Matthew Collins is an activist and author born in London in 1972. [1] He was a member of several British fascist and neo-Nazi organizations, before starting to work as an informant for an anti-fascist magazine. He later became an activist for anti-fascist and anti-racist campaigns.
In his youth, Collins was the South London organizer for the National Front, a volunteer for the British National Party’s head office and a member of the neo-Nazi organization Combat 18. [2]
Collins took part in the Battle of Welling after which he became a mole for the anti-fascist Searchlight magazine. Collins was paid in book tokens for his role as an informant. [1] When his role as a Searchlight informant was exposed, Collins went into hiding in Australia
He returned to the UK as the subject of a BBC documentary Dead Man Walking (2004). [1]
In 2012, Collins wrote a memoir of his youth, entitled Hate: My Life in the British Far Right which included a foreword by Billy Bragg. [3]
Matthew Collins is currently a researcher and Head of Intelligence for the anti-fascist and anti-racist campaign group Hope Not Hate. [4] Hope Not Hate is described as a non-sectarian, nonpartisan third party organisation. [5] He manages Hope Not Hate's intelligence network. [6]
Collins managed Robbie Mullen, a mole in National Action, in foiling a plot to murder Labour MP Rosie Cooper in 2017. [7] In 2019, Matthew Collins wrote his second book, Nazi Terrorist: The Story of National Action with Robbie Mullen, [8] and in 2022, he wrote his third book, The Walk-In: Fascists, Spies & Lies - The True Story Behind the ITV series, with a foreword by political journalist Kevin Maguire associate editor of the Daily Mirror newspaper.
Collins is played by the actor Stephen Graham in the ITV television drama series The Walk-In broadcast in Autumn 2022. [9] He appeared in the documentary Nazi Hunters: The Real Walk-In which was broadcast after the final episode. [10]
Searchlight is a British magazine, founded in 1975 by Gerry Gable, which publishes exposés about racism, antisemitism and fascism in the United Kingdom and elsewhere.
The British Movement (BM), later called the British National Socialist Movement (BNSM), is a British neo-Nazi organisation founded by Colin Jordan in 1968. It grew out of the National Socialist Movement (NSM), which was founded in 1962. Frequently on the margins of the British far-right, the BM has had a long and chequered history for its association with violence and extremism. It was founded as a political party but manifested itself more as a pressure and activist group. It has had spells of dormancy.
Anti-Racist Action (ARA), also known as the Anti-Racist Action Network, is a decentralized network of militant far-left political cells in the United States and Canada. The ARA network originated in the late 1980s to engage in direct action and doxxing against rival political organizations on the hard right to dissuade them from further involvement in political activities. Anti-Racist Action described such groups as racist or fascist, or both. Most ARA members have been anarchists, but some have been Trotskyists and Maoists.
David Wulstan Myatt, also known by the pseudonym Abdulaziz ibn Myatt al-Qari, is a British author, religious leader, far-right and former Islamist militant, most notable for allegedly being the political and religious leader of the White nationalist theistic Satanist organization Order of Nine Angles (ONA) from 1974 onwards. He is also the founder of Numinous Way and a former Muslim.
Raymond Hill was a former leading figure in the British far right who went on to become a well-known informant. A sometime deputy leader of the British Movement and a founder member of the British National Party, Hill also secretly worked for Searchlight in feeding information about the groups' activities.
Far-right politics in the United Kingdom have existed since at least the 1930s, with the formation of Nazi, fascist and antisemitic movements. It went on to acquire more explicitly racial connotations, being dominated in the 1960s and 1970s by self-proclaimed white nationalist organisations that opposed non-white and Asian immigration. The idea stems from belief of white supremacy, the belief that white people are superior to all other races and should therefore dominate society. Examples of such groups in the UK are the National Front (NF), the British Movement (BM) and British National Party (BNP), or the British Union of Fascists (BUF). Since the 1980s, the term has mainly been used to describe those groups, such as the English Defence League, who express the wish to preserve what they perceive to be British culture, and those who campaign against the presence of non-indigenous ethnic minorities and what they perceive to be an excessive number of asylum seekers.
Troy Southgate is a British far-right political activist and a self-described national-anarchist. He has been affiliated with far-right and fascist groups, such as National Front and International Third Position. He co-created the think tank New Right alongside Jonathan Bowden and is the founder and editor-in-chief of Black Front Press. Southgate's movement has been described as working to "exploit a burgeoning counter culture of industrial heavy metal music, paganism, esotericism, occultism and Satanism that, it believes, holds the key to the spiritual reinvigoration of western society ready for an essentially Evolian revolt against the culturally and racially enervating forces of American global capitalism."
The Racial Volunteer Force (RVF) is a violent neo-Nazi splinter group of the British neo-Nazi group Combat 18 (C18) with close ties to the far right paramilitary group, British Freedom Fighters. Although originating as a breakaway group the RVF has since re-established links to C18 whilst maintaining a distinct identity.
Redwatch was a British website associated with members of the far-right British People's Party. It published photographs of, and personal information about, alleged far left and anti-fascist activists. It typically targeted activists in political parties, advocacy groups, trade unions and the media. The website's slogan was "Remember places, traitors' faces, they'll all pay for their crimes", a quote from neo-Nazi musician Ian Stuart Donaldson.
Hope not Hate is an advocacy group based in the United Kingdom which campaigns against racism and fascism. It has also mounted campaigns against Islamic extremism and antisemitism. It is self-described as a "non-partisan, non-sectarian organisation." The group was founded in 2004 by Nick Lowles, a former editor of the anti-fascist magazine Searchlight. It is backed by various politicians and celebrities, and it has also been backed by several trade unions.
The British Democratic Party (BDP), commonly known as the British Democrats, is a British far-right political party. It was registered with the Electoral Commission in 2011, and officially launched in 2013 at a Leicestershire village hall by a ten-member steering committee which included former members of several political parties including the British National Party (BNP), Democratic Nationalists, Freedom Party and UK Independence Party (UKIP). It currently has three parish councillors, making it the largest far-right party in the UK in terms of electoral representation
The Anti-Nazi League (ANL) was an organisation set up in 1977 on the initiative of the Socialist Workers Party with sponsorship from some trade unions and the endorsement of a list of prominent people to oppose the rise of far-right groups in the United Kingdom. It was wound down in 1981. It was relaunched in 1992, but merged into Unite Against Fascism in 2003.
Paul Martin Laurence Weston is a British far-right politician and was a member of the Pegida UK leadership team. An activist and blogger, Weston joined the UK Independence Party (UKIP) in 2010 and stood as a Parliamentary candidate for Cities of London and Westminster. In 2011, Weston left UKIP and joined the now-defunct British Freedom Party with members of the English Defence League (EDL) and former members of the British National Party (BNP). From 2013, he was the chairman of Liberty GB before the party was dissolved in December 2017, recommending its members to join For Britain.
National Action was a British right-wing extremist and neo-Nazi terrorist organisation based in Warrington. Founded in 2013, the group is secretive, and has rules to prevent members from talking about it openly. It has been a proscribed organisation in the United Kingdom under the Terrorism Act 2000 since 16 December 2016, the first far-right group to be proscribed since the Second World War. In March 2017, an undercover investigation by ITV found that its members were still meeting in secret. It is believed that after its proscription, National Action organised itself in a similar way to the also-banned Salafi jihadist Al-Muhajiroun network.
Jack Andrew Renshaw is a convicted child sex offender, terrorist and former spokesperson for the neo-Nazi organisation National Action. He was an economics and politics student at Manchester Metropolitan University and an organiser for the British National Party (BNP) youth wing, BNP Youth. On 12 June 2018, Renshaw pleaded guilty to preparing an act of terrorism, with the intention of killing the Labour MP Rosie Cooper, and to making a threat to murder a police officer.
Colin Robertson, known as Millennial Woes or simply Woes, is a Scottish former YouTuber, white supremacist, and antisemitic conspiracy theorist.
The London Forum is a loose organisation of far-right individuals based in London but with regional headquarters across the United Kingdom. Emerging in 2011 out of a split within the British far-right, meetings were regularly held by the organisation. These have been met with significant protests by anti-fascist activists and have been infiltrated by journalists, most notably a 2015 investigation of the group by The Mail on Sunday with the help of Searchlight, an anti-fascist magazine that focuses on the British far-right.
The Traditional Britain Group (TBG) is a British far-right pressure group that describes itself as traditionalist conservative and "home to the disillusioned patriot". It was founded in 2001 by Gregory Lauder-Frost, with Merlin Hanbury-Tracy, 7th Baron Sudeley as its president. Sudeley was still in office when he died in 2022.
Patriotic Alternative (PA) is a British far-right, fascist, neo-Nazi and white nationalist hate group which states that it has active branches nationwide. Its stance has been variously described as Islamophobic, fascist and racist.
The Walk-In is a five-part 2022 British true crime television series dramatising the infiltration of far-right terrorist group National Action, foiling a plot to murder an MP. It stars Stephen Graham.
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