Pembrokeshire man goes on trial over ‘highly racist and antisemitic’ podcasts

A man accused of stirring up racial hatred through a “highly racist and antisemitic” podcast station called Radio Aryan has gone on trial.

James Allchurch, 50, from Church House, Gelli, Pembrokeshire, is charged with 15 counts of distributing audio material to stir up racial hatred over a two-year period.

His trial began in July last year but it had to be adjourned due to barristers’ strikes. A new jury was selected at Swansea Crown Court on Monday.

The jury heard that each charge relates to a separate audio file uploaded between May 17 2019 and March 18 2021 to a public website called Radio Aryan, which was later renamed Radio Albion.

Jonathan Rees KC, prosecuting, said the content of the episodes was “highly racist and antisemitic”, and “white supremacist in nature”.

Mr Rees said Allchurch can be heard being “threatening, abusive and insulting” about ethnic minorities, and perpetuating the idea that black and white people in Britain are in a race war.

Inflammatory

Often uploaded along with inflammatory cartoons, the recordings had titles such as Rivers Of Blood, Banned In The UK, the Leftist Supremacist Mindset, and the Usual Suspects.

It is the prosecution’s case that Allchurch was the owner of the website, the main host and was responsible for distributing the audio recordings, despite often being joined by co-hosts and guests such as National Action co-founder Alex Davies.

Davies, 27, from Swansea, was jailed in June last year for eight and a half-years for being a member of the banned far-right organisation.

Other guests included Laurence Nunn, also known as Max Musson, and American neo-Nazi Daniel Kenneth Jeffries, who went by the nickname Grandpa Lampshade – “a joke” about the skin of Jewish people being made into lampshades, Allchurch claimed.

The court heard that Allchurch went by the alias Sven Longshanks, a reference to King Edward I, who was also known as Edward Longshanks and was responsible for expelling Jews from England in 1290.

Mr Rees said: “The prosecution say that this defendant was responsible for the creation of a number of audio files containing commentary of a highly racist and antisemitic nature which were then uploaded to a website that was open to the public.

“Despite the change in name from Radio Aryan to Radio Albion the virulently racist content of the website remained unchanged.

“In his own words, the defendant is an avowed racist and considers himself to be a National Socialist.

“The very purpose of Radio Aryan was to spread his propaganda about racial conflict.”

Adolf Hitler fan

Mr Rees said Allchurch is a fan of Adolf Hitler and has praised the propaganda films created by the Third Reich and the Nazis’ research on racial science.

He also said Allchurch had referred to well-known far-right organiser and anti-Islam activist Tommy Robinson, who founded the English Defence League (EDL), as “too moderate”.

Allchurch is said to have pre-recorded each podcast episode from his house in Wales and he claimed each show attracted around 4,000 listeners.

More than nine hours of podcast episodes are to be played to the jury, made up of six men and six women.

Themes in a number of episodes include negative stereotypes of black and Asian people, and the idea that “non-white” people are responsible for all the crime, violence and sexual violence in the UK.

There are also discussions about so-called replacement theory, with Allchurch propagating the idea of segregating people by their ethnicity as well as using violence to “protect white people” and fight against “the invasion”, the prosecutor said.

One of the charges relates to an episode entitled May Refuses To Step Down, which was a discussion about Brexit negotiations during which Allchurch introduced a song he said was “one of his favourite tracks”.

The lyrics – deemed to be “threatening” by counter-terror investigators – include overt references to hanging black and Jewish people, and claim society was better 200 years ago when black people were enslaved, and 80 years ago when Hitler was persecuting Jews in Europe.

Allchurch was arrested by police at his home on December 17 2019 and interviewed.

Mr Rees said: “He (Allchurch) described that he was building up a community of ‘positive-minded individuals’.

“He claimed that what he did on Radio Aryan actually stopped people getting involved in extremism.”

The trial continues.