English Advocates plan to strip ethnic minorities of their rights

English Advocates - a Facebook page run by Lee Ingram - has started a new campaign. It hopes to ensure that all ethnic minority citizens will be barred from holding positions of authority in England, and that anyone who stands in the way of this movement will be arrested.

The Advocates believe themselves to have solid legal grounds for this endeavour, using a quotation from the Bill of Rights 1688 as a basis:

In their rush to justify their racist agenda, however, the English Advocates have grossly misrepresented the document in question.

Here is the relevant passage in full:

New Oaths of Allegiance, &c.
And that the Oathes hereafter mentioned be taken by all Persons of whome the Oathes of Allegiance and Supremacy might be required by Law instead of them And that the said Oathes of Allegiance and Supremacy be abrogated. 

Allegiance.
I A B doe sincerely promise and sweare That I will be faithfull and beare true Allegiance to their Majestyes King William and Queene Mary Soe helpe me God. 

Supremacy.
I A B doe sweare That I doe from my Heart Abhorr, Detest and Abjure as Impious and Hereticall this damnable Doctrine and Position That Princes Excommunicated or Deprived by the Pope or any Authority of the See of Rome may be deposed or murdered by their Subjects or any other whatsoever. And I doe declare That noe Forreigne Prince Person Prelate, State or Potentate hath or ought to have any Jurisdiction Power Superiority Preeminence or Authoritie Ecclesiasticall or Spirituall within this Realme Soe helpe me God.

So, what the Advocates are quoting is part of a pair of oaths. Oaths are binding only to people who actually make them, and the Bill of Rights does not specify who is required to make these oaths.

In this day and age, of course, nobody is required to make either of these oaths - the fact that one of them mentions William III and Mary II indicates just how outdated this section of the Bill of Rights is. These oaths are historical artifacts, nothing more.

This is not the only fatal flaw in the English Advocates' plan. Notice that the second oath refers specifically to positions of religious authority; this is evident even in the section quoted by Ingram and company, who are apparently unaware of what the word "ecclesiastical" means.

As anybody with any knowledge of English history will tell you, the Bill of Rights was drafted at a time of great strife between Catholics and Protestants. The reference to "noe Forreigne Prince Person Prelate, State or Potentate" is not directed at immigrants or descendants of immigrants living in England, but rather to individuals and bodies based in foreign countries - it is an obvious allusion to the Roman Catholic Church.

Lee Ingram, the man behind English Advocates.

To recap, Lee Ingram and his comrades are making three fatal errors in their reading of this document:

1: That the oaths are legally binding to everyone in the country, even those who have not actually made them;
2: That "foreign" refers to ancestry, rather than geographic location;
3: That the second oath covers all positions of authority, rather than merely religious authority.

Nice try, Lee. But while the replies to your post demonstrate that your followers have fallen for your misrepresentation of the Bill of Rights, not everyone is quite so gullible. Any legal expert would laugh their socks off if you came to them with this nonsense.

This is not the first time that Ingram has expressed interest in removing the rights of ethnic minorities.  Take a look at these posts he made at the now-defunct Cross of St. George forum back in 2007 (the thread is archived here):

The article he links to, with obvious approval, is hosted on the white supremacist website Heretical Press. Written by Kenneth McKilliam, a Nazi sympathiser who was closely involved with the BNP during its early days, the article argues that Jews should not be allowed to hold positions of authority in Britain:

Being prohibited aliens by the Edict of Expulsion Jews have no right to sit in our houses of parliament, nor on our local government councils. They have no right to be in the judiciary nor to hold office in the executive of government nor in the police force. All purported laws and purported acts of parliament in which Jews have taken part in the voting are illegal, unconstitutional: null and void. 

Stripping ethnic minority groups of their rights, it would seem, is a cause dear to Lee Ingram's heart.

The failure of the Steadfast Trust's English Community Groups

Late last year I wrote a post with a rundown of the various English Community Groups that had been set up at the behest of the Steadfast Trust. With this organisation currently on ice, we should not be surprised that its ECGs are in pretty poor shape themselves:

The Ipswich ECG appears not have made any moves since 6 January.

The Portsmouth ECG seems to have frozen up a week before its Ipswich cousin.

The Southampton ECG - a group so obscure that I didn't even know it existed when I wrote my last rundown - let out its death rattle at the same time.

The Essex ECG,  I believe, closed its doors in late 2014.

The Dorset ECG merged into the English Volunteer Force, a not-particularly-significant EDL splinter group.

The Northants English Welfare Society is still active - but it seems unlikely to attract widespread support, given that its frontman Walter Greenway is an unabashed Nazi sympathiser. Incidentally, "Walter Greenway" is a pseudonym, and the man in question also appears to go under the name "Gamlegorm the White". I am unsure what his real name is, but a short while back I received hits from someone searching for "ragnar northants english welfare society", "gamelegorm the white walter greenway" and "walter greenway northants english welfare stephen osborne". Make of that what you will.

 A typical posting from the Northants English Welfare Society.

Recently, however, there has been one more nail in the coffin: ECGL.org, the official website of the Leicester ECG, has closed down as a result of its domain expiring on 17 September.
For a bit of background, the ECGL - the most prominent of the ECGs - was founded on 2011. In March last year it announced that it would rebrand as a nationwide group called English Advocates.

This is where things get a little fiddly. The ECGL Facebook page changed its name to English Advocates and the group's Youtube channel rebranded as "Ethnic English", but the ECGL website remained and the old group was, officially, still active. Ingram (or one of his cohorts) even restarted its Facebook presence as a separate page.

But that second ECGL Facebook page closed as well. Now, with the closure of the website, all that is left of the English Community Group Leicester is the English Advocates page - which is basically just Lee Ingram ranting:

Lee Ingram argues that living in England is as bad as living in war-torn Syria.

I took the opportunity to archive the ECGL website just before it went down. Of particular interest is the photo gallery, where I found this image...

Hmm, wonder what those papers they're distributing could be about...?

Well, it just so happens that the site offered a closer look:

Now, what does that stack of fliers on the left say...?

Ah, yes. Woden's Folk.

For those unfamiliar, Woden's Folk is a neo-Nazi cult that believes Hitler to have been an avatar of the god Woden. The cult is eagerly awaiting the return of Woden/Hitler, in the belief that he will save the Aryan race from the dark forces of Judaism. Lee Ingram and his pals, for reasons of their own, felt that this cult was worth promoting.

If you're reading this, Lee, please don't insult my intelligence by claiming that you were unaware of the cult's neo-Nazi beliefs at the time. We're talking about a group with "Woden" in its name. That alone should have been more than enough to set off alarm bells.

The Steadfast Trust's English Community Groups were meant to represent ordinary English folk. Instead, they ended up as magnets for neo-Nazis. Had anyone voiced these concerns at the beginning of the project, they would doubtless have been dismissed as Anglophobes. However, as history has shown, those concerns turned out to be entirely valid.

Of course, the failure of the English Community Groups is just one of many casualties in the short history of Englisc nationalism. My report on the impending demise of the Anglo-Saxon Foundation turned out to be overoptimistic - the forum's domain was renewed for another year - but we need only take a quick look around the movement to find numerous other groups that have bitten the dust. English Shieldwall? Dead. Englisc Resistance? Dead. Steadfast journal? Dead.

Englisc nationalism will never gain a foothold amongst the English. Simple as that.

Edmund Dee's White Wyrm Rising: White Wyrm or whitewash?

One of my first posts on this blog was about the nationalist publications put out by Athelney, an imprint of Anglo-Saxon Books.

Proof of the relationship between Anglo-Saxon Books and Athelney, from the Directory of Publishing 2014.

At the time I mentioned that Athelney had been keeping a low profile for a few years, but was preparing to publish a new book entitled White Wyrm Rising: A Journey into Modern English Nationalism.

The book in question was finally published this January. I was interested in covering it, but out of reluctance to give my money to Athelney, I waited until a second-hand copy of White Wyrm Rising turned up on Abebooks before buying it.

My copy arrived recently, and as it is a very slim volume, it didn't take long to finish. I can't say I was impressed.

Written by someone called Edmund Dee, the book touches upon a number of the groups I've covered on this blog. In each case, Edmund makes a concerted attempt to sweep the racism perpetrated by those outfits under the carpet. White Wyrm Rising is a thoroughly disingenuous attempt to whitewash Englisc nationalism.

Throughout the book, Edmund paints nationalist groups such as the Anglo-Saxon Foundation, the English Shieldwall, Woden's Folk and the Steadfast Trust (the book came out shortly before the Exposure documentary on that last group) as noble, right-minded organisations which hold no hatred for people of other ethnicities, only love for the culture and heritage of England. Any racism in the English nationalist movement, according to Edmund, can be blamed squarely on a small, misguided minority - which the author portrays as being essentially a different movement entirely.

In reality, the Anglo-Saxon Foundation is a forum where stuff like this is posted on a regular basis:

...But you'd never know this from reading Edmund's shamelessly sanitised version of events. How can Anglo-Saxon Books, which purports to be a respectable publisher of informative books on history, justify shilling for a racist forum this way?

Anyway, on to the book itself. I recognised quite a few of the people mentioned by Edmund, even though he tends to identify them by their screen names:

"Ingy and Ynngy" are Lee Ingram and Paul Young.

Since the book was published by Athelney, we shouldn't be too surprised to find it plugging another Athelney publication:

Linsell's "holy book", incidentally, makes the bizarre claim that the English are descended from Aesir and Vanir. Edmund doesn't seem to find this at all dubious.

Our first real glimpse of just how disingenuous this book is comes when Edmund talks about the English Folcmoot, an event organised by Paul Young in 2011:

I've written about Wulf Ingessunu before; his organisation Woden's Folk is a neo-Nazi cult which believes Hitler to have been an avatar of Woden.

As for the loving couple Harold and Shirley, "Harold" is actually Clive Calladine, known on the Internet under the pseudonyms Harold Godwinsson and Teutoburg Weald. This is evidenced by a posting from the English Shieldwall website which names the couple as Clive and Shirley...

...And by one of "Harold"'s postings at the Anglo-Saxon Foundation, where he describes the ceremony himself:

I've documented his views at length here. In summary, Calladine regards Anders Breivik as a "hero"; feels that England should have been on the side of the Nazis during World War II; supports apartheid; believes that "the Jew" is conspiring against the white race; argues that liberals and Asians are "enemies" who can be justifiably murdered; endorses the criminalisation of homosexuality and race-mixing; and says that members of minority groups should not have human rights (even though, as a Wodenist, he is himself a member of a minority group)

Edmund is certainly aware of Calladine's extremist views, as they both post at the same forum. And yet, the author portrays Calladine as a loveable sort whose only visible flaw is his tendency to get into amusing arguments with his wife.

Early in the same chapter, Edmund pours scorn on some Morris dancers who were concerned that the English Folcmoot would attract a racist element. But the presence of Wulf Ingessunu and Clive Calladine demonstrates that those Morris dancers were entirely correct.

Again, Edmund namechecks his bigoted comrades. Seaxan is the owner of the Anglo-Saxon Foundation; I discussed his views here. AelfredSeax appears to be a fascist sympathiser, judging by the fact that he has an Oswald Mosley quotation in his signature at the ASF:

Moving on...

Let's take a second to unpack this. First of all, Edmund is quite right to treat antifascist protests with a degree of skepticism. Groups such as Unite Against Fascism and the Socialist Workers Party have atrocious records when it comes to free speech, and campaign against certain kinds of extremists while aligning themselves with others - particularly of the Islamic variety. Jesus and Mo sum them up:

However, Edmund is giving a seriously skewed version of events when he claims that the March for England demonstration was opposed by antifascists simply because it celebrated St. George's Day. If that were the case, then other St. George's Day celebrations - such as that held regularly at Stone Cross - would also be targeted by antifascists.

The reason the event was attacked by antifascists was because of the nature of the group which organised it - namely, the accusation that it has far-right connections (its Facebook page has linked approvingly to Casuals United). You may question the legitimacy of these accusations, but the fact remains that they are the reason for the group coming under scrutiny, not its decision to celebrate St. George's Day.

Edmund smugly dismisses the anti-fascists as "thousands of Anglophobes" who felt hatred "for anyone who reminded them that there was a country called England, and for anyone who dared celebrate its existence." This is a flat-out caricature: again, where were these "thousands of Anglophobes" at every other St. George's Day event around the country? The Brighton march was targeted because of the group behind it, not because of the day it was held on.

In the same chapter, Edmund names some of the Anglo-Saxon Foundation members who accompanied him to the 2012 March for England event. First is Osgar:

I have to wonder if this is the same Osgar who fell out with his daughter when she started dating a black man (or "a spade", as Osgar delicately refers to his potential son-in-law):

After this come a few others:

Well, "Steven" is possibly the same Steven who seems to think that the 2013 Westgate shopping mall attack was a Jewish conspiracy. But the really remarkable person in this group is Steed.

Steed is another member of the neo-Nazi Woden's Folk. He used to run a blog called Eye of Woden, where he made a number of utterly remarkable claims - that Zionists worship a race of intelligent lifeforms from Mars, and that the creators of the cartoon series Family Guy were in on the Boston Marathon bombing, to pick just two. He has since closed this blog but he can still be spotted in the comments section of Aryan Myth and Metahistory, run by his fellow neo-Nazi Wotans Krieger.

So, Edmund is pulling the exact same stunt as with his account of the English Folcmoot: scoffing at anyone who suggested that there were racists at the event, and then providing evidence that - yes - there were racists at the event.

By now, you should have a clear idea of what Edmund Dee was up to when he wrote this book: he was trying to pass off a bunch of racist cranks as simply honest folk who want what's best for their country.

But just who is this Edmund Dee person? Given his fascination with King Edmund, it seems likely that his name is a pseudonym.

In my next post, I will dig a little deeper and try to find out exactly who it was who wrote White Wyrm Rising...

Exposure: How does the Steadfast Trust's response stand up?

In my previous post I summarised how the Steadfast Trust had been presented by the recent Exposure documentary. Just to recap, here is the charity's response to the programme and its accusations:

"Tim Hawke has been suspended pending an internal investigation, and Darren Clarke suspended from our supporters' list.

The Trust does not share or support the offensive views expressed, some by people unknown to the charity. We cannot be held responsible for the views, actions or political affiliations of our supporters. 

We always work within charity law and all donations are used to further our registered objectives.  The Steadfast Trust is not and never has been political in its aims and we are perplexed by the suggestion it has become the focal pint for the far right. 

Tim Hawke attended the event to identify whether it could benefit from a grant, he disliked what he saw and told trustees he would not attend in future. 

We have criteria that English Community Groups must follow. Only a fraction of groups are sanctioned by us. Tim Hawke says 'burn the mosques' was a comment on the page of one group, and he decided the trust could not be associated with it. Mark Taylor's comments on skinheads were made in jest and the event referred to did not happen."

There are two points I will give to the Steadfast Trust here.

One, the documentary was misleading in making its allegation that the Steadfast Trust is "a new focal point for the fascist far right", implying that all the old members of the BNP, the NF and the rest are now rallying around Steadfast. While the organisation has certainly picked up supporters from such groups, and it is definitely the focal point for a specific subset of the far-right (the subset which I have termed "Englisc" nationalism), it is not a major focal point for the British far-right as a whole. That is a worthwhile distinction.

Two, the documentary's presentation of Tim Hawke's "burn the mosques" discussion is suspect. It begins halfway through the conversation, with the narrator summarising what came before; we are left to take his word for it. So, it is quite plausible that Hawke's words were twisted by the documentary.

Beyond these two concerns, however, the word which I would use to describe Exposure's segment on the Steadfast Trust is "unsurprising." I have written multiple posts on this blog analysing the Steadfast Trust and its satellite groups, and time and time again I have provided evidence that the charity (former charity, now - it has been re-registered) is knowingly associating itself with racist groups. I will recap some of my findings in this post.

Mark Taylor: the man behind the Steadfast Trust?

The documentary portrays trustees Tim Hawke and Mark Taylor as the two joint leaders of the Steadfast Trust; my own research suggests that this is the case.

If so, it would be reasonable to assume that - now Hawke is suspended "pending an internal  investigation" - Mark Taylor is in charge of Steadfast. Perhaps it was Taylor who drafted the above statement, Taylor who is currently manning the Steadfast Facebook page, and possibly even Taylor who will be investigating Hawke.

Mark Taylor

So, just who is Mark Taylor and what does he stand for? Well, RationalWiki has an article on Taylor which argues that he was the owner of a now-defunct YouTube account called "Seaxwielder"; I added my own thoughts to the evidence here.

To summarise: Taylor and "Seaxwielder" are both Steadfast activists; have both lived in Kent; have both used the pseudonym "Scyld"; and are both artists. Capping it off, "Seaxwielder" linked to Taylor's website Wyrdart.co.uk on his profile:

The likelihood that Taylor was the man behind this account is definitely worth our attention when we consider the racist material posted by "Seaxwielder":

This is far stronger than the prejudice shown by Hawke in the documentary. Taylor would appear to be the more overtly racist of the two men, which makes the charity's suspension of Hawke hard to take seriously. From my point of view the suspension appears to be a case of Hawke falling on his sword so as to save the charity's reputation.

The extremist connections of the Steadfast Trust

The charity's official claim is that it did not endorse the Maldon event, and finds the fascist presence "abhorrent":

I think it is true that the Maldon meet-up was never endorsed by the Steadfast Trust - certainly, I can find no mention of it on the Steadfast website. But this is irrelevant when we consider that the charity had, on multiple other occasions, knowingly aligned itself with racists.

Consider this posting, in which it openly invites members of the ASF and Woden's Folk to a Battle Abbey event:

I've written about Woden's Folk and its founder Wulf Ingessunu at length here. It is hard to say where to start when summarising the views of this neo-Nazi cult: the more you scratch the surface, the more absurdities you find.

Briefly, they believe that Hitler was a divine avatar who fought a "holy war" against "dark forces"; that the 1980s TV series Robin of Sherwood was a divinely inspired work of prophecy; that white people did not evolve from apes, but rather have a "vegetative basis"; and that the two world wars were caused by Loki. At least one member also believes that Mars was once inhabited by an intelligent lifeform which is currently worshipped by Zionists.

The ASF (Anglo-Saxon Foundation) is rather more straightforward: it is a racist forum filled with white supremacists. Here are some typical postings by three of the forum's regular members:

Supporters of this movement will tell me that it is unfair (nay, positively anglophobic) to dismiss the entire forum because of a few objectionable posters. But a cursory glance over the board will demonstrate that these objectionable posters comprise the entire membership: even the forum's owner, Seaxan, thinks that Jews should be expelled from England.

As I demonstrated here, both Tim Hawke and Mark Taylor are members of the Anglo-Saxon Foundation - in fact, Taylor used to be one of its moderators. They are therefore well aware of the levels of racism to be found at the forum; despite this, they are perfectly willing to invite the ASF members to their events.

Darren Clarke, one of the activists spotlighted in Exposure, posts at the ASF under the name "Edmundy". The Steadfast Trust suspended him from its list of supporters in the wake of the documentary. As with the suspension of Hawke, this smacks of damage control: the Steadfast Trust openly invited members of a racist forum to its event, so it can hardly be surprised that one of those members turned out to be racist.

We can find more evidence of Steadfast colluding with the ASF in the documentary itself, although the makers did not pick up on it. Remember the sequence showing a Steadfast stall manned by Taylor and Hawke...?

Notice that one of the t-shirt designs on sale features the URL www.englisc-gateway.com. This is the address of the Anglo-Saxon Foundation. The charity was deliberately promoting Seaxan's racist forum.

Another hate group with which Steadfast has aligned itself is the Northants English Welfare Society. I examined this organisation in depth here, demonstrating that its frontman Walter Greenway is a Nazi sympathiser and rabid anti-semite. This is just one of his pro-Nazi postings:

The charity once named the Northants English Welfare Society as an organisation which "can benefit from help in the form of financial grants and advice / assistance from the Steadfast Trust". For an idea of how close Steadfast is to Greenway's racist group, just look at this joint stall:

As we can see, the racism and fascism demonstrated at the Maldon event were not some isolated occurrence. The Steadfast Trust has a proven history of knowingly aligning itself with racist groups, including outright pro-Nazi organisations.

The supporters respond

The Exposure documentary provoked the ire of Steadfast supporters even before it aired. One anonymous blogger hailed the documentary as "desperately pathetic", even though it wasn't due to be screened for another four days. A number of news websites summarised the documentary prior to its broadcast, resulting in comments such as these:

After the documentary was aired, heated discussions broke out on the Steadfast Trust's Faebook page; most of the comments have now been deleted.

At least one supporter lost faith in the charity after seeing its seedy underbelly:

Others, however, began defending the Steadfast Trust, sometimes with conspiracy theories. These two decided that the racists seen in the documentary were probably actors hired to discredit the charity:

"Æthelflæd Seaxmaiden", however, took a different tact and declared that trustee Tim Hawke is actually a plant who was deliberately sabotaging the charity. She also smugly dismissed the undercover cameraman as a "red", although quite how she can have deduced his views on economics is unclear:

The aforementioned Northants Enbglish Welfare Society chimed in with support. Ironically, this posting from a neo-Nazi group was followed by a comment from Lee Ingram arguing that the Steadfast Trust should issue a statement clarifying that Nazis aren't welcome:

Poor, naive Lee. He seems genuinely unaware that the Steadfast Trust has been deliberately inviting neo-Nazis to its events: if it took a principled stand against racists, it would lose most of its support base.

Speaking of Lee Ingram, his "English Advocates" Facebook page expressed its outrage at the affair, pleading that the Steadfast Trust is "a tiny charity... with no Government funding" - as though this means that it is somehow beyond criticism:

Note the implication that Nazi sympathisers within the English nationalist movement are part of a conspiracy. This is a curious sentiment coming from English Advocates, a page that has previously linked with approval to the openly neo-Nazi website Metapedia:

Finally, possibly the most interesting post comes from the Stormfront member Atrociter. I've written about this man before - he once claimed to have spent the day with a Steadfast trustee, indicating that he is pretty close to the charity.

He was apparently in the Maldon group shown in the documentary, and complains that Exposure never showed them joking about a white man wobbling on his bicycle being a "human sacrifice" (this, apparently, is meant to justify their hostility towards a passing mixed-race family). He also makes the reasonable point that the Islamic extremism seen in the same documentary was a graver concern than the Steadfast Trust, before unexpectedly showing his support for the fundamentalist Hindu group:

He also shows some familiarity with the undercover reporter:

Ironic that a Steadfast Trust supporter can object to the charity being associated with white supremacy... while posting at Stormfront.

In conclusion, Exposure may have represented the Steadfast Trust unfairly in some cases. In other cases, however, it was much less harsh than was deserved - think of how much mileage it could have got out of the Steadfast/Woden's Folk connection, for starters.

I'd say that while certain aspects of the documentary are questionable, it was broadly accurate as a whole. The Steadfast Trust has a history of knowingly aligning itself with neo-Nazis and similar extremists, and has now paid the price. I won't shed a tear.

In the next post in this series, I will talk about the second charity examined in the Exposure documentary: Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh.