Mark Cotterill, editor of Britain’s self-styled ‘intellectual’ nazi magazine Heritage and Destiny, is plainly enjoying playing mein host to social gatherings of the dregs of British national socialism.

Two recent events in less than a fortnight brought together veteran fascists, Ulster Loyalists – including some with records of serious violence – and former members of far-right terror groups.

Bookshop attack

The first was in York at the beginning of April. On the far left of the photo above is Paul Thompson, who for several years in the 2000s was BNP organiser for County Durham. In 1994 he was convicted of criminal damage after taking part in an attack on a bookshop.

This was one of a series of such attacks by the nazi terrorist group Combat 18.

Thompson was then jailed in 1998 after taking part in some of the worst football violence seen in the region, when he joined Darlington hooligans brawling with rival thugs from Cardiff City.

Cartwright has been one of Scotland’s most notorious nazis for well over 30 years, involved with the BNP, Combat 18, and Blood and Honour

Soon after his release from prison, Thompson visited the USA where he attended meetings of the American Friends of the BNP, chaired by Cotterill, who was later booted out following investigations by the FBI and US Immigration. Cotterill remains excluded from the USA.

Another of those boozing with Cotterill at this gathering was Steve Cartwright, another AFBNP guest, who also has a record of association with Combat 18 violence.

Notorious nazi

Cartwright (second right in the photo) has been one of Scotland’s most notorious nazis for well over 30 years, involved with the BNP, Combat 18, and Blood and Honour. Cartwright and his brother John are among the main organisers of nazi skinhead music events.

In 1991 he joined fellow fanatics from several European countries featured in a Channel 4 documentary about Holocaust denial.

Letter bomb

Cartwright was on the receiving end of nazi terrorism himself in January 1997. As part of an internal feud inside Combat 18, one of C18’s Danish operatives, Thomas Nakaba, sent a letter bomb to Cartwright’s post office box.

The bomb was detonated in a controlled explosion at a delivery office in Glasgow. Nakaba later shot a Danish police officer while resisting arrest.

As Searchlight recently mentioned in our obituary of Jean-Marie Le Pen, Cartwright joined Liverpool gangster Joe Owens to provide security for Le Pen when he was guest speaker at a BNP dinner in 2004.

Cartwright’s circle of Glaswegian extremists includes veterans of the football hooligan and Loyalist scene.

Also in York was Dr James Lewthwaite (seated third clockwise in the photo) a former Bradford City Councillor who left the BNP to join the British Democrats, which he now leads.

Fading nazi star

The BDP would like to pretend that it has little in common with violent hooligans like Cartwright and Thompson, though Lewthwaite is a keen member of the Orange Order, where he will be used to rubbing shoulders with Cartwright’s Loyalist buddies. He is also a patron of Heritage and Destiny.

Fresh from this gathering, and barely a week later, Cotterill was back on his own side of the Pennines in Manchester, and this time with one of the fading stars of the British far right, Patriotic Alternative leader Mark Collett.

The PA führer was one of three Yorkshiremen among Cotterill’s guests, joining former Harrogate BNP candidate Steve Gill and former BNP MEP Andrew Brons (far right).

Many of those in the photo had at one time been members of both the NF and BNP. Brons was once NF chairman, but his career on the British far right goes back to Colin Jordan’s jackbooted, swastika-bedecked, synagogue-burning National Socialist Movement.

We will never tire of pointing out that he once described would-be synagogue bombers as “well-intentioned”.

Self-styled intellectuals

The only native Mancunian in the photo is former BNP activist and regular H&D letter writer Austin Stonham.

Mysteriously missing were fellow Mancunian Peter Rushton (Cotterill’s deputy editor) and two of his colleagues in the self-styled intellectual wing of British fascism who also regularly write for H&D under pseudonyms, barrister Adrian Davies and former NF Directorate member Steve Brady.

Spanish nazi fanatic

Perhaps their absence was linked to the Madrid trial of another H&D writer, Spanish nazi fanatic Isabel Peralta who was jailed for race hate offences.

Davies is known to be fluent in Spanish, and Brady has a record of safehousing wanted fascist terrorists in his days as International Liaison Officer of the neo-nazi League of St George.

Rushton organised her trip to the UK in 2023 when she addressed H & D’s conference in Preston.

Searchlight and our anti-fascist colleagues in Europe have observed how supposedly non-nazi sections of the far-right, including activists in the anti-immigration movement Vox, have rallied in support of Peralta since her trial, and have been prepared to overlook the fact that she is a completely undisguised nazi.

Within the UK, Peralta has now been backed by British Movement, the country’s most orthodox nazi group, who have produced stickers hailing her as a leader of the new “Europa”.