By Molly Bishop

A far-right political party, Patriotic Alternative, held a conference at the Stirling Highland Hotel earlier this month.

The party booked the venue by withholding their identity, they then later held a demonstration at Stirling Castle where they showed a banner reading “White lives build Britain”. This was the party’s first annual conference, however, it is unknown why they chose this location.

When speaking to the Ferret, a spokesperson for the Stirling Highland Hotel said: “We were unaware of the nature of the event or the organisation which made this booking, as they provided an acronym at the time. Had we known, we would not have accepted the booking.”

Stirling MP Alyn Smith commented on the event, saying: “These bams abused our hospitality with their ultra-hate-fest and their daft wee stunt.” The group has been condemned in the city.

The Patriotic Alternative party is considered the UK’s largest fascist organisation. It was founded in 2019 and it was built on ideas of Neo-Nazism and anti-Semitism to name a few. The Founder, Mark Collett, was the former director of the British National Party.

One Keynote Speaker at the event in Stirling was Sam Melia, who is heavily believed to have been a part of the National Action, a terrorist organisation. National Action was banned in the UK back in 2016 under the anti-terror legislation, over the massive concerns of their propaganda online and threats of violence.

The group’s social media accounts were banned in February 2021; however, they have emphasised the desire to recruit young members. At the same time as their accounts being banned, Tech Against Terrorism found that Patriotic Alternative was recruiting young supporters by creating gaming tournaments through the game Call of Duty Warcraft.

Extreme right-wing groups having the ability to create an online platform is an ever-looming danger. The Intelligence and Security Committee released a report this year on Extreme Right-Wing Terrorism. In their assessment, they acknowledged how “a major driver of the ERWT threat is the online space, where sites dominated by Right Wing Extremists provide encouragement and guidance for terrorist attacks.”

Although MI5 has acknowledged that there has been no increase in ERWT in recent years, between 2017 and 2020 just under 30% of prevented terrorist attacks were motivated by extremist right-wing ideologies. The attacks that have happened were more high profile, resulting in these ideologies becoming more widely discussed and embedded in social media.