The jailing of the Yorkshire organiser of Patriotic Alternative is a warning to every citizen that freedom of speech is under attack in Britain. It is aimed at intimidating other patriots and to stop them from speaking out against the invasion and destruction of our people.
Last December ‘celebrity’ Rachel Riley posted on Twitter that her friend had spent a day defacing BM stickers in North London. Ominously, she urged anyone seeing the stickers to call the police: “This is a counter terrorism issue” she wailed. The tweet went viral, with over a million views. Unfortunately for Riley, whose main claim to fame is that she stands in front of a board and places random letters on it, the vast majority of replies could see nothing wrong with the messages on the stickers.
Sam Melia, a father of one whose wife is expecting their second child, was found guilty of intent to stir up racial hatred through the distribution of stickers. Sam is married to Laura Towler, who has shared a platform with BM speakers on a number of occasions, including at last year’s Heritage & Destiny conference. Laura has not been cowed by this attack on her family, quite the opposite in fact.
Sam was sentenced to two years imprisonment last Friday (March 1) after his arrest by Counter Terrorism Policing North East. The official Crown Prosecution Service website filed their report of the trial under its ‘News and Terrorism’ category, while the Counter Terrorism Policing website also featured the trial. The political police now seem to be equating paper stickers with violent jihadi’s intent on murder.
The case has caused outrage among free speech advocates, many of whom do not endorse or support Sam’s politics, but regard the charges and sentence as another step in the direction of a repressive, totalitarian state. Judge Tom Bayliss KC said to 34-year-old Sam: “I am quite sure that your mindset is that of a racist and a white supremacist. You hold Nazi sympathies and you are an antisemite.”
“You do not have to agree with a single thing Sam Melia believes to find his two-year sentence utterly chilling. Many violent criminals have been punished with far less ferocity than Melia has been for the ‘crime’ of producing some stickers. Free speech is our most precious liberty, upon which all our other freedoms depend. It must include the right to express views that are objectionable, offensive and obscene – all of which apply to Melia’s far-right screeds. Hearing these views is an incredibly small price to pay for living in a free society.”
Fraser Myers, deputy editor of Spiked online.
Looking at some of the lenient sentences the judge has passed down recently, it seems he regards the stickers (which the court said contained factually correct and legal slogans) as more harmful than violence against the police, sexual offences against children, and hard drug dealing.
In February 2024 at Leeds Crown Court, Judge Bayliss sentenced a teenager caught with £4,000 worth of crack and heroin to two years (suspended for two years) for his crime. Obviously, paper stickers are more dangerous than hard drugs, which are known to fuel many other types of crime.
In July 2022, Bayliss told a defendant to “just go before I change my mind” as he tried to apologise for attacking a police officer. David Walker, who was already on a suspended sentence, has 17 convictions for 23 offences, including for violence. He gave Walker four months, suspended for 12 months, and told him his previous suspended sentence would remain in place. Obviously, paper stickers are more dangerous to society than attacks on the police.
In February 2017, a Dewsbury man caught with sexual images of children as young as three and images of bestiality, was spared jail by Judge Bayliss. Reeves (56) was given an eight month prison sentence suspended for two years. He said the best way to stop his behaviour and protect the community was to ensure his supervision by the probation service. Obviously, paper stickers are a bigger danger than paedophile perverts.
Our thoughts are with Sam Melia and his family at this time, and we hope that Sam has already filed an appeal against his sentence and will be out on bail shortly.
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