RJH

In the least surprising news of today, a Hitler-supporting neo-nazi jailed for running a racist radio station broadcasting thousands of hours of anti-semitic and racist content including daily readings of Mein Kampf has been accepted into Rupert Lowe's Restore Britain. Tell me again how Rupert Lowe and his Restore Britain aren't far right. James Allchurch, 54, from Pembrokeshire, was sentenced to two years at Swansea Crown Court in May 2023 after being convicted on ten of 15 counts of distributing audio material to stir up racial hatred. The self-proclaimed Hitler supporter presented Radio Aryan, which pumped out virulent racist content around the clock to an estimated 4,000 daily listeners until counter-terror officers swooped on his one-bedroom cottage in December 2019. Since his release, Allchurch has returned as a daily host of its successor, Radio Albion, under the name Sven Longshanks, a nod to the nickname of Edward I, the king who expelled Jews from England in 1290. In September, Allchurch recorded a three-part podcast series telling his white supremacist listeners to vote for Restore because it is 'the only viable political party that actually promotes our issues'. In the first episode, the radio host claimed that Restore's political philosophy, as outlined in a statement released at the beginning of September, amounts to an ‘implicit anti-Semitism’ that allows them to work around ‘the extent of Jewish power and influence on our politicians’. He said he viewed Restore as the ‘closest to the ethno-nationalists’, and said: ‘This is why I say that I think Restore Britain is the best that we can ever get from a political party in modern Britain.’ The Radio Albion website includes a link to the party’s membership page embedded within an image of Mr Lowe pictured as an English crusader. In a July episode on the conspiracy of The Great Replacement, Allchurch shockingly claimed that some Jewish people were orchestrating mass migration in Europe as ‘revenge for the Holocaust’ and that the replacement of white people benefited Jewish bankers financially. In another podcast released in September called ‘UK told to build statues of Africans’, Allchurch’s rants included inflammatory remarks that black people don’t perform well in society because they have a low IQ and that statues of black people picking fruit would most accurately represent their contributions to history. The pernicious podcast host signs off each of his hate-filled episodes with the Nazi slogan and greeting 'sieg heil', which translates in English to 'hail victory'. The racist radio host's support of Restore Britain is the latest in a series of controversies for the political party, which has attracted numerous white supremacists. Grotesque claims that black people ‘prefer witchdoctors’ over hiring lawyers and that pornography is a ‘Jewish enterprise’ to harm non-Jews were also aired to thousands of daily listeners. Officers arrested Allchurch at his cottage in the tiny hamlet of Gelli in December 2019. He told counter-terror police he was disabled and unable to work and spent up to 12 hours a day producing podcast episodes and curating his website, monetising the platform through a Bitcoin link. Sentencing him in May 2023, Judge Huw Rees said: ‘It beggars belief, or at least it should be, that someone would want to speak these words at all, let alone feel the need to publish them for the consumption of others.’ A spokesman for Restore Britain acknowledged Allchurch's membership but said: 'This individual has no role in the party, no influence, no position.' Allchurch’s alignment with Restore Britain is the latest in a cascade of controversies surrounding the political party’s membership. In June, it was revealed that a number of activists campaigning for Restore had joined neo-Nazis at a summit for white supremacists in Portugal. The previous month it was revealed that Restore had reinstated Dundee member James Munro, who had been expelled over holding a neo-fascist flag and making a Nazi salute.

Far-right agitator Daniel Thomas, known as Danny Tommo, a close associate of the far-right extremist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, known as Tommy Robinson, has admitted criminal damage after slashing a dinghy with a knife in the Channel. The 37-year-old changed his plea to the single charge when he appeared via video link from prison at Portsmouth crown court on Thursday. A court previously heard Thomas had taken a boat into the Channel and observed the occupants of a dinghy being assisted by the RNLI, Border Force and the French coastguard. Kevin Lucie, prosecuting, told Basingstoke magistrates court in September that the defendant instructed his boat be steered towards the empty vessel that was adrift and then armed himself with a knife as rescue crews also approached the dinghy and a Frenchman boarded from a rescue vessel. After slashing the boat with the knife, Thomas could be heard saying: “This is what needs to happen to everyone in these boats. Right, you’re on English territory. This is England, this is not France any more. “Get off the boat, you have time to get off the boat. This is not France. Take them back.” At the hearing on Thursday, Thomas, whose address was withheld by the court at a previous hearing, reiterated his plea of not guilty to failing to disclose the pin to his phone to police, under section 53 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. After footage of the incident in September emerged, Thomas’s actions were condemned as violent and dangerous by refugee charities the Joint Council for Welfare of Immigrants and Stand Up to Racism. According to the @RNLI, the rescued asylum seekers had been in the water for 36 hours, which is thought to be the longest time small boat passengers had spent crossing the Channel. RNLI said there were concerns for their deteriorating health and fears of a “catastrophic failure” of their dinghy. The French coastguard said about 60 people on a small boat had spent more than 33 hours at sea “in precarious conditions”, refusing help as they were “determined to take all risks to reach the United Kingdom”. Thomas gathered dozens of nationalist protest groups over the summer under the umbrella movement Patriot Platform. Earlier in September, hundreds of masked and hooded anti-migrant activists aligned to Patriot Platform descended on Dover and Portsmouth. Hampshire police said later that a number of police, coastguard and Border Force vehicles had been damaged, and a few officers had suffered minor injuries. Judge James Newton-Price KC set sentencing for 18 November. Thomas remains in custody ahead of the hearing.