Outside the system

Founders of ‘Apolitical’ Patrol Group in Bournemouth Include Asylum Hotel Activist and Reform Candidate

EXCLUSIVE: One leading ‘Safeguard Force’ figure previously expressed hope Reform would “set the world on fire” if elected. Another shared anti-migrant memes featuring weapons

Safeguard Force backer and recent Reform UK candidate on GB News again this week. He is presented as simply a ‘local business resident and military veteran’. Screengrab: GB News

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A new ‘vigilante’ volunteer patrol group in Bournemouth was established by an organiser of anti-asylum hotel protests and is being fronted by a recent Reform UK council candidate.

Safeguard Force, a vigilante-style volunteer group patrolling the streets of Bournemouth, with a view to preventing crime, launched its first patrol on Monday 11 August.

The group claims to have no political affiliation or objective. A post on the group’s Facebook page from 30 July stated: “We are the community — doing this for the community. This is not about politics or headlines. It’s about real people standing up for real safety.”

However, Byline Times can reveal that one of Safeguard Force’s founders, Gary Bartlett, a Dorset-based small businessman, helped organise protests against asylum seeker hotels and moderates a Facebook group containing Islamophobic and anti-migrant posts in which he asked for support for Safeguard Force. And a key spokesperson for the group stood for Reform this February.

Bartlett is the admin, alongside a handful of others, of ‘Taking Back Our Country’, a Facebook group which organises nationalist and anti-migrant protests in Dorset.

holding farage to account #reformUNCOVERED

While most the rest of the media seems to happy to give the handful of Reform MPs undue prominence, Byline Times is committed to tracking the activities of Nigel Farage’s party when actually in power