Neo-Nazi group is quietly buying up land across the UK in a bid to create white-only enclaves
The Woodlander Initiative (TWI) has already purchased more than 20 acres of land in four different locations and plans to buy up plots in every county in the UK to establish 'white heartlands'.
The fascist land-buying scheme owns a large plot of land near a secluded village in rural Wales that has been used by Britain's largest fascist group to host 'camping' and training weekends.
The group has raised more than £160,000 from far-Right donors and recently bought a section of woodland near Rye in an attempt to establish a white-only enclave in the East Sussex town.
Experts say that owning large swathes of land has been a longstanding ambition of the British far-Right and described it as 'concerning' that Woodlander has been able to do so under the radar.
TWI is run by former BNP and National Front member Simon Birkett who is now linked to Britain's largest neo-Nazi group - Patriotic Alternative (PA) - and was a speaker at its last annual conference.
In a recent article for TWI members Birkett invoked conspiracy theories including the 'Great Replacement' and said that Woodlander is part of attempts to 'create an elite, a vanguard, an alternative group who will actively do what's best for us'.
PA leader Mark Collett - a former British National Party official - has repeatedly championed the land-buying scheme and his activists have camped on the TWI land in Wales.
Writing in the neo-Nazi magazine Heritage and Destiny, Collett described TWI as 'a fantastic initiative that allows nationalists to pool their money in order to purchase land and property'.
'This is a long-term plan that will hopefully catch on and turn into the establishment of indigenous heartlands; places for our people,' he wrote.
Dr William Allchorn, a senior research fellow at Anglia Ruskin University who is an expert on the British far-Right, said that buying land is part of a broader strategy for fascist groups.
'It's the idea of creating a separate white heartland or parallel society where they can be completely off grid,' he said.
'This is worrying because while these camps can look fairly innocuous they involve things like paramilitary training or training in martial arts.'
Dr Allchorn said it was concerning that TWI appears to have 'progressed fairly far' and that it has parallels with groups in the United States, East Germany and South Africa where 'neo-Nazis have been buying up land in order to create white-exclusive towns or communities that live in the style of the Nazi past'.
He said that British far-Right groups had previously 'flirted' with buying land but had largely been focussed on trying to enter electoral politics, but their focus has shifted since the pandemic.
'They view this as a key moment,' Dr Allchorn said. 'If they can find land or they can find a place to build this enclave, it fits neatly with the broader ideological vision which all far-Right groups are aiming towards, which is the erasure and exclusion of minorities and migrants.'
Woodlander has purchased land near the village of Llanafan Fawr, in mid Wales, and recently bought three and a half acres of woodland near the village of Beckley, East Sussex.
It is also planning to buy land near Alston, Cumbria, and advertised this to PA members in an attempt to raise cash to build 'villages' exclusively for white Britons.
In a video posted earlier this month Birkett spoke of 'building a village' for TWI members and on its website TWI says its plan is to 'take back control of our land, our freedoms and our future' for 'British people as a distinct group comprising of the English, Welsh, Scots and Irish'.
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