner of Lennon’s cousin, Kev Carroll. “Kev was quite open that Lennon ran the place,” she told HOPE not hate. “He picked out a new Stone Island jacket from there and of course he didn’t have to pay for it.”

“I know that is his baby,” she added. “They were all so secretive. Kev used to remind me that no-one could know it was his. He just got people to run it.”

Even Jenna Lennon’s father has boasted to friends about his son-in-law owning a clothing outlet which brought in thousands every month.
Stephen Lennon’s name does not appear on the company paperwork, but then it never does. For the last fifteen years, from the tanning salon, which was fronted by Jenna Lennon, to the plumbing business, which only had his father’s name on company papers, and more recently his political and media interests, Lennon has always remained in the shadows, quietly controlling things. In the business world it is called a “silent partner”.