BBC investigation exposes 'far-right' group in secret filming
2025-01-21
Category: news

Warning: This story contains strong and offensive language.A far-right organisation should be banned and some members investigated by police, the BBC has been told, after we secretly filmed people in the group saying migrants should be shot.Former Counter-Extremism Commissioner Dame Sara Khan believes the UK government should urgently change the law to make groups like Patriotic Alternative illegal.Barrister Ramya Nagesh watched some of the footage and said: "There's more than enough evidence for the police to investigate and refer to the Crown Prosecution Service."An undercover BBC reporter spent a year investigating the far-right group and its members were recorded using racial slurs.
One Patriotic Alternative (PA) member said he believed a race war was inevitable and the organisation should use a similar tactic to the Nazi party to gain power.The group cannot be banned under current legislation as they do not advocate terrorism but Dame Sara, the UK's first Counter-Extremism Commissioner, feels they are "creating a climate conducive to terrorism".Patriotic Alternative leader Mark Collett said they are not extremist, do not promote violence and peacefully campaign for the rights of what he calls indigenous British people.The group, considered to be the UK's largest far-right group with about 500 members and thousands of followers online, says it exists to "raise awareness" of immigration and promote "family values". 
The BBC Wales Investigates programme found some members making comments that experts say could amount to inciting racial hatred.Patriotic Alternative have regional branches around the UK and encourage members - including former teachers and nurses - to hold protests, highlight immigration issues, film their activities and share clips online.A BBC journalist infiltrated the group in Wales using a fake identity, Dan Jones, someone who slept on friends' sofas in Cardiff and did not have a full-time job.Posing as a new recruit, the undercover reporter covertly filmed at Patriotic Alternative demonstrations, their summer camp and secretive annual conference over the course of a year and heard some members sharing extreme views.
Demos and banners: The public-facing image
Dan attended a number of demonstrations in south Wales, including in Merthyr Tydfil where the group protested against the housing of migrants. He went to banner waving events on busy road bridges where the group would visibly demonstrate against controversial local issues, encouraging drivers to honk horns in support.These events are legal and often attended by people who are not in Patriotic Alternative.However it was at these so-called 'banner drop' protests where Dan met people like Roger Phillips.While he said he wasn't a Patriotic Alternative member, Mr Phillips joined the group at a demonstration and privately told Dan "35 to 40 of us were prepping, arming ourselves" after being at a protest against plans to use a hotel in Llanelli to house asylum seekers.
"I'm buying a pump action shotgun now," Mr Phillips told the undercover reporter."Who do you think is going to fight these migrants? Us lot."He discussed modifying ammunition and claimed the weapon he planned to get could "kill you at 150 yards".Mr Phillips said afterwards that he had suspected Dan was undercover so fed him false information and that he had been talking about paintballing guns.
Joe Marsh, Patriotic Alternative's Wales organiser and former leader of the anti-Muslim Welsh Defence League, invited Dan to events."If you didn't have Jamaicans and Africans here stabbing people, we wouldn't have any knife crime," the former British National Party (BNP) activist and former football hooligan was filmed saying.
After the stabbing of three young girls in Southport in July 2024, Mr Marsh told his followers: "People shouldn't be calling demos at mosques... if you are going to do one, outside a migrant hotel or in the town centre."The next day, hotels housing migrants near Rotherham and in Tamworth were set on fire. We do not know if any of the protesters were Patriotic Alternative members or followers of Mr Marsh.Mr Marsh told the BBC he had not incited racial hatred, he had legally protested and had not introduced any new recruits to members with extreme views.
What's said behind closed doors
The secret filming exposed how the more extreme views of some members came out, like when Aaron Watkins offered Dan some casual work.Mr Watkins is now a handyman after losing his tax job at HMRC after being outed for making racist comments online and being spotted at demonstrations.While the pair were wallpapering a house, Mr Watkins told Dan: "The communities that are the most diverse are the people we want to get rid of, violently preferably."
"Round them up into camps and if they refuse to leave, we shoot them. The people who come here are parasites." Mr Watkins told Dan that anti-terrorism detectives did not find any evidence against him when they investigated him for making racist comments because he had a new phone and had destroyed his old handset."I'd burnt the old one, literally on a barbeque," he privately admitted. "So, they couldn't get me."When the BBC approached Mr Watkins afterwards, he declined to comment. 
Our undercover reporter was invited to join social media chatgroups where he got messages daily about how immigrants were "invading" the UK.Dan was invited to Patriotic Alternative's summer camp in Derbyshire and to their annual conference where he met Patrick - and the former history teacher from Bristol said the group should mirror the tactic of the Nazi party in 1920s Germany."If you look at what the national socialist party did in Germany… community organising, talking to people about local issues, not as politicians… that is what paved the way for them skyrocketing to the elections from 1929 onwards," he said.Patrick then told Dan a race war was "inevitable", and if immigrants did not leave: "The only way to get rid of them will be to kill every single one of them."
When asked about his comments afterwards, Patrick accused the BBC of having an anti-white bias and "persecuting ordinary British people who care deeply about the safety and wellbeing of our indigenous people".Dan shared a conversation with one of the conference guest speakers who was a far-right activist and a convicted criminal from Australia, Blair Cottrell.He was secretly filmed likening Africans to dogs and suggested that slaves had been happy to work for white people."An old lady was stabbed to death by a gang of African kids. When you look at the way things happen in Africa, the only language they understand is violence" he told Dan and other group members.
"The only way to effectively respond to a crime that they've committed as heinous as what I described is to literally skin them," he was filmed saying."You hang a few of their bodies up across some traffic lights or something. Just theoretically of course, I can't condone it."The BBC has repeatedly asked Blair Cottrell about his comments - he replied, but did not answer our questions.Dan has now left Patriotic Alternative and the undercover footage was shown to a leading barrister who said the BBC's findings should prompt a police investigation because, in her view, some of the comments could incite racial hatred.
Calls to investigate Patriotic Alternative
"After the Southport riots, we saw prosecutions of individuals who'd posted even just one or two messages on their social media platforms," said criminal barrister Ramya Nagesh, who has written a book on hate crime."And those messages were arguably not as inflammatory as the ones you have shown me."Dame Sara said groups like Patriotic Alternative were "attempting to mainstream extremism in our country".
"They should absolutely not be allowed to operate with impunity," said Dame Sara. "We've seen their recent activity and their contribution towards public disorder in the summer riots."She has now called on the UK government to introduce new laws to ban groups like this."It's incredibly urgent... unless something changes, I'm afraid we're going to continue to see groups like PA radicalise our children and make us a weaker and less democratic society."The UK government said extremism has "no place in society" and was working to "assess and consider the right approach" to tackling the issue."We work closely with law enforcement, local communities and our international partners to tackle groups and individuals who sow division and hatred," said a Home Office spokesperson.
Patriotic Alternative's leader said any comments were made in private."We're people that advocate for the rights of indigenous Britons and we are people that are campaigning now against what is going on in this country," said Mark Collett, who formed the group after being press officer for the BNP.When pressed about the use of racial slurs by his members, Mr Collett said this was prohibited in the group's code of conduct."If people have breached that code of conduct, then we will deal with that in due course," he added.If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this story you can visit BBC Action Line.