The Infidels plot their violent Brexit return

When the noisy and obnoxious English Defence League (EDL) used to be a big noise about town, they were often torn by internecine warfare. Most, if not all of these squabbles were between drug dealers that had joined the EDL to sell their wares. It was no exaggeration to say the EDL marched on marching powder.

When splits occurred everybody had the decency to use code that the arguments were over proceeds of “merchandise” sales. 

There were two particular “gangs” that split from the EDL and went onto spread and hold influence and sway over the ‘movement’. They  were two violent gangs based in the north.

Both the North West and the North East Infidels (NWI and NEI) became more violent and more politically extreme versions of the EDL.

The founder of the ‘Infidel’ movement  was one John “Snowy” Shaw, a Llama harmer from Yorkshire.  A violent and drug addled animal abuser, Shaw went from the Israel flag waving EDL to out and out Nazism.

Dominated by violent, racist drug dealers Shaw introduced his followers to Holocaust Denial. He still gets regular visits from the police despite only playing in a Loyalist flute band these days.  

Shaw’s wayward and hedonistic lifestyle soon took its toll and the North West Infidels fell under the spell of one Shane ‘Diddyman’ Calvert from Blackburn. Diminutive and with a string of convictions for drugs and violence, Calvert built the NWI into a force to be reckoned with.

Despite he and his gang being very open about peddling drugs the NWI were very smooth operators. Some thirty strong, between 2012-2018 the NWI were a major player in the far-right. Their drug dealing and violence fuelled not only the National Front but also the BNP and the terror gang National Action at times. Their drug dealing, violence, intimidation and fraud stretched from Blackburn to Blackpool and Wigan.  Two drug deaths are directly linked to the NWI’s activities. Out of respect to the families’ we won’t link to them here.

The gang was instrumental in rioting at Dover and Liverpool, occasions where drug fuelled fascists battled with both police and antifascists.   The NWI was an ‘anything goes’ gang. As well as peddling killer drugs, domestic violence was not just tolerated, but also encouraged as a spectator sport.

In the North East, the Infidels has been led until recently by Warren Faulkner, a convicted drug dealer and football hooligan from Sunderland.  The NWI and NEI did not always link up together because despite sometimes wearing a Nazi military helmet and giving Nazi salutes, Faulkner often claimed he was not a Nazi. This didn’t stop him marching with the National Front at times. Because of Faulkner’s supposed anti-Nazism (he once ate a takeaway curry) some Nazis in the North East were linked up with the NWI. Confused?

Faulkner tried on a number of occasions to keep National Action out of the North East but finally succumbed to their ‘charms’ not long before it was banned. Helped in no small way by that gang threatening to terrorise him if he did not.

Faulkner’s gang spent most of its time in the North East fighting with the EDL and the Sunderland Defence League, led by notorious wally and jailbird Billy Charlton.  Faulkner’s star has stopped shining somewhat of late and his popularity plummeted when he showed apparent delight at the recent jailing of Charlton. Faulkner’s delight was probably more that he can now drink in pubs without having to bump into Charlton.

The Infidels have been quiet since Calvert was jailed in 2017 for his part in organising the joint National Action and Polish Nazi riot in Liverpool in February 2016.

Calvert had organised for Polish football hooligans to travel to Liverpool to guard a National Action event that caused up to £25,000 of damage to the city’s famed St George’s Hall which was left daubed with Nazi swastikas.

After Calvert’s jailing the gang continued for a short time.  Early last year a senior member, described as a ‘herbal supplement supplier’ succumbed to an overdose.  Although the NWI had become almost moribund and consumed with consuming excessive amounts of its own product, it looked like the final nail in their proverbial coffin. The rest of the gang dissipated-apparently under instruction until Calvert could take the reins again.

Calvert left prison late last year under the apparent direction of the government’s ‘Prevent Programme’. While he is under license until the end of November this year, he has busied himself organising young people in a food project of sorts.   One can only assume he’s probably not supposed to be talking to other far-right activists while doing this. But who knows. Everything we know about Prevent we learned from National Action, anyway.

Calvert’s unwillingness or inability to reorganise the NWI has made feet made for marching itchy. Another ‘Infidel’ released from prison more recently and supposedly still under license is Martin Corner.

For the last few months Corner has been using a variety of assumed social media profiles to try and get the gang back together. Another violent thug who also hung out with National Action, Corner claims that when incarcerated with Calvert he attempted to persuade Calvert to let him take over the group but was told firmly “no.”  As we reported in November of last year, Corner is one of a series of NWI members who have developed over time an obsession with the Nazi terror group C18.

With a number of former members of the gang living in bail hostels, their communications have been made using different names on social media. What is clear is that the frustration of waiting for Calvert is taking its toll.

Corner has now made his move and sent word to Calvert that the group will now be known as Infidel Nation Patriots.  Corner is probably unaware that the names of drug gangs are rarely copyrighted.

Using the moniker ‘Martin Mosley’ Corner demands people tell Calvert that the group is now under his command.  As yet there has been no response from Calvert or the collection of women who took over the ‘business’ while he has been incapacitated.

Calvert is an unpleasant and thoroughly reprehensible human being. But the unhinged Corner, who once danced to Calvert’s tune, is a far nastier piece of work altogether. And it can be no coincidence that the North East Infidels (NEI), themselves silent for eight months, also appear to have a new leader.

Alan Raine is currently celebrating (!) his 39^th breach of conditions set out after his recent release from prison.  Raine wants to relaunch the Infidels in London at the end of this month. Both gangs of Infidels are keen to be organised and ready for an anticipated outbreak of violence if as anticipated, Brexit is delayed.

It’s interesting that two of the worst traveling gangs of thugs have re-emerged. A report by the government’s Commission for Countering Extremism (CCE) has just released major report- its first major report, and it has found “Far-right activists are exploiting community tensions by swooping into towns and cities and distorting the truth in an effort to turn residents against minorities, particularly Muslims.”

Perhaps the government was previously unaware of the English Defence League (EDL) which engineered somewhat of a violent hold on towns and cities between 2010-2015.  Thereafter came it and its fractured offspring to do pretty much the same, but on a smaller but more violent scale. The internet was supposed to do the rest for them.

So it’s hardly a new discovery- to find gangs of white racists have been causing misery up and down the country, “swooping” even, targeting brown faces.

I’m not that old, but I can just about remember the National Front (NF) and even the British National Party (BNP), Combat 18 etc doing the same thing in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s.  I’m not even certain if anybody even remembers the BNP on Barking & Dagenham council, domiciled even, taking advantage of local tensions anymore.

Has anybody even heard of Cable Street? One would’ve thought the fact fascists do this, have always done this and continue to do this would be the raison d’etre for the Commission, not the core finding of its first report.  Still, I am old enough to remember the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) declaring the EDL was not racist or right wing.

Some of the mechanics of the far-right may have altered like the climate (I’m going to call that ‘climate change’ and pretend I invented the term), but the far-right doesn’t even reinvent its wheel.

Talking of reinventing the wheel, I hope people have read this statement by Jim Jump of the International Brigade Memorial Trust. In a week that we remembered the heroics and brilliance of those that stopped Mosley at Cable Street, we should also remember that history is on our side and needs no whitewashing whatsoever.