How to defeat Britain’s far right

11:01Gaby Hinsliff:2001. You know, people see it as the Asian riots. But actually what happened on that day was a group of Combat 18, Oldham football hooligans and associated friends, a group of 60 to 80, had met up that afternoon. Tension had risen when some members of the National Front had arrived at this pub in Oldham and were surrounded by police. trying to go into an Asian area to kick off trouble. Right. So we were watching. Darren was in the pub. He was feeding information to me. Police were watching the pub. And then at five o 'clock in the afternoon, people started to disperse, leaving a small corps behind.

11:40Gaby Hinsliff:And the police left. And there was a fight between two kids on the other side of town, including a relative of one of the people in the pub. and three taxi loads of blokes from this group went down and started running down the street attacking Asians in their houses, smashing their windows, banging on doors, threatening people. It just happened early on where all this died. There's a shop there. Police were there. These youths come down, white youths. They smashed the shop up, beat people inside. And they were later convicted for it and the judge specifically said this triggered the riots. Right.

12:19Gaby Hinsliff:Now, two weeks later, they tried to do the same again. We passed intelligence onto the police. That stopped that happening. A week after that, England were playing Pakistan at cricket at Old Trafford. And the plan was there were 40 Combat 18 in Oldham were going to run onto the pitch and put a big Combat 18 flag in the middle of the wicket with encouragement for the Pakistan fans to come onto the pitch to have a fight. So again, we passed information onto the police, and they were all arrested as they were coming in. So I look back on those early days, what I saw as success as was probably stopping extreme violence.

12:56Gaby Hinsliff:Probably very different to my later years.

13:09Nick Lowles:Hope Not Hate was born in 2004, two years after your successes in Oldham. And the organisation has gone on to have a string of successes in exposing the far right from repelling the BMP in Barking and Dagenham in 2010 to exposing a plot to behead a Labour MP called Rosie Cooper in 2017. Many people listening might have watched a docudrama that was based on that, but it was all about the bravery, wasn't it? About one young man in Lancashire who joined the far right group behind the plot and blew the whistle. but reading the book I was really struck by how your techniques have had to change as technology has moved on and in a social media age and and a time when groups and parties far right parties are arguably less important than individual influencers Tommy Robinson is the most famous you prefer to call him I think by his real name Stephen Lennon and Hope Not Hate has been monitoring his antics ever since his early days as a football hooligan with the English Defence League in the early 2010s but people might not know that it was you guys who put him in prison last year

14:09Gaby Hinsliff:Yeah, so in 2021, Stephen Lennon lost a libel case. He had slandered a Syrian schoolboy from Huddersfield, called him violent, said he'd like threatening lots of girls at school. It was horrendous. Lennon's videos were watched by millions. The boy had got a huge number of threats, death threats. They had to move house. The whole family had to move. and literally it scarred him it scarred him for years and the boy sued and won it was clear even going into that trial that lennon had no intention of paying he had got rid of a lot of his assets a few months before he had gone through a divorce and yet he lived this lifestyle he was in and out going on holidays doing all this whilst also pleading to the courts that he hadn't he had no money.

15:02Gaby Hinsliff:So we began working with the lawyers to try to get a proper investigation into his finances. So he's got a string of houses, but of course, none of the houses are in his name. He's got a string of businesses, some of which has profits of hundreds of thousands of pounds, none of it in his name, in friends' names, in family members' names, whatever. So it became quite difficult legally to find this money because as i say there was nothing in his name but part of the judgment in the court case as well as the damages was that he was not to repeat the claims about this syrian school boy but lenin being lenin grew increasingly frustrated about this and partly because this is victim mentality he's right he's been wronged he wants to tell everyone and then he he met these people in the US who had this platform, Mite Media, and they concocted a plan to release the film overseas.

16:00Nick Lowles:Okay, so this is a film in which Lenin basically tries to make the case that the story has been manipulated by the media and the truth about this Syrian schoolboy has been silenced.

16:08Gaby Hinsliff:This is a documentary about the unholy alliance between the media, the justice system and our politicians. How they conspire to suppress free speech, how they pervert democracy and how the The truth and your freedoms are just two of the casuals. Now, of course, he said, I made this footage before the court case. I have nothing to do with a film release, nothing to do with me, Gov. I'm, you know, I'm as surprised as anyone that this film's come out. We proved that that was complete nonsense. If you've just watched this film, you've seen something that they worked tirelessly to hide. They didn't want you seeing it, which means they're going to come to me even more.

16:45Nick Lowles:Who knows where I am when you're watching this film now?

16:47Gaby Hinsliff:At the end of the film, when it was publicly released in May 2023...

16:52Nick Lowles:When the Syrian schoolboy's still waiting for his lighter payout.

16:55Gaby Hinsliff:Yeah, yeah, hadn't got a penny. The final clip of the film was a kind of piece to camera with Lennon saying how difficult it had been for him and his family, please give him more money, whatever. You can support me at www.supporttommy.com. One of our team looked at that video and said, I'll find out where he is. and then he looked a bit closer and he thought the cars look quite old so straight away we suddenly saw these are kind of cadillacs 1950s cadillacs cuba so we started looking and then we found the hotel he was at amazing so then we rang up the hotel obviously claiming to be a good friend of his you know he's gone missing can he confirm he was there blah blah blah and they confirmed the dates that he was there etc we pieced all this together we had like literally an 80 page dossier.

17:42Gaby Hinsliff:We had all sorts. We had video evidence to prove that things were filmed after he had claimed. And we took it to the attorney general's office. And eventually, the solicitor general took it up and they prosecuted him. And he got convicted.

17:57Nick Lowles:And sent to prison.

17:58Gaby Hinsliff:He got sent to prison. Yeah. 18 months.

18:01Nick Lowles:Yeah. And a lot of the work that Hope Not Hate does now seems to be to be a bit more akin to data journalism as opposed to sitting in the back of a van in your pants with a with a long lens camera because it was one of your researchers and i didn't realize this until reading the book who identified the instigator of the southport riots last year tell me about that yeah so i mean

18:21Gaby Hinsliff:at the time of the southport riots obviously a lot of the violence around the country a lot of demonstrations were fairly spontaneous but there was a particular um an account on telegram on the social media platform Telegram. That was just urging people to come out on the street, was encouraging violence, encouraging mosques to be burnt down, the Home Secretary to be hung, calling on people to make a name for themselves by killing me. And it was one of our team who began studying these videos that he was putting out and the text. And there was a particular word that he used. We'd never seen a word spelt like this previously, which was spelt E-I-Y.

19:02Gaby Hinsliff:and we we've built this system one of our team has literally built the system that kind of scrapes and monitors social media accounts we ran this word through it we found a whole number other accounts that use this word that were all linked to him and so then my colleague found on a different account he'd found a photo that the account holder had posted out of his back window and there was a bush there was literally a bush at the end of the garden and my colleague literally searched every garden using Google Earth across Merseyside until he found this bush. And we compiled this dossier and gave it to the police.

19:43Gaby Hinsliff:Up until that point, the police had no idea which part of the country this person was from. There was no single investigation looking into him. In the end, he ended up pleading guilty. He got seven and a half years.

19:54Nick Lowles:And you mentioned that of the threats to kill, one of them was a threat to kill you or encouraging people to kill you. And I wanted to hear a bit about the personal costs of the work that you do, because I know in the acknowledgement section of your book, you thank your long-suffering family who've had to put up with me over all these years, often at great personal risk to themselves. Yeah, I mean, I think, I mean, on one hand, I kind of think I do this,

20:22Gaby Hinsliff:I know the consequences. But more importantly, though, it's that other people are dragged into it. And my partner's been confronted by Tom Robinson's people. And filmed. We've had people watching the house. I mean, there's another person in prison at the moment for trying to both swat me, ringing up the police.

20:43Nick Lowles:Swat you? What does that mean?

20:45Gaby Hinsliff:So that means ringing up the police, saying I've got guns in the house, I'm holding people hostage. I tried to get armed police to come to the house in the hope that they might shoot me or do something he eventually got caught trying to buy a gun um you know I get confronted on the street on quite a regular basis but you know I know what I do and I take the consequences and I kind of I understand the risks I guess my real fear is family and friends people getting dragged in because of me And there always has been a real guilt about that, that people might be hurt or people might have an awful time because of what I do.

21:22Gaby Hinsliff:Partly because we're living in a social media age and we're living in a digital age. You can't remain hidden anymore. For the first 19 years of my activity, my name wasn't known. I had no profile. I could walk around the street quite happily. Obviously, that's all changed now. But sometimes it can feel quite a lonely experience.

21:52Nick Lowles:If we look at Britain in 2025, and your colleague Jo Mulhall has coined the term post-organisational far-right, the rise of far-right social media personalities who don't have a traditional activist background, maybe don't belong to any groups. What challenges does this environment kind of pose to hope not hate and anybody who's wanting to fight and counter the far-right?

22:14Gaby Hinsliff:Yeah, I mean, I think that we're living in a really different world, both in terms of how the far right organise and their ability to organise. When I first started out, you know, the far right were literally small groups of skinheads or football hooligans who'd hang out in pubs. And they looked the part. They were what they said on the tin. And they were really violent. There was far more violence than there is now. But at the same time, you know, they were obvious who they were. this day and age it's less about organizations and it's more about individuals and the far right have been far more successful in utilizing new media new platforms social media than the kind of progressive side of politics and so first of all they can organize they can earn a living out of it you know and again i look back on my early days there was a social cost to being in the far right.

23:06Gaby Hinsliff:If someone was identified being in British movement or Combat 18, they'd lose their job or, you know, there was a stigma. The other thing that we've seen as well, first of all, it's the, this has become internationalized. So you've got someone sitting in the bedroom somewhere in the world and they're influencing someone down the street from you. The other really disturbing feature that we've seen in the last few years is the thing about sexual violence. That, you know, again, when I first started out in this, the BNP's attitude to women was about women are in a home they're you know they're mothers they you know they shouldn't work they should shouldn't wear trousers all these sorts of stuff whereas now we're seeing these particularly amongst teenagers these these boys growing up and that sexual violence is part and parcel of their identity and you know we're seeing more and more people both in terms of far right but also as we saw with the southport killer people who just love violence and extreme violence and you know there There are now these kind of chat rooms or these groups on Telegram where you literally get Nazis, Satanists, jihadists and non-aligned all just mixing together.

24:17Gaby Hinsliff:And the thing that bonds them together is their hatred of women. And they're talking about violence and rape and everything. And these are small numbers of people. It probably reflects a bigger thing about some young men in society, the Andrew Tate sort of world. But this is a new feature and we're seeing it more and more.

24:33Nick Lowles:It's very disturbing, isn't it? And given that Hope Not Hate has always been traditionally so good at digging up dirt on the leaders of these movements, is there any point anymore? Because people like Tommy Robinson, Stephen Yaxley, Lenin, it feels like his crimes are sort of baked in. Nothing seems to stick to him anymore. And at the Unite the Kingdom march, I was saying to people, but, you know, Tom Robinson was jailed for telling lies about a Syrian child. You know, he prompted the racial abuse of a black man who was simply playing with his white granddaughters. And everybody was like, well, it doesn't stick.

25:10Nick Lowles:Is there any point anymore?

25:11Gaby Hinsliff:Yes, there is. I mean, it's a lot harder. And maybe the tactics or the objectives are probably different to what in the past. In the past, you would reveal someone's criminality and people would be generally horrified. But I think, again, we've got to differentiate between the kind of people who've drunk the Kool-Aid, the real believers of these people, and either they're out of fringes or the rest of society. Because people like Tommy Robinson, Stephen Lennon, they are marmite. They've got a big group of people who like him. In our latest polling, 45 ,000 people, 17 % of people like him. 17 % of people in Britain like him.

25:50Gaby Hinsliff:obviously a lot more dislike him.

25:52Nick Lowles:So what's that, about 10 million people? Yeah, but that's, you know, it's frightening.

25:56Gaby Hinsliff:And when you're looking at men between 25 and 34, it goes up to 37%. I mean, this is just unbelievable numbers. But then there's a whole load of people who don't like him. And I think it's really important, even if sometimes we feel that we're hitting our head against a brick wall, it's really important for us to keep reminding people what these people are really about. And some people will understand that straight away. Some people, it will take something for the penny to drop. But, you know, if we don't, we end up kind of helping to normalise people.

26:37Nick Lowles:Coming up, how to have difficult conversations with people you don't agree with.

26:51Nick Lowles:Scotland has natural beauty in abundance, but beyond the stunning landscapes, it's a fertile ground to build, grow and succeed, filled with people who are ready to push boundaries in the pursuit of breakthrough ideas. That's why today, Scotland is a dynamic hub of opportunity across growth sectors, from clean energy and life sciences to digital technology and space innovation. Scotland, for the head, heart and the spirit. Discover more at theguardian.com forward slash Brand Scotland. This message was paid for by Brand Scotland. Parles-tu français?

27:23Gaby Hinsliff:Hablas espanol?

27:24Nick Lowles:Parli italiano?

27:26Gaby Hinsliff:If you've used Babbel, you would. Babbel's conversation-based technique teaches you useful words and phrases to get you speaking quickly about the things you actually talk about in the real world. With lessons handcrafted by over 200 language experts and voiced by real native speakers, Babbel is like having a private tutor in your pocket. Start speaking with Babbel today. Get up to 55 % off your Babbel subscription right now at babbel.com slash ACAST. Spelled B-A-B-B-E-L dot com slash ACAST. Rules and restrictions may apply.

28:06Nick Lowles:I think we should talk a bit more about the solutions, what we can do. And you write in the book, I would never have thought I would ever utter these words, but the progressive movement needs to take a leaf out of the far right playbook. Tell me, what do you mean by that?

28:20Gaby Hinsliff:I think we need a bit of honesty and humility that our message isn't working, clearly, because if they can get so many people on the street, we can't.

28:31Nick Lowles:Yeah, what's saying that these people are racist and xenophobes.

28:34Gaby Hinsliff:And I think that how we speak to people. Throughout my book, I say we have to earn the right to be heard. We tell people how to do something. We don't often do enough listening. And actually, we're often not in the communities that are most susceptible either. And sometimes we just need not to think that we've got all the answers because clearly we kind of don't have all the answers. you know they are speaking to people in a way that that connects whether we like it or not and you know that has to be our starting point and they're certainly better using social media i would argue than the left yeah and it's interesting because in i start the book by telling the story of this young lad who um got convicted of terrorism he actually got convicted because we had infiltrated a group he was 15 years old at the time and it was during covid and he kind of reacted to Black Lives Matter.

29:24Gaby Hinsliff:And within two months, he'd been radicalised online and was in a group talking about terrorism. And I met him earlier this year. He reached out to me. What I found really interesting was that one of the points he made, he said, the right wing was fun. The left wing is not fun.

29:42Nick Lowles:Just a bit po-faced, a bit sanctimonious or what?

29:44Gaby Hinsliff:Sanctimonious, telling people what they must think, what they mustn't think. And there's a righteousness about it. and and he said that not only what he loved he was 15 years old he loved just abusing people he loved that on the right they just made fun of people right okay someone's fat someone's ugly someone's there someone's that teenage boy stuff yeah yeah totally but also in the sense of the the way they talked about things it was about empowerment you'll be a better person and it was just fascinating because it's like i've never heard the kind of left or the progressive side of politics talk about you'll become a better person in doing this part of your development yeah and that's not to say that we have to jettison our beliefs or our values but we've

30:25Nick Lowles:got to speak to people in a different way yeah so what would you say to people maybe on the left progressive people whose instinct is like i'm going to go on a counter demo i'm going to unite against racism i'm going to make a banner and i'm going to get my whistle out maybe i'll shout nazi scum at people what would you urge them to do instead well look i mean i think the first

30:43Gaby Hinsliff:The first thing to say is that I totally understand the desire or even the need to show opposition. You know, that's an important thing, intrinsic thing. What I'd say is that things like demonstrations, things like rallies, these are tactics. Is that the best thing to do? Shouting Nazi at people isn't working if they aren't Nazi. And secondly, actually what we need to be doing is mobilising people. because the majority of British people are in a much better place than it would seem by social media or the political landscape. But there isn't a movement to articulate that. And actually, to me, it's a much better use of time to be working in the communities, to try to kind of bring communities together.

31:30Gaby Hinsliff:Most people see their local community as a nice place. They think that nationally things are awful. and I think that we need to work in those communities. So what I'd say is that we need to find other things to do. There might be times that counter-demonstration is useful.

31:46Nick Lowles:Yeah, maybe showing solidarity does provide comfort to people of colour to think we're not alone.

31:50Gaby Hinsliff:And I think that if particular communities are really, for example, if they were going to march through the east end of London or somewhere where there's a real direct threat, you can understand why people want to come out and show solidarity. But sometimes demonstrations in central London or whatever, It's kind of one group against another group. And as we saw, rather than being a mobilizing and empowering event, many people who went on the counter protest against the Stephen Lennon demo came away really despondent and spirited, both because of numbers and the threats that they were they were under.

32:25Gaby Hinsliff:you know so i i just think we're at one of those moments we're at a real crossroads that we're sleepwalking into something really dangerous and actually what we need to do is to build something massive we need to show there are far more of us than them that isn't to deny their issues have to be addressed clearly there are whether it's economic political legal or whatever but at the same time the far right have their sights on our multicultural society that's what ultimately thereafter. You know, the idea, can people of different faiths, different religions, different backgrounds live together peacefully and happily?

33:01Gaby Hinsliff:They say no. And things that we never thought would be contested territory 20 years ago, 10 years ago, even five years ago, is now contested.

33:22Nick Lowles:give me your favorite example of something at a community level a project or an organization that has worked so it's a community called

33:29Gaby Hinsliff:buttershaw and the kind of south part bradford which had obviously had very strong bmp support in the past very strong ukip support virtually all kind of british white population we made links with a local community center and then covid happened and initially we thought this is a disaster we're having to stop our work but actually we linked up with the community center and started a food bank we our supporters raised money to build an extension to the community center so they could build a proper food store we ran meals and wheels service for people who can get out of their houses we then backed it up with newspapers we had letters leaflets so gradually we became part of the community doing stuff that councils used to do yeah and um then we started doing a kind of annual fun day and started introducing different you know whether it was sport theater different groups from around the city with different backgrounds into the area we held a community fun day at the bradford ball stadium 11 and a half thousand people came it was a weekday in the summer holidays.

34:36Gaby Hinsliff:And honestly, you know, when I look at what gives me hope, there are people up and down the country who are doing unbelievable things with virtually nothing. Our job is to support them, to amplify them and to bring them together because actually that's the way that we are going to beat this. Can you just give some advice for people who have a friend, a colleague, a relative who

35:00Nick Lowles:is repeating far right talking points? How do you handle that conversation?

35:05Gaby Hinsliff:I mean, I think that the key thing is we have to engage in a respectful manner. Obviously, to some people, that's harder to do than others. But at the end of the day, you've got to listen to people. You've got to hear what they've got to say. And you've got to try to draw out either the inaccuracies or the falsehoods they believe. But also, you've got to start posing questions. I think we need to understand what their underlying frustrations are. Now, some of it is about immigration. but actually I know our research shows that actually for even the people who talk about immigration often there's other things underlying it you know and it's like it could be NHS dentists it could be you know housing it could be about their jobs or insecurity at work and you know you've really got to say well is your job going to be better or is your access to an NHS dentist going to be better if we don't have immigrants or migrants or whatever there's got to be a conversation and the dialogue and we've got to draw stuff out of them we have to understand where they're coming from we've got to listen to them but then hopefully in the process of that we can turn around we can challenge them for certain things get them to think about other things and say well what about so and so is your friend and you know do you hate that person do you want that person to go back and i think that we've got to kind of unpick them rather than just shouting at

36:22Nick Lowles:them yeah and it sounds like you believe that a lot of this work needs to happen at a community level, person to person, to people talking to their neighbours, their colleagues, but there presumably is also a job here for government. What should politicians, especially Labour, be doing right now?

36:37Gaby Hinsliff:Sure. I was, and I pick my words carefully here, I was so angry over the summer that we had all these protests going on. You know, we knew that the people, the key organisers behind the flag protests, we knew what their politics were. We knew why they were doing it. That was encouraging racism. And not only was there no pushback from government, there was just nothing from government.

37:07Nick Lowles:More than that, they were all showing how many flags they had on their sheds. Yeah, yeah.

37:10Gaby Hinsliff:But, you know, I kind of think that, you know, the feeling of isolation. People are scared. We need our leaders to stand up. We need them to take a stand on this because this is about values. This is about the country we want to live in. They run the government. Labour came into power. without a cohesion strategy. A year on from the riots, we still don't have a cohesion strategy. It's starting to happen now, but it's a little bit too late. But also, fundamentally, I think, you know, look, there is such a lack of trust in politics and in government particularly, that the answer cannot be government-led either.

37:47Gaby Hinsliff:So, you know, over the last couple of days, you know, we hear Keir's going to do a speech, he's going to meet with other Western leaders and talk about the threat of far-right populism. Fine. But what is not only important, but what's more likely to work is if civil society rises up. It's finding people who have credibility in communities. You get them to speak up and people will listen to them. That isn't the politicians. They can help facilitate it. But look, I mean, we are at a moment where this isn't about immigration policy. This isn't about, oh, look, people have got concerns. This is something far deeper now.

38:21Gaby Hinsliff:The government have to lead. because if we don't, we are sleepwalking into something really, really dangerous and we'll only have ourselves to blame.

38:33Nick Lowles:Nick, thank you very much.

38:35Gaby Hinsliff:Thank you very much.

38:40Nick Lowles:That was Nick Lowell's. His new book, which is out now, is called How to Defeat the Far Right and I would really recommend it. You can follow all of our coverage of the far right at theguardian.com. And that's it for today. This episode was presented by me, Helen Pidd, and was produced by Alex Atak. Sound design was by Joel Cox. The executive producer was Hummer Khalili. And just before we go, if you're interested in subscribing to The Guardian on Saturday, now is a great time to do it because you can take advantage of loads of digital benefits, including unlimited access to the refreshed Guardian app as well as the Guardian Feast app.

39:18Nick Lowles:Subscribe today and save up to 33 % for three months. Just search Guardian newspaper subscription for further details. We'll be back tomorrow.

39:53Nick Lowles:Scotland has natural beauty in abundance, but beyond the stunning landscapes, it's a fertile ground to build, grow and succeed, filled with people who are ready to push boundaries in the pursuit of breakthrough ideas. That's why today, Scotland is a dynamic hub of opportunity across growth sectors, from clean energy and life sciences to digital technology and space innovation. Scotland, for the head, heart and the spirit. Discover more at theguardian.com forward slash Brand Scotland. This message was paid for by Brand Scotland. Parles-tu français?

40:25Gaby Hinsliff:Hablas espanol?

40:26Nick Lowles:Parli italiano?

40:27Gaby Hinsliff:If you've used Babbel, you would. Babbel's conversation-based technique teaches you useful words and phrases to get you speaking quickly about the things you actually talk about in the real world. With lessons handcrafted by over 200 language experts and voiced by real native speakers, Babbel is like having a private tutor in your pocket. Start speaking with Babbel today. Get up to 55 % off your Babbel subscription right now at babbel.com slash acast. Spelled B-A-B-B-E-L dot com slash acast. Rules and restrictions may apply.

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