JAMES SHAND was 30 years old in when he left his home in Southbrook Road, Streatham, to drive 250 miles to Rhyl in north Wales. He was going, he thought, to meet and have sex with a girl he’d so far only “met” online. 

The plan was to pick her up and then drive to Warrington, where Shand had booked a hotel room (with one, double, bed). 

But he got the shock of his life instead — north Wales police officers stopped and arrested him on the A55. 

“I’ve f***** up big time,” said Shand — accurately, because the girl he believed he was meeting was literally a girl — he believed she was 13 years old. Fortunately, she didn’t exist; he’d been caught in a police sting. 

In 2016 at Mold Crown Court, Shand admitted “attempting to meet up with a girl under 16 to commit a sexual offence,” and was jailed for 21 months and placed on the sex offenders’ register for 10 years, with a 10-year sexual harm prevention order intended to curb his future activities.

Astonishing, then, that only five years later Shand should have been attending an organisation’s “family days out,” and, according to one account, bringing toys for children.  

The group in question, neonazi sect Patriotic Alternative (PA), had no problem accepting him into membership under his real name, as a leak of membership data showed.

Nor has having a convicted sex offender in its ranks since stopped PA taking the well-worn fascist route of posing as “protectors” of women and girls. 

In that guise it has been stirring up trouble around the country this year, inflaming fears about child grooming and using them to target asylum-seekers and refugees. 

“People are, understandably, very emotional when it comes to kids,” as anti-fascist activist Sarah told me last week, a few days after she and others found themselves having to physically protect a hotel in Knowsley, Merseyside, from attack. 

Merseyside Police would later say the major disorder around the Suites Hotel on February 10, which saw a police van set on fire and an emergency worker assaulted, had been provoked by “misinformation and rumours” about refugees housed there. 

The previous Monday a video was circulated appearing to record a girl talking to a man, and telling him that she was 15 (there was no context and the man’s side of the conversation wasn’t audible). 

Rumours flew that this was a Suites resident trying to importune a girl for sex; although police have since stated a man was questioned about the incident in another part of the country altogether and released. 

Just before this, Sarah said, PA had been posting anti-refugee leaflets in the Knowsley area. 

Anti-fascists had to mobilise quickly when they learned a protest at the hotel was planned, said Steve from the local Stand Up to Racism group: “We had to organise with just a few days’ notice.” 

On the night of the protest, anti-fascists were initially kept behind police lines, but Sarah told me they could work out what was happening from audible police radio chatter and what officers directly told them: “They were very open with us. They told us there were right-wing figures who they’d been monitoring among the crowds, and then later on we could hear ‘The far right have arrived’ over their radios.” 

According to some sources I’ve spoken to, far-right “rent-a-mobs” were literally bussed in from round the country, though there is no doubt locals were there in numbers. 

Steve said: “I think the fascists attracted some local youth with the crude strategy of blaming refugees for all social inequalities.”

Sarah saw violent scenes erupt: “We saw the police van go up in flames. Police told us petrol bombs had been used, and that the plan was to use further petrol bombs on the Suites hotel — they clearly planned to attack the premises. 

“Policing was chaotic at first; they told us they couldn’t guarantee anyone’s safety, as they were so outnumbered.” 

Steve agreed there was no doubting the intention of the anti-refugee crowd: “The fascists were trying to terrify the refugees with incendiaries. I think they would have been happy to set fire to the hotel.”

Sarah and her comrades decided then that they had to prepare to protect the hotel and its residents; Merseyside Anti-Fascist Network and others started building barricades with skips and anything that came to hand, and looking for items to defend themselves with if it came to it. 

The anti-refugee protesters were trying everything they could to break through a dense barrier of hedges, trees and shrubbery around the hotel.

Steve told me they were also splitting into separate squads to divide the initially inadequate police ranks, so they could attack anti-fascists. 

At that point the refugee charity Care4Calais tweeted that they were essentially trapped in the hotel car park, surrounded by the angry crowd.  

Looking at footage of the night, it’s astonishing more people weren’t hurt, though a man was subsequently arrested for assaulting an emergency worker. 

In the aftermath, Sarah noted that subsequent arrests were of local young people rather than fascist agitators: “Where are the far right when local kids are being policed heavy-handedly? Where are they when the community is facing hardship? Nowhere. They use locals as cannon fodder; stir them up and leave them to pay the price.”

Although PA fascists were not the organisers at Knowsley, they moved quickly to try to use events to leverage their status on Britain’s fragmented far-right scene. 

Founded in 2019 by former BNP Youth leader Mark Collett, whose mentor was the loathsome Nick Griffin, PA was something of a laughing-stock even among fellow extremists.  

Their last notable public appearance had been in Telford last year, when I watched with anti-fascists as Tommy Robinson threw them out of his rally in a Telford car park, denouncing them as “Nazis.”

Robinson has, of course, been trying to capitalise on fears and huge failures over child grooming gangs for years, but even on such an emotive issue, was getting nowhere.

I was part of Stand Up to Racism counter-protests to three of his Telford rallies, and attendance halved at each one, from 800 to around 200 at the last.   

Robinson was failing to cut through for several reasons, including allegations about the behaviour of his own team with young female victims in Telford, and his own typical half-arsedness, swinging into town from his home in Spain at the last minute. 

Crucial too, however, were methodical counter-protests by Unite Against Fascism, Stand Up to Racism, local trade unionists and residents. 

These made it their mission to both acknowledge the experiences and include the words of victims of grooming, like activist and author Caitlyn Spencer.
 
We also drew attention to the far right’s own appalling record for sexual offences against women and children. 

Robinson’s ongoing support for his old Luton mate, the alleged sexual abuser, money-launderer and virulent online misogynist Andrew Tate hasn’t helped his cause — even HIS supporters, it turns out, draw the line somewhere. 

Robinson is currently trying to revive his anti-grooming gang grift in Ireland, leaving PA to muscle in on his territory here. 

When they first emerged, PA sought to present themselves as a young, clean-cut “white pride” organisation in the mould of now-defunct Generation Identity, away from the grubby, thuggish, beer-stained image of old-school British neonazis.  

They had some epic fails, like a “banner drop” at 5.30am in London in 2020, where their 12-metre “White Lives Matter” banner was immediately seized and binned by London anti-fascists. 

PA is distrusted by other far-right groups, among whom Collett himself is spectacular unpopular. 

Also prominent among PA organisers are Yorkshire couple Laura Towler and Sam Melia. Melia is a former member of banned neonazi terror group National Action, proscribed in 2017. 

In 2018, member Jack Renshaw, like Collett a former Youth BNP activist, pleaded guilty of plotting to murder former MP Rosie Cooper. 

Renshaw had called for Jews to be “eradicated.” The same year, he was separately convicted of child sexual offences. 

In March last year Kris Kearns, PA’s “fitness mental health officer” and former National Action associate, was charged with having terror-related material. 

In June, Alex Davies, co-founder of proscribed National Action and active in PA since 2020, was jailed for eight-and-a-half years.

James Costello, one of Patriotic Alternative’s most active campaigners who Laura Towler has said she “loves,” is also a “reverend” in the Creativity Movement, a white supremacist cult that says “Judaism must be destroyed.” 

Costello was also an associate of National Action and was filmed with them at a secret training camp after the group was banned. On February 15 he complained on the Telegram site that he had been placed under curfew by police after the Suites protest.  

Melia was behind a stunt at Clifford Tower in York last August. The tower was the site in 1190 of a mass suicide by York’s Jewish community, who were besieged by an anti-semitic mob and believed they faced certain death. PA chose this site to hang another “White Lives” banner. 

On February 6 this year, PA organised a small and unsuccessful protest against asylum-seekers in Erskine, Glasgow, and were met by over 100 counter-protesters from Stand Up to Racism and other local groups.

The day after Knowsley, Saturday February 11, PA switched targets to protest against a Drag Queen Story Hour event at Tate Britain. 

I was among 250 anti-fascists who assembled early, to find no police on the scene. When a small, motley band of PA supporters turned up, led by a man called Alec Cave (alias Wesley Russell) who fancies himself a rising star of the group,  anti-fascists easily moved them back from the Tate and down the road, before passing police arrived to stop us. 

The Tate event went ahead, despite protesters including notorious conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers and ex-EDL members who attempted to assault anti-fascists.

Elsewhere, PA continues to try to fuel local tensions and misunderstandings around asylum-seekers and refugees. 

On Monday February 13, Andrew Selous, Conservative MP for South West Bedfordshire and mayor of Dunstable, was forced to issue an official statement telling residents that a public meeting planned about a local hotel housing asylum-seekers had not been organised by the far right, and asked extremists to stay away. 

Once again, PA had been putting out scare-mongering leaflets in the area. 

At the meeting on the 16th at the Priory Church, who should appear but “Wesley Russell,” who grabbed the microphone, refused to cede it, and made a inflammatory, evidence-free and wildly inaccurate speech suggesting (with no shred of proof) that the hotel was housing “criminals.” 

“They should be in cells, some of them … are going to go on to commit rape and murder…”

While some local anti-fascists as well as members of the public protested, he was also applauded. It was left to Selous, clearly shaken, to defend the asylum-seekers: “We are in a church. There are Nigerians in the hotel who have been persecuted for being Christians. Thousands of Christians have lost their lives to persecution. I am glad, Sir, that you were not in charge when Jewish people were seeking sanctuary here from Nazi Germany. What you are saying is offensive,” said Selous.

Selous could be heard to comment that as Russell stormed out, he made a gesture which resembled a Nazi salute. The MP told me afterwards that he found the action of PA despicable: “I had wanted the meeting just to be for local people, and I am  upset that Patriotic Alternative have targeted the town in the way they have done.”

As Sarah told me, refugees and asylum-seekers, who have often escaped life-threatening situations and are already traumatised, are genuinely terrified by these events: “They were so grateful to us for being there [at Knowsley] — they were waving at us and blowing us kisses in gratitude. It was really emotional.”

One asylum-seeker at the hotel in Dunstable told the press: “We are in a dangerous situation. We are at risk and are scared to go outside. Everyone is in stress. Staff at the hotel said they can protect us inside but not outside. 

“Some of my friends are planning to go to London and be homeless there because we will have more freedom and be safer than we are here.”

There have, however, been extremely successful counter-protests: in Rotherham, on Saturday 18, 80 fascists were outnumbered by 400-plus anti-fascists, organised by Rotherham SUTR and TUC. Sarah and her comrades attended from Merseyside. 

Andy Searson, of Rotherham TUC, said: “The hate targeted at these people today is a direct result of Tory politicians spewing dangerous rhetoric that wouldn’t be out of place in the Third Reich. 

“Those consequences were played out on the streets in Rotherham today as neonazis attempted to scare and intimidate people who have already suffered so much. 

“But today over 400 trade unionists, anti-fascists and ordinary people turned up outside that hotel in Rotherham and said ‘The fascists shall not pass’!”

In Liverpool the same day, Steve told me, five fascists turned up at Lime Street station but were outnumbered by 800 anti-fascists, including, marvellously, “Nans Against Racists.”

Finally Tommy Robinson got a huge turnout in Ireland — but it was to oppose him. An astonishing 50,000 people turned out in Dublin to protest against his visit and in Parnell Square, folk singer Christy Moore serenaded them with his anti-fascist anthem Viva La Quinta Brigada.

We should not get the power of groups like PA out of proportion: their weak street presence doesn’t match up to their shameless self-publicising. But nor should we underestimate the current threat. 

Weyman Bennett of Stand Up to Racism told me: “Knowsley is a warning to us about the nature of the government are divide-and-rule policies — and how is it enabling racism and the Nazis to build. 

“We have to mobilise the anti-racist majority not just in Liverpool but across Britain — that’s why we should march in our thousands together on March 18 on the TUC and Stand Up to Racism #ResistRacism protests in London, Glasgow and Cardiff.”