Three Unite the Kingdom Fascists Failed to Disrupt Our Picket of Barclay’s Bank in Brighton

Why does 5 Pillars Interview & Give Uncritical Publicity to Nick Griffin, Former Chair of the BNP Who Believes Islam is A ‘Vicious & Wicked’ Religion?

Brighton Picket of Barclays Bank & Fascist Counter-Protest Seen Off 17 January 2026

There is a nationwide campaign to Boycott Barclays Bank because Barclays now invests over £2 billion in, and provides financial services worth £6.1 billion to, companies arming Israel. 40 years ago Barclays was investing heavily in Apartheid in South Africa so nothing much has changed. Barclays is and always has been a racist bank.

Fascist Mother and Her 'Sweet' Zionist Princess

The Fash Minder with a Hitler Moustache

It is therefore not surprising that supporters of the openly White Supremacist Unite the Kingdom should seek to mount a counter-protest, albeit only 3 of them, to demonstrate their support for a ‘British’ bank.

I went along to the picket in North Street, Brighton and noticed after a while a Union Jack with 2 women on either end of it side by side with our own banners, so I thought it would be a friendly thing to go and talk to them.

I asked one of them why it is that fascists are such ardent supporters of Zionism and Genocide and why they were opposing our picket.  The woman I spoke to didn’t seem able to answer my question. Instead she insisted that I should get out of her private space which seemed to extend well beyond her rancid features.

She then pushed me in the chest so I pushed her at which point the other woman came and tried to attack me. I parried her flailing arms and then the male minder with a Hitler moustache joined in as did a load of protesters and the Police.

Picket of Barclays Bank – BHPSC (see their banner at the 30s mark)

They made a bogus complaint of assault but the Police could see it was a case of much ado about nothing and apart from taking my details weren’t inclined to do anything.  Meanwhile these creeps had lost their place on the wall besides other protestors and the police told them to go onto a side street out of the way which meant that no one could see their patriotic mugs.  Mission accomplished.

What is interesting about this is how British fascists now overtly support Zionism and Israel as integral as part of their political agenda thus giving the lie to the assertion that it is us who are anti-Semitic.

There was a time when British fascists used to disguise their anti-Semitism with a self-proclaimed opposition to Zionism when what they meant was Jews. Today their main targets are Muslims and they hide their anti-Semitism behind support for Zionism. Which is of course understandable since even the thickest Zionist now accepts that Zionism and Jewish Supremacim is a manifestation of White Supremacism.

Dilly Hussein Interviews British Neo-Nazi Nick Griffin - For the Second Time

 I mention this because the Islamic fundamentalist site 5 Pillars which is run by Dilly Hussein, doesn’t seem to understand that anti-Muslim racism/Islamophobia and Zionism are two sides of the same racist coin.

In December 2025 it interviewed Nick Griffin, the former Chair of the British National Party in a podcast Civil war, the American deep state and the Zionist lobby.

Griffin has been a longstanding feature of the British neo-Nazi Right. This was the second interview Dilly had with Griffin. The first Jews, Zionism, the far-right, and Islam in Europe was in November 2023.

5 Pillars, which claims to be the most popular Islamic site in Britain, seems to have a fondness for far-right Islamophobes and anti-Semites.

Dilly Hussein

In February 2024 it interviewed Mark Collett, who characterised Jews as ‘shapeshifters who purport to be “normal white” people but are not.’  Mark Collett is a British neo-Nazi who was chairman of the Young BNP. In 2019 he went on to form the fascist, white supremacist Patriotic Alternative.

In an interview later that year with BBC Radio Leicester Collett condemned the wearing of the veil by Muslim women, describing it as a “powerful statement against integration.”

5 Pillars is vehemently homophobic and anti-women's rights, going so far as to praise the Taliban’s exclusion of girls from education. It would seem that their reactionary position on social questions has led them to embrace the worst Islamophobes.

Later in 2024 IMPRESS, a press regulator, ruled that a podcast episode featuring Jayda Fransen, former deputy leader of Britain First, included unchallenged antisemitic conspiracy theories. Fransen is a Christian fascist and it would seem that support for a reactionary social agenda, anti-gay and anti-trans forms common ground between Dilly and Britain’s far-right.

Nick Griffin | Civil War in Britain, American Deep State & The Zionist Lobby

Before writing this I contacted 5 Pillars twice to ask why they were interviewing fascists but I got no response. I did this after having come across an interview by Dilly with one Nick Griffin, the former Chairman of the British National Party.

This is the same Nick Griffin who was acquitted of incitement to racial hatred in November 2006 for describing Islam as a ‘wicked, vicious’ faith.  Griffin today proclaims that he is opposed to Zionism when it is, or should be, obvious that Griffin’s opposition to Zionism is a thinly disguised anti-Semitism.

Griffin was charged after making a speech to BNP supporters at a pub in Keighley, West Yorkshire, in January 2004. During his speech he said that Muslims were turning Britain into a “multiracial hellhole”.

Griffin was acquitted alongside the BNP's head of publicity, Mark Collett. Collett had referred to asylum seekers as “cockroaches”, telling the gathering: “Let's show these ethnics the door in 2004”.

At the time of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 2006 the BNP was a fulsome supporter of Israel, so much so that Ruth Smeed, of the Board of Deputies of British Jews admitted that the BNP website

is now one of the most Zionist on the web – it goes further than any of the mainstream parties in its support of Israel.’ [‘BNP seeks to bury antisemitism and gain Jewish votes in Islamophobic campaign The Guardian, 10.4.08.]

In an article Nationalism and Israel on the BNP’s site Lee Barnes, their legal advisor wrote:

As a Nationalist I can say that I support Israel 100% in their dispute with Hezbollah. In fact, I hope they wipe Hezbollah off the Lebanese map and bomb them until they leave large greasy craters in the cities where their Islamic extremist cantons of terror once stood.

Now it might be that Nick Griffin has had a Damascene conversion to anti-racism and anti-imperialism but somehow I doubt it. In the little of the interview that I watched Griffin made it clear that he doesn’t want Muslims in Britain.

It is issues like homophobia that enable Muslim fundamentalists like Dilly Hussein and anti-Muslim racists like Nick Griffin to find common ground. This is one reason why anti-racists should never compromise on their opposition to homophobia and transphobia or be tempted to adopt a reactionary social agenda.

Tony Greenstein

 BNP leader cleared of race hate charges

Why Socialists Should Support George Galloway’s Candidature in the Rochdale By-Election

There is one and only one issue – Labour’s Silence on Genocide in Gaza and the Attack on Rafah

Whatever else you can say about George Galloway he is not without controversy. Politically he has a long record of forming alliances and then falling out with his partners – whether it is the SWP in Respect or the Stalinist Communists Party of Great Britain - Marxist Leninist in his Workers Party.

I say ‘his’ because the Workers Party revolves around George. It is very much his baby and it is highly unlikely that the membership would overrule him on any major issue or indeed have the means to do so.

🚨Twitter deleted the post, so reposting to expose Israeli army crimes!

Last video of kids martyrs of Husouna family massacre
They fled from Gaza to Rafah in search of safety, escaping shelling
Israeli army killed them inside their tent along with all family members last night ! pic.twitter.com/hlW7qWqFJx

— Nour Naim| نور نعيم (@NourNaim88) February 13, 2024

This is what war criminals Keir Starmer & Peter Kyle Support

George is politically eclectic. He is a brilliant speaker, an old-fashioned orator in an age when the leader of the Labour Party freezes like a rabbit caught in a car’s headlights whenever anyone gets to challenge him as Audrey White did when Starmer ventured into Liverpool.

George is not someone that socialists find easy to support. He is anti-abortion for a start and dismissive of issues of sexual orientation and sexual oppression -  all of which he  puts into a basket called ‘wokery’. There is a distinct impression that he panders to some very basic prejudices such as homophobia and transphobia in the belief th at if you ignore these issues then you will get basic workers’ unity.

Likewise George’s attitude to race which is most evidenced in his failure to oppose the Tories scapegoating of asylum seekers. George disgracefully attacked the SNP for having supported demonstrators in Glasgow who freed two refugees who were seized by the Home Office’s Border Unit.

He was also vehemently pro-Brexit and was quite prepared to support a racist like Nigel Farage. Indeed he tried to become a candidate in the European elections for the Brexit Party.

He even formed an alliance in Scotland with Tories and that he even shared a platform with David Clews, a member of the Patriotic Alternative.

Deserted!

So what are his pluses?

George has been a consistent anti-imperialist and was expelled from the Labour Party as an MP for opposing the Iraq War. When summoned to Congress to address allegations regarding oil sanctions he turned in a fine and memorable performance.

On the issue of Palestine George also has a good record. There was a time when he supported the two-state solution. I know because I debated the issue with him at my old college St Mary’s in Strawberry Hill, Twickenham. But as he later admitted I was right and he was wrong on this.

So I understand why it is that many people refuse to support Galloway because of his de facto alliance with racists and reactionaries.

Letter in the Scottish National from anti-racist campaigner Mark Brown

However the by-election in Rochdale is not about Galloway but what he stands for on the one key issue in Britain and indeed the world.  US and British imperialism’s support for the genocide in Gaza. All other issues pale by comparison. The lives of thousands of Palestinians hang in the balance at this moment and Galloway’s disgraceful opportunism over refugees, Brexit and Farage are minor by comparison.

Galloway and only Galloway is able to win this election. If Galloway wins the election it won’t be his previous positions that are highlighted in Britain against the racist imperialists Sunak and Starmer but his position on an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

This is the key dividing line in British politics. It is the most crucial issue that we face today. It would be utter sectarianism for anyone on the left to ignore this. We cannot choose who our representatives are sometimes. Galloway’s victory will be a victory for the Palestinians. What he thinks about Brexit or refugees is frankly irrelevant at this time.

A defeat for Starmer’s candidate, Azhar Ali is now certain now that the Labour Party has withdrawn its support for him, allegedly over his ‘anti-Semitic’ comments about Israel having been forewarned of the October attacks but in reality because of the realisation that he was going to lose.

We need Galloway’s victory to make it crystal clear to that apology for a human being, the robotic Keir Starmer that support for genocide is unacceptable.

GENOCIDE IN GAZA IS THE ONLY ISSUE IN THE ROCHDALE BY-ELECTION

What is it that the Bigots and Conspiracy Theorists fear about Drag Queens reading stories to children?

Demonstrators in Brighton and Hove see off an assortment of racists and fascists led by the King of Conspiracy Theorist, Piers Corbyn

Bigots & Piers Corbyn Demonstrate Against Drag Queens Reading Stories to Children

There was a demonstration by hundreds of people on Thursday at Brighton’s Jubilee Library against an assortment of fascists, cranks and conspiracy theorists who were attempting to prevent drag queen Aida H Dee from reading stories to children.

They were led by Piers Corbyn who seems to take pride in his idiocy. Leading chants of ‘your parents were straight’ and speaking of the New World Order it is clear that Corbyn has become gripped by a pathology that prevents all rational thought.

The pervasive idea that gripped the counter demonstrators was that by being read stories by a drag queen the ‘innocence’ of young children was being compromised and that they were being groomed.

Hove Bigots Demonstrate

These people have a fear of any sexuality which isn’t straight and believe that by coming into contact with those who are gay or transgender children will be contaminated and converted. Simply as a matter of fact children are sexual beings. They are inquisitive about their own bodies and that of other children. They will often play ‘doctor’ and play with themselves. That is a normal part of  growing up. For fascists and racists, children are innocent until they reach puberty. See Child sexuality.

The idea that children might experiment with different gender roles is a threat to those who cannot envisage anything other than male and female stereotypes. Anyone who has actually had children knows that they like to experiment in for example dressing up as the other sex or playing different roles.  But for the fascists and the assorted nutcases who gathered in Brighton and Hove this is a threat, not least to their own identity.

Not all those who demonstrated in Brighton and Hove were fascists but a good proportion were. I received an email a week ago from the outright neo-Nazi  Patriotic Alternative boasting that

‘Patriotic Alternative has led the charge to oppose this clear attempt to introduce children to sexualised material.’

We were accused by them of being paedophiles (a favourite accusation of neo-Nazis), grooming children and we were otherwise subject to abuse from these low lives. The irony is that it is the far right which has always contained within it numerous child abusers and paedophiles.

Hove Paedophile Woman

This should be no surprise since authoritarian political movements are a magnet for those who want to dominate others, including children. It is the Right and far-Right which have always supported beating children. Of course that was for their own good! Nothing to do with child abuse or their own sexual proclivities.

The woman in the video who accused us of paedophilia, was repeating a standard fascist trope belies the evidence. Below are a few examples.

Child abuse, paedophilia and the far-right

Despite his claim to campaign against child abuse, no one has been friendlier to paedophiles and child abusers than Tommy Robinson. Robinson has repeatedly equated Muslims with child abuse yet the statistics are quite clear. The actual data shows that the ethnic origins of those convicted of sexual contact with children are pretty much the same as the ethnic mix of the UK.

What is clear though is that fascists and neo-Nazis are over represented amongst those who are convicted. Below are a few examples:

1.            In 2010 Tommy Robinsons friend Richard Price was convicted of making 4 indecent images of children. Far from condemning Price a campaign was launched by the EDL for his release. Robinson wholeheartedly supported Price, claiming he had been “stitched up” and that “Price has no idea how they were on his computer.”

Since its formation, there have been at least 20 members and supporters of the EDL convicted of child sexual exploitation offences. At least 10 of these were active while Robinson was still leading it.

2.            The most shocking case was that of Robert Ewing, who murdered schoolgirl Paige Chivers. He was later prosecuted for abusing two other children.

3.            Leigh Mcmillan, a senior EDL figure was sentenced to 17 years after abusing a 10 year-old schoolgirl 100 times in the mid-1990s.

4.            In 2010, EDL supporter Brett Moses was given a 12-month suspended prison sentence after pleading guilty to sexual grooming.

5.            In 2011 John Broomfield, an active EDL supporter, admitted 20 counts of making indecent images of children. The police found 236 indecent images depicting children and babies on his computers.

6.            Also in 2011, Michael Coates was charged with a series of sex offences, including two attempted rapes. He was active in the EDL splinter group the North West Infidels.

7.            In 2011, a gang of racists attacked Redbridge Islamic Centre. Elliot Jones, one of the attackers on that day, was convicted of trying to incite a child into sexual activity.

8.            Mark “Archie” Sleman was an EDL supporter who was active in London and Exeter. He was imprisoned for nine years in 1994 for the kidnap and rape of a ten-year-old girl.

9.            In 2012 EDL member Matthew Woodward was charged with possession of images of children as young as 10.

10.       Michael Kinnear, who was active in the EDL was gaoled in 2015 after police found images on his mobile of a primary school aged girl “performing a type of striptease” and in a state of undress.

11.      47 year old Paul Whiteside was given a 10-month jail sentence suspended for two years for abducting a school girl. Whiteside had previously campaigned against ‘Muslim grooming of young girls in Lincolnshire.’

12.            Other EDL child abusers and sex offenders include Bradley Daniel Alford, Alan Boulter, Pete Gillett, Luke Atkinson, Dean Chambers and Bruce Cordwell amongst many others.

13.       More recently, Robinson once again found himself allied with a sex offender. In June 2017, he shared a stage with William Charlton at a rally in Sunderland at an event where the sexual abuse of children was the key theme of the speeches. It later transpired that Charlton was found guilty of distributing an indecent photograph of a child. 

I could go on but as I said, fascism attracts people who love uniforms and worship authority. Children are their ideal targets because of their vulnerability which is why their accusations of paedophilia are a means of projecting their own inadequacies onto others.

Gender Criticism

However there is also another aspect to this fear of people who don’t conform to ‘normal’ gender stereotypes.

As people will know from previous blogs, I do not agree with much of transgender ideology when it comes into conflict with women’s demands for autonomy.  In particular I find it difficult to accept the claim that a transwoman is a woman sexually when that clearly isn’t the case biologically.  Likewise I can’t accept that mere self-definition without more therefore means that a man can claim to be a woman.

However I have always been clear that we should not countenance prejudice or discrimination against transgender people. I find it strange that this debate focuses primarily on transwomen and not on transmen even though the majority of trans people are the latter. I have no doubt that a section of transwomen are imbued with what might be called masculinist ideology. For example the attack on a group of feminists by transwomen in 2017 in Hyde Park.

What has though shocked me is that someone who I know as a gender critical feminist posted to me an article critical of the drag queen story telling and when I pointed out the far-right connections she was nonchalant about this. 

Last year the Institute of Race Relations published an article by Sophia Siddiqui arguing that gender critical feminists were peddling a far right agenda. I wrote to them at the time saying that they might find that they were embarking on a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Feminists around Womens Place UK and other gender critical feminists have a responsibility to clearly and explicitly dissociate themselves from the fascist inspired demonstrations in Reading, Brighton and Hove and other places.  Otherwise their gender critical   ideology will be seen as nothing more than an attack on trans people per se.

Piers Corbyn

I have a few words to say about Piers Corbyn who I have just unfriended on Facebook. I sent him a message:

After today I am removing you as a friend. You have come a long way from a squatters leader and member of the IMG to someone who demonstrates alongside Patriotic Alternative and assorted fascists and bigots. I have no idea what has taken hold of you but you are working with an assortment of cranks and conspiracy theorists. Clearly socialism and a class analysis play no part in your world outlook or analysis. From always being an eccentric you have made idiocy your byword.

I first knew Piers over 40 years ago when he was the leader of the London Squatting Union as well as a member of the International Marxists Group. Now he comes across as a deranged conspiracy theorist, a climate denier and anti-vaxxer who happily works with fascists and other freaks.  He has now decided to join these people in ‘protecting children’.  It is true that children do need to be protected but primarily from Corbyn and his fascist friends.

Hove Paedophile Woman

The irony is that it was the parents of the children who were taking them to the story time, so it was they who were being accused of being paedophiles and groomers by these misfits and bigots.

This was undoubtedly distressing to the parents which was why it was necessary that we outnumbered them. CNN quoted one parent who had to pass through a Patriotic Alternative demonstration in Reading:

Rosie said she was unprepared for the vitriol she encountered at the library, where protesters waved signs reading "Stop grooming children" and a line of police officers ushered parents into the building. At least one mother was crying inside as protesters played the theme song to British TV show "Jim'll Fix It," whose late host was a notorious ​child sexual abuser, on loudspeakers outside the library.

"It was just horrible. I was expecting it to be a joyous thing, considering it had been Pride a couple of weeks ago in Bristol." Instead, she said the harassment by protesters was "very backwards and (I feel) naive to think there's been any progress."​​

Bigots and fascists chant 'Antifa Out' - an obsession of Trump loyalists and assorted White Supremacist groups

At least one person chanted ‘antifa out’.  Antifa being an anti-fascist organisation that Trump demonised in the United States. These are the people that Corbyn has decided to link up with.  He should remember the saying about those who lie down with dogs get up with fleas!

Tony Greenstein