Off The Fence: Bank Holiday Bonanza

Dear Readers,

Good afternoon and welcome to Off The Fence, the svelte weekly supplement to our gorgeous and beloved quarterly magazine. This week’s edition is a bonus one for all manner of reasons: it’s a bumper Bank Holiday special, for one, and the first edition compiled without the stewardship of our erstwhile editor, Charlie Baker, who is on a temporary secondment to the Isle of Wight for a much-needed fortnight's holiday. For the next two editions, the remaining editorial staff – the Rump Fence, if you will – shall be taking the lead, inserting all of our various hobbyhorses and peccadilloes into the feed tube of content. Expect a marked increase in John Betjeman references, rapacious Liverpudlianism, and Séamas making everything about the small cohort of minor celebrities he happens to know because they're Irish.

This week, however, we begin on a different track, with a special investigation from Harry Shukman, one of Britain’s most fleet-footed gumshoes, examining Toby Young and the far-right allies that he has courted in his pivot towards ‘defending free speech’.

Loser Friends & Alienated People

Toby Young is a firebrand commentator and author who is rarely out of the public eye. He’s got friends in high places — the Prime Minister once praised Young’s ‘rigour and caustic wit’. It also seems like he has friends in places far beyond Downing Street.

In February 2020, Young set up the Free Speech Union to tackle cancel culture. If you pay a £5 monthly fee, his team will come to your defence if you find yourself on the wrong end of a Twitter pile-on.

Despite its name, the Free Speech Union is not, in fact, a real trade union. If you want to join one of those, Young recommends an organisation called the Workers of England Union (WEU), which his followers can join at a discount rate. Promoting this special offer, Young told his members: ‘Unlike most other unions, the WEU will go to bat for you as soon as you sign up.’

In striking a deal with the WEU, Young has climbed into bed with some very unsavoury characters. The union’s chairman is a man named Robin Tilbrook, a far-right campaigner currently flogging a book about ‘the baneful influence of Talmudic racism and Zionism on the body politic of the West’.

Tilbrook is a solicitor from Essex who also runs a far-right political party called the English Democrats, which has welcomed former BNP members into its ranks. He frequently shares the ‘great replacement’ conspiracy theory, which claims that shadowy elites are organising the migration of Asians and Africans into Europe to threaten the existence of white people, and has denounced the Jewish philanthropist George Soros for his ‘evil record and baneful influence’. His party’s manifesto calls for a re-education programme for ‘Islamic community leaders’ and ‘other religions causing concern’. What other religions might they be? Perhaps the book Tilbrook has been shilling, Deus Vult: Reconquista of the West, provides a clue.

‘The controlled mass media ensures we hear not a word about the Talmudism of the Pharisees, the ones who crucified our Lord,’ the book says, using one of the many far-right synonyms for Jews. It adds: ‘We are forbidden to learn – still less to speak – of the intense hatred of Christians and other goyim, and the occult motivation behind the torture-murders favoured, for example, by the Talmud-inspired cult of Bolshevism.’

Nick Griffin, former head of the BNP, has claimed some responsibility for writing Deus Vult. At least one of the chapters appears to be written by Jim Dowson, a veteran agitator involved in the Knights Templar International, a movement that combines far-right politics with Christianity. Tilbrook has spoken of ‘producing’ the series that Deus Vult appears in. One of its chapters on avoiding police scrutiny bears similarities to advice he gave a white nationalist group called Patriotic Alternative.

When I asked a worker at the English Democrats about Tilbrook’s involvement in that particular chapter, she told me: ‘He might have had something to do with it,’ although denied that he wrote the whole book. She added that Tilbrook had ‘a little partnership thing’ going with the Knights Templar. ‘They’re slightly different, but we’re all fighting for the same cause.’ I asked Tilbrook directly if he had contributed to the text, and he said: ‘I am not the author of the Deus Vult book,’ which isn’t quite the same thing as saying he did not contribute to it.

Where is Young in all this? He’s certainly in contact with Tilbrook. When the latter campaigned to get COVID regulations overturned, Young invited him to write for his website, Lockdown Sceptics, and promoted Tilbrook on his Twitter account. In a tweet that has since been deleted, Young introduced Tilbrook as ‘the solicitor leading one of the legal challenges of the government's lockdown regulations’.

The WEU’s number two is Stephen Morris. The union is registered at his address in Bury, north Manchester. Morris is one of the English Democrats’s perennially unsuccessful electoral candidates, having tried and failed to become a mayor, MP and councillor. He is a vaccine sceptic who has told his followers that 5G phone signals are a health risk and global elites are planning to inject people with nanochips to control their lives.

Also involved in the WEU is Niall McCrae, a former mental health lecturer at King’s College London who left his job after calling a Remain campaigner a “fucking traitor” and waving a Union Jack flag in his face. McCrae, an officer at the WEU, writes for The Light, a conspiracy theorist newspaper and has appeared on David Icke's TV channel to plug the union. McCrae has also pushed the ‘great replacement’. Young has published McCrae on his Lockdown Sceptics blog. 

In response to our reporting, anti-extremism charities raised concerns about Young’s connections to the WEU.

A spokesperson for Campaign Against Antisemitism said: ‘Those who fight to safeguard free speech do a severe disservice to the cause by associating with or endorsing individuals or groups that promote antisemitic tropes or incite hatred of others. Anyone connected to Nick Griffin or who shares his horrendous views can have no place in our national conversation. The evidence compiled here is deeply disturbing. All of us must work to keep the far-right on the fringes of British life rather than risking bringing them into the mainstream.’

Real trade unionists might also question whether Young’s recommendation for his fans to join the WEU is worth it. Last year, the union was taken to court by the Press Association newswire after it issued journalism identity cards to far-right influencers. The WEU’s cards were emblazoned with the logo of a fake organisation called the ‘English Press Association’, which the real Press Association argued allowed purchasers to ‘misrepresent themselves’ as their staff.

According to their most recent accounts, the WEU has 1,197 members and an annual income of £116,000. It spends £89,000 on administrative costs, half of which goes towards staff salaries and the remainder on travel, stationery and advertising. The WEU’s benefit expenditure – the amount it spends on members – is just £6,700.

Matthew Collins, a researcher at Hope Not Hate, the anti-extremism charity, dismissed the WEU as a ‘mad dash for shillings’, adding that it was a ‘union for people who are not trade unionists but want to be protected by bad law, bad advice and shite theories’.

Young did not respond to a request for comment, although tracking software shows our email to him was opened no fewer than 22 times. After hearing that a story about his links to the WEU was in the works, Young deleted mentions of the reciprocal discount from his website. This would be a foolproof method of covering one’s tracks were it not for the Internet Archive, which preserves webpages in perpetuity. Which, as his friend Boris Johnson once noted, might be uncharitable evidence of Young’s famous rigour.

Harry Shukman writes Scout, a newsletter about the rise of the British far-right

The Fat of the Land

Last week, we were delighted to publish one of the star stories of Issue 11: an exposé on the horrors and calamities of the government-launched, monarchy-backed ‘Pick for Britain’ scheme, put together with immense skill by the prodigious Jack Beaumont. Since publication, it’s been heartening to see how many of you have shared and commented on Jack’s reportage, believing as we do that the treatment of farm workers, within and aside from the pandemic, is a scandal deserving far greater interrogation by the national press. If you haven’t had the chance to read it yet, it comes strongly recommended – not just by us, but by The Guardian’s First Edition newsletter, who were kind enough to recirculate the story last week.

Throwing the Green Book

It’s a sad truth that a single terrible experience whilst on holiday can set you, irrationally and unfairly, against a whole nation for the rest of your existence. For most people, this prejudice is limited to the tail end of pub chat or leaving a nasty review on TripAdvisor. Not so for famed fan of proportionality, the late Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. We were recently reminded of the fact that, at the G8 summit of 2009, Gaddafi brought a serious proposal to have Switzerland partitioned between Italy, France and Germany after his son – who is named, in line with the rest of the Colonel’s totally normal behaviour, Hannibal – was arrested whilst on holiday in Geneva. In truth, Hannibal and his wife were found to have beaten their servants whilst in residence at the Swiss hotel. A series of tit-for-tat diplomatic incidents between the two nations followed, such as the ban on minarets in Bern being countermanded with a ban on Swiss watches in Tripoli. Relations between the two countries remain frosty – so in the unlikely event that you’re planning a holiday in Sirte this summer, try to avoid a connecting flight via Zurich.

NH? Yes!

It’s time for a Fence salute to the infamous Nicky Haslam, who remains capable of inducing shock even into his ninth decade. He managed to make headlines with a new ‘Things Nicky Haslam Finds Common’ tea towel (available, signed, for a distinctly uncommon £38). The towel included ‘Instagrams of David Bowie’, suggesting a comprehension of the social media platform unusual in an octogenarian. We at The Fence were therefore particularly interested to receive a tip off from an art world insider, who invited us to have a peek at the accounts – presumably Bowie-free – that NH does actually follow on Insta. Amid the Bismarcks, Yentobs and Mary Ann Siegharts, there’s quite a theme. Suffice to say, we don’t think ‘@Skinpisser’, ‘@locked.in.rubber’ or ‘@bones_the_rubber_puppy’ will be appearing on a branded tea towel any time soon.

Everyone Loves The Fence

You may have noticed, in recent weeks, that we have been on a bit of a publicity drive, rattling every tin available to us in order to reach our target of 1500 subscribers under threat of execution from our proprietor. Well, to borrow a phrase from Eddie Vedder, we’re still alive, scooping the final few subs with mere hours to go before the May Day deadline (helped across the line by the redoubtable Chris Addison, booster extraordinare), allowing us all to sleep easy across the Bank Holiday weekend. So, we’re overjoyed to be telling you that our begging bowl is going back in the cupboard now, for a little while at least, and you can trust that your inboxes and timelines will no longer be so populated by our frantic pleas for subs purchases. On the other hand, if you are still unsubscribed, and want to permanently free us from the urge to panhandle, you know what to do: click this link here, or the one at the bottom of the email, and sign up for £25. Two hundred pages, four issues, brightest and best – you know the rest.

Recherche du Tim perdu
The Fence’s editor-at-large, Fergus Butler-Gallie, recalls a brush with the newly disgraced DJ.

The words echoed across the piste: ‘IS YOUR PUSSY CLEAN?’ Tim Westwood’s father had been Bishop of Peterborough and a regular contributor of vague Anglican platitudes on Thought for the Day. Now his son was the headline act for the Oxford and Cambridge Varsity Ski Trip, and was leading his set on a specially constructed stage, bellowing various profanities in the general direction of Val Thorens. Sic transit etc. In many ways, it was a sort of appallingly detailed vignette of Cameron’s Britain: Oxbridge students awkwardly bopping away on a ski slope whilst a drug-addled man in his fifties yelled sexual obscenties at them. For this they had paid hundreds of pounds and would recount that it was ‘one of the best weeks of my life’. Think of the moment in Joseph Roth’s Radetzky March where the protagonist observes a grim and joyless conga around a drawing room at the end of the Habsburg Empire. But with more alcopops. Oh, and a bishop’s son shouting ‘all the ugly people, fuck off!’ in the midst of it.

I was there, at the end of my first year, vaguely aware of Westwood from his appearances on the execrable British remake of MTV’s Pimp My Ride. I remember thinking he was a sort of comedy booking – this was an era when students would be routinely treated to DJ sets by the man from Get Your Own Back or someone on day release from the breeding pen at Made In Chelsea. Now it transpires that the man who spent his headline acts on that ski trip bellowing crude sexual innuendos about people’s mums (see the contemporaneous report in the link above) was a wrong ‘un after all.

Always the ones you least expect, eh? Comparisons have inevitably been made with another DJ who turned out to be a predator. Westwood stands accused of nothing close to the horrors of Savile, but the role of character played, of hiding in plain sight, of a very British oddness throughout both careers makes the link apposite. Those who encountered Savile in the 80s recalled him being a deeply strange figure, who would have been almost comedic in his strangeness, but for a lingering sense of the sinister. So it was with Tim Westwood on the piste 11 years ago. Everyone knew he was weird, that he was sexually inappropriate – in fact he even told us so, at a volume that probably risked an avalanche – but, the sad reality was that, amidst the heady mix of braying, blue runs and vin chaud, nobody really cared.

In Case You Missed It

For the Liverpool Post, Ethan Croft analysed the quiet demise of Europe’s oldest Chinatown.

If you haven’t read this incredibly chaotic op-ed about soulmates in the Sydney Morning Herald, you’re missing out.

We very much enjoyed Nick Duerden’s study into the afterlife of popstars post-fame for the Guardian, covering everyone from Lisa Maffia to Robbie Williams and everyone in between.

On a musician whose fame endures across Latin America, the New Yorker’s portrait of Caetano Veloso really is something to behold.

Writing for the New Statesman, Stuart McGurk spent months collating a fascinating picture of life inside GB News, chronicling its ambition and its hubris as it attempted to upend the British news landscape.

And Finally

If you only know the broad strokes about Dejan Lovren – that he was merely a calamitous Croatian centre-half who bothered the Premier League for a bit – then you’ve lived a charmed life. Eager Lovren followers know the man to be a far stranger presence in football: one glance at his Twitter favourites and you’ll see support for Jordan Peterson, Candace Owens, Ben Shapiro, and Vladimir Putin. He’s been caught singing fascist anthems after Croatia games, has encouraged vaccine hesitancy, and recently urged his followers to boycott Disney over the company’s efforts at incorporating LGBTQIA+ perspectives into their content. A lifetime of heading footballs will do that to you.

But where Lovren stands out most is as an eternally hapless entrepreneur. While at Liverpool, he attempted to set up his own fashion label, inexplicably named after the former Labour MP for Dumfries and Galloway (2005-2015), ‘Russell Brown’. Despite having only one signature design - an owl that looked like it was drawn on an iPad by a child - Lovren was able to force his wares on to some of the most celebrated names in the game: Steven Gerrard, Franck Ribery, Luka Modrić, all photographed candidly and terribly in the latest gear. Sadly, somehow, this marketing firepower didn’t send Russell Brown to the catwalks of Milan; the label’s account has been inactive since 2015, much like its MP namesake, and Lovren now runs a hotel called ‘Joel’ in a small Croatian town near Zrće Beach.

*

That’s just about it for this week’s edition, which we hope you enjoyed without the tweaks and touches of our leader-across-the-water. If this newsletter has prompted any thoughts, queries, questions, comments, rants, essays, or grumbles, reply below and it’ll land in all of our inboxes – your feedback always delights us, and it helps to have hard evidence that we didn’t fumble our first task.

We’ll catch you again next Monday, but for now, have a lovely week. Speak soon.

All the best,

TF

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