This investigation was first published in the May 2024 print edition of Byline Times
Subscribe now to stay ahead of the curve
United Hull’s support of survivors of child sexual exploitation seems, on the surface, to have been a strange course for the group to take.
According to this newspaper’s research, United Hull was founded by several former football hooligans linked to Hull City FC. It was originally set up as a street protest group, aiming to force the local police to reopen an investigation – Operation Marksman – into an alleged paedophile ring operating in the area that had not been fully addressed by the force. It was a story similar to the systemic policing failures to tackle paedophile gangs in Rochdale, Telford, and Rotherham.
Over the years, the extreme politics of United Hull’s leadership and members became increasingly apparent.
The far-right Patriotic Alternative rally, which multiple United Hull members and a leader attended, was a turning point.
Dubbed “Britain’s largest far-right white supremacist movement” by The Times last year, Patriotic Alternative has become one of the most prominent neo-Nazi groups in the country.
Special Investigation: ‘The Far-Right Is Cynically Taking Advantage of Child Sexual Exploitation Survivors’
Andrew Kersley spent five months speaking to survivors of child sexual exploitation and experts on the ‘grooming’ of vulnerable women by far-right groups to understand why it is happening
Earlier this year, Byline Times revealed that the Equality and Human Rights Commission threatened the group with legal action after one of its campaigns – ‘Operation White Christmas’ – asked people to donate only to white families in need.
In the aftermath of the Patriotic Alternative rally, a United Hull leader who eventually stepped down said that he was “first and foremost a street protestor and a patriotic campaigner”. But he was not a singular example of far-right tendencies within the group.
In Facebook posts, United Hull members discuss patrolling night clubs to hunt predators, protesting and “guarding” proposed sites for migrant accommodation, and the need to “form an army like the IRA and defend our country”.
One United Hull member, Sam Melia, was jailed for two years in March this year on charges of stirring up racial hatred. A fan of Oswald Mosley and Adolf Hitler, and an organiser for Patriotic Alternative, the judge said he was an antisemite with Nazi sympathies.
Another United Hull member, Alek Yerbury – who has been subject to a slew of negative press for his resemblance to Hitler – has posted multiple times in United Hull’s Facebook group, including organising details for multiple protests at asylum seeker accommodation. Yerbury was also a leading member of Patriotic Alternative, before leaving in February last year to ally himself with a new group of hardened far-right activists in Yorkshire with hopes to form a “new EDL”, according to Hope Not Hate.
United Hull has also taken part in livestreams with Sharon Binks, an organiser for a group called Justice for Women and Children. It also has links to the far-right, with Binks’ praise for far-right figurehead Stephen Yaxley-Lennon previously the subject of a BBC Newsnight investigation.
