Last summer, I was sitting in the backyard of a suburban house surrounded by barbed wire fences and locked gates with a group of people. We were all sitting very close on garden chairs. The leader of the Far Right party Britain First, Paul Golding, was just staring at this point on my chest.
I was wearing a hidden camera, and he was looking right where the camera was. I knew I was very far from being safe. This was locked door inside locked door. There was nowhere to run to. Golding has been convicted of headbutting a man in a nightclub and breaking a court order on entering mosques.
After a while I realised he was just zoning out looking at me, and he didn’t know anything about the camera. I was slowly able to breathe again.
For the past 12 months I have been in several groups inside the Far Right as an investigator for the anti-fascist and anti-racist organisation HOPE not Hate.
My investigation into Britain First is live on the Daily Mirror, and part of a documentary on Channel 4 to be shown next week. It’s the first time HOPE not Hate has ever allowed a film crew to follow us.
For over a year, I was known as “Chris”. That was the undercover name I used to gain access to far-right networks here in the UK and across Europe.
At times I have barely recognised myself as I have had to nod along with all kinds of horrendous views and language, posing as a foot-soldier with groups like Britain First, and as an investor inside the ‘intellectual’ Far Right.
While being undercover is stressful, I always felt in good hands. My ‘handler’ inside HOPE not Hate was Patrik Hermansson, who himself infiltrated the Far Right in 2017.
Patrik understands the consequences of Far Right ideas becoming reality, as while he was undercover in the United States, he witnessed what happened at the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville.
A car ploughed into counter protesters and a young woman, Heather Heyer, was killed, just metres away from Patrik. He taught me that preparation is everything for an undercover assignment and helped me to prepare well for spending so many months inside hateful organisations.
In total, we looked at five different movements, groups and networks.
I was surprised to see how many Far Right networks don’t look like the British Far Right.
A lot of these people don’t have pasts in the BNP, EDL, or skinhead haircuts – they have suits and PhDs. They have money and power and influence and access to the most important people in the land. They have a really pernicious agenda around race science and eugenics.
It’s the other side of the coin. Both strands want to stop ‘alien’ cultures.
The eugenics people are two more notches closer to power and they have much more money. It’s the intellectual end of the Far Right. They want to affect society through ideas rather than street protest.
At HOPE not Hate we are trying to pull those ideas into the light, to make sure people know how they are being influenced.
With Britain First, it’s the same work, letting their voters and donors and members know what the organisation is really like. Some people think they are mainstream, but just to the right. When you break down their policies you find they are deeply racist, aggressive organisers posing as a legitimate political party.
It’s important to understand that the UK riots this summer followed years of agitation. Anger plus conspiracy theories, online actions, plus the state of our politics. The way politicians speak about immigration plays a role. We have seen an escalation.
While I was in Warsaw attending a Far Right rally with Britain First this year, I also visited the Jewish Cemetery. It was a moment for some personal reflection.
Part of my family left Poland just before WW1. We are not culturally or practising Jews, but their history looms large in my family. The part of my family that didn’t leave Poland are believed to have been deported to the Majdanek concentration camp and gassed there.
So many people I have met in the last year have Jews in their sights.
This stuff never goes away. It doesn’t even change that much. The symbols and the flags might change somewhat but the meaning behind them doesn’t. Today, it’s a relief to be out of the Far Right – and just to be myself again.
Undercover: Exposing the Far Right airs on Channel 4 on Monday October 21
