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Reform UK has repeatedly refused to provide any explanation to Byline Times for why its leader, Nigel Farage, met and posed for a photograph with a group of far-right activists including a man who went on to be criminally convicted for violently storming an anti-racism meeting at a church – an offence that took place two weeks before the picture was taken.
Byline Times first reported on the photograph, which was taken in mid-December 2024, last January.
Having been posted on Facebook by one of the individuals in the picture on 18 December 2024 with the caption “just been up to meet Nigel for a Christmas drink”, Reform did not reply to multiple requests for comment when Byline Times asked it to explain why Farage had met a group of people associated with racist activism.
This week, Reform again ignored multiple requests for comment from this newspaper, after it learned that one of the men in the photograph, Stephen Lynch, was convicted of assault by beating at Basingstoke Magistrates’ Court last month after the storming of the Holy Trinity Church in Aldershot by a far-right group on the evening of 5 December 2024.
Jeremy ‘Jez’ Stocking, who was also present at the church attack but was neither charged nor convicted, was also pictured with Farage in the photograph. He is an election agent for Reform in this week’s local elections in Rushmoor, Hampshire.
The location of the photograph remains unconfirmed, but its private office setting suggests Farage did not come across the group merely in passing or by chance. The social media post of the picture itself claims that the individuals were there to meet Farage “for a Christmas drink”.
Farage has previously sought to publicly distance himself from Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (‘Tommy Robinson’) and other extreme elements on the populist right, claiming last year that he had “done more to drive the far-right out of British politics than anybody else alive”.
But a Labour Party spokesperson told Byline Times that Farage “time and time again, finds himself in the company of extreme voices” and that “far from distancing themselves in the way Farage has claimed, Reform has actively incubated these individuals, many of whom have expressed vile views or behaved egregiously”.
“This is just the latest – in a string of examples – that show Farage and Reform stand for division and are not on the side of working people,” they added.
A spokesperson for Rushmoor Stand Up to Racism – the campaign group which had organised the anti-racism meeting at the church which was targeted – told Byline Times that “the way this far-right group stormed inside, threatened, and even assaulted people while filming for viral content was beyond anyone’s worst imagination”.
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‘You Are Heretics’
The incident at the church in Aldershot unfolded at approximately 7pm on 5 December 2024, when a group of activists associated with the local anti-migrant campaign, Rushmoor People First – together with figures from UKIP and the far-right group Turning Point UK – interrupted an anti-racism meeting organised by Stand Up to Racism and Blackwater Valley Friends of the Earth.
Four members of the group that stormed the meeting were convicted of assault by beating following a trial this April, having denied the charges.
In footage posted by the UKIP “PBTV” YouTube channel on 6 January 2025, UKIP Leader Nick Tenconi – who is also described online as the chief operating officer of Turning Point UK – can be seen leading the group inside the church. He was not charged with any offence.
The film – titled “Nick Tenconi UKIP gives it back to a far-left meeting at Holy Trinity Church in Aldershot” – shows Tenconi shouting “this is what Christian courage looks like” inside the building.
He goes on to call those present “communists” and “Islamists” who are “here with malintent on the British public”, and claims that “the communists want to see Britain burn and the Islamists are here to spread the caliphate”.
“They are using the house of God to conceal their malignant schemes on Britain,” he says in the film, adding that “the far-left are not welcome in Britain and they are not welcome in Rushmoor”.
At one point, Tenconi turns to the vicar and says: “Reverend… stop behaving like this. Take your boys away.” Addressing meeting attendees directly, he says: “You are heretics, shut up and get out.”
One member of the group present, who faced no criminal proceedings, Jez Stocking, is understood to have attended some of the court hearings in the public gallery. Around the time Byline Times first reported the existence of the photograph with Farage in January 2025, Stocking was described as Reform’s campaign manager for Aldershot in a Facebook post from the party’s Hampshire branch.
However, after this newspaper first approached Reform with a request for comment for this story, the local Reform branch posted a statement online stating that Stocking “is not the Reform UK Aldershot campaign manager” and that, instead, “he is acting as an election agent for one candidate”.
“We also want to be clear: Reform UK Aldershot does not endorse racism, homophobia, Islamophobia, threats, vigilantism, unlawful violence, or personal abuse,” the statement added.
Gillian Bailey, chair of Reform’s Aldershot branch, told Byline Times: “Reform UK Aldershot is focused on the local election campaign and on the issues that matter to residents in Aldershot, Farnborough and across Rushmoor and Hart. For clarity, Jeremy Stocking is not, and has never been, the campaign manager for Reform UK Aldershot.”
In a video posted to social media in March, Stocking called Nick Tenconi a “very good friend of mine” and warned followers to “not trust the police”. In a Facebook post this month, as admin of the Rushmoor People First group page, he is seen leafletting for Reform.
