Camp with far-flung: I learned what I have learned from a year inside the option of patriotism

For the past one year I have been presenting as Dan Jones – a distant group patriotic optional (PA) member.

I have participated in protests, a summer camp full of families, a secret conference, and when I told them that I was sofa-sarfing, the group also gave me a job.

What I heard during the undercover was the matter of the race wars, people who planned to threaten violence against migrants and divide themselves.

The evidence I have been filmed secretly have made calls for police investigation and calls for separate calls. To change the law and ban group,

Warning: This article accounts for racist and violent language graphic

I was following PA members for months before joining the group.

PA organizers in Wales, who were an experienced member of Marsh, far-flung, who had many previous Gujiz in the form of British National Party (BNP) and football goons.

He was involved with protests outside a hotel in Llanelli, Which was prepared for hundreds of shelter seekers,

I wanted to meet him to find out what he would personally say to someone who wanted to join PA.

I chose a fake name, practiced my backstory-that I was a sofa-surfing delivery rider, through a poor brake-up-and sent my details to PA.

It took less than 24 hours to give me a message to Mr. Marsh.

He invited me to meet him for breakfast in Swanasi before protest against drag Queens.

He told me that he invited anyone who wanted to join PA, first to meet him, “You don’t know if you will end on BBC Wales”.

My stomach fell.

After a few hours, it felt as if I passed an exam. Before I left, he asked if I was following his social media accounts. Then the messages started.

Some were direct for me, for some groups in which I was added.

They were tireless – day and night, Mr. Marsh and others from the group. And almost every message was about the race.

There were some racist memes.

For example, a drawing of a policeman who entrusts notes to someone at their door.

Read in the note: “So … we decided to rape a Pakistani to our daughter. Why is it here.”

And there was a continuous stream of links of news stories about the crimes of black and Asian people being guilty of crimes.

After a few weeks, I was invited to join PA members for a so -called banner drop – members gathered near a road for more than an hour, with PA logo and other messages to wave branded flags with other messages. For.

The message on the banner was often quite gentle-they did not want to attract the attention of police or counter-protectors.

But the real conversation I heard was very different.

In my first banner drop, a former civil servant and PA member called Aaron Watkins, asked me if I could fight. They told me that I should learn, saying that it would be good for me to know that I can kill a person.

On another occasion, Roger Philips – who was not a PA member, but participated in some of his protests – told me that he was buying a pump action shotgun, asking me, “Who else is going to fight the migrants?” “

Nearly nine months after joining PA, I was invited to participate in the group’s “Summer Camp”.

About 150 of us – including men, women and children – landed at a camp in Derbishair for three days under the guise of being a hiking association.

The group handled a large part of the campsite and decorated the area with regional flags.

All the leaders of the organization were there, such as founder Mark Cell and Deputy Laura Tavler.

Members came from all over Britain. Many people brought their children with them and were allowed to run and play around the camp, while the group discussed things such as white replacement conspiracy and used racial slars.

We were not just on the campsite.

There was a large scout group next to us, moving forward because they said that children felt frightened by PA.

When this happened, Campsite owners threatened to throw out patriotic options.

One morning, we went to a group growth, in which almost everyone took PA flags. We reached the top of a mountain and stayed for some time, before noticeing a small group of men of South Asian heritage, which was for hiking in the same direction.

Hike ended in unveiling two large banners at the top of a local peak. One read “We will not be not retired” and read another “White Lives Matter”.

One of the last work I did in October was participated in the “Special Conference” of PA.

It was a three -day program, like a political conference, in a hall, the group hired under the guise of the 50th birthday party.

A few hundred members changed and there were banners everywhere, as well as speakers from other countries.

A speaker was Blair Cotrail from Australia – a person with a person. After his speech, I sat on the table on which he was.

He talked about a black criminal in Australia.

He said: “You cannot argue with them, you have to use cruel force.”

And as a preventive, he then suggested a sick suggestion: “Really give them skin and hang some of their bodies in some traffic lights.”

He said that he was speaking theoretically, but said: “This is practically the most effective way to send him a really message.”

Many PA members around him were full of praise. I asked one – Patrick, a former history teacher – did he bought a race in the idea of ​​war.

He said it was unavoidable and, for those migrants who refused to leave the country, “the only way to get rid of them would be to kill each of them”.

The undercover operation was not without stress or issues and took it to the toll for so long undercover. I was always over-thinking, always stressful and my phone always pinged.

Soon after joining, I started wearing a hidden camera.

Once, when I was in a house in South Wales with Mr. Watkins – who offered me a day’s work, helping me with a decorating job – I thought I was recording her, Until I went to the toilet and realized that my camera was not working.

I told him that I need to go out to call my mother, but instead play my manufacturer for help.

My BBC colleagues scrambled to find a solution, eventually left a new camera in a nearby bush to find me.

As we worked, Mr. Watkins told me that he believes that migrants coming to Britain should be put in camps until they agree to leave the country. He suggested that those who refused should be shot.

He said that before finding the anti -terrorism police, he also accepted to burn his old phone on a BBQ.

At the end of the year, the moment came when our BBC team approached the PA members and revealed the evidence made by us.

We never told him that he was an undercover journalist, but within 30 minutes he worked that it was me.

I was dropped from the private messaging group in which I was added, and my burner phone was completely silent. that was that.

Turning back, perhaps the biggest surprise was that there were no PA members who hoped that I expected them to be.

Many were well educated – including a former history teacher, civil servant and NHS workers. He was organized, in which there were in -charge of groups in every region of Britain and a centralized leader in Mark Cell.

He has tried unsuccessfully to register as a political party. Now his plan is to win the People’s Trust by engaging in “local activism”, according to leader Mark Cell.

He said: “Because if you are working in nine-to-five jobs, you are worrying about money … So, suddenly, you are worrying about whether your daughter is raped It is being done, there are 250 men of the fighting ages who go to school as soon as he goes to school.

“And then a group that comes in stops and removes that concern, it is positive in people’s lives.”

Group is also raising money for guilty criminals, such as jail after jail Southport riots,

I spoke to at least three members preventBut his views were not clearly changed.

Now all this is over, I am more cautious than I used to be. I think I have to be careful and more aware than before.

Finally, people with whom I met in Pa do not know my true identity – but they know what I look like.

A barrister who has written books on extremism has said that some of the members of me can be investigated to incite racial hatred, and there are calls to ban groups like PA for law that spread hatred Are you

Leader Mark Cell said that he was not extremist, did not promote violence and had a campaign in peace as to what he said to the indigenous British people.

I have no regrets. It seems, whatever happens, the PA member or other people like him will continue to find ways to do it.

So it is important that they keep showing those who are behind the mask.

If you are impressed by any issue raised in this story BBC Action Line.