A neo-Nazi who was jailed for handing out white supremacist propaganda has said prison had further radicalised him as he announced plans to rejoin one of Britain’s biggest far-right organisations.
Sam Melia, 36, said he would be resuming his senior role in the far-right group Patriotic Alternative.
He said that prison was the ‘single most radicalising thing I’ve been through’ and that he had a ‘renewed zeal’ to rejoin the group.
Melia appeared on a podcast, where he was asked whether prison had ‘doubled his resolve’. He replied: ‘One hundred per cent, I have a lot of hope moving forward. Prison is the best place to send someone like us; there was no one that took issue with me, if anything it earnt me favours.’
Melia was jailed in March 2024 for distributing anti-immigration, antisemitic and white supremacist propaganda.
He used racist stickers to stir up racial hatred and had an Adolf Hitler poster pinned to his wall.
He was released from prison after spending just ten months of a two-year sentence under Labour’s emergency release scheme which freed some prisoners early to combat overcrowding.
Melia’s prison licence restrictions ended this month, allowing him to rejoin the far-right groups he was once part of.
Sam Melia, 36, said he would be resuming his senior role in the far-right group Patriotic Alternative after his licence restrictions ended this month
It is understood the restrictions stopped him meeting with Mark Collet, leader of the Patriotic Alternative and admirer of Hitler.
Melia, of Pudsey in West Yorkshire, lives with his wife Laura Tyrie, who often uses the pseudonym Laura Towler and is also deputy leader of Patriotic Alternative.
On Tyrie’s Telegram channel, a secretive chat-based social media, Melia wrote: ‘My time away hasn’t dimmed my spirit in the least; quite the contrary.
‘Interrogated by both National Security Division’s probation service, as well as Counter-Terrorism’s Desistance and Disengagement Programme, the weakness of their arguments was breathtaking. Frequently breaking down to, “yeah, all that’s true, but why do you care?”
‘We care because this is existential and we’re the only barrier to their sick replacement plan coming to fruition. I rejoin the fray with renewed zeal, this whole experience, dealing with these people, has been the single most radicalising thing I’ve ever been through.’
He added: ‘I’m resuming my work and role within Patriotic Alternative as soon as possible and I can’t wait to see all my friends and compatriots in the coming weeks.’
Melia announced that he would speak at a rally in Nuneaton next weekend. He said that he had written a book that would be released next month.
Melia distributed racist material to more than 3,500 subscribers through the social network ‘Hundred Handers’ from 2019 to 2021.
The group chat’s name referred to a mythological Greek creature that had 100 hands – with Melia being the head of the animal and his followers being the anonymous limbs.
Laura Towler, Mark Collett, Joe Marsh, Wesley Russell and Sam Melia on stage during a protest by nationalist group Patriotic Alternative in Tower Gardens in Skegness, Lincolnshire in 2023
Melia was jailed in March 2024 for distributing anti-immigration, antisemitic and white supremacist propaganda
Judge Tom Bayliss described Melia as a ‘racist and a white supremacist’ at his sentencing in 2024.
The stickers shared through the group were found in a number of public places across Britain – bearing slogans such as ‘It’s okay to be white’, ‘Diversity did not build Britain’, ‘Nationalism is nature’ and ‘Labour loves Muslim rape gangs’.
In his trial, the court heard that Melia’s views were not illegal in themselves, but the fact he was sending out the downloadable messages to be printed showed ‘that their only purpose was to stir up racial hatred’ – which is a crime.
Police found a poster of Hitler in Melia’s garage and a book by British fascist Oswald Mosley on his bedside table.
Ian Acheson, a prison expert, told The Times: ‘In their current form, prisons can act as petri dishes for radicalisation, it is absolutely no surprise at all that this is happening. You take low-level offenders and place them in an environment where more hardened individuals have both the time and opportunity to influence them.
‘And it doesn’t end at the prison gate. The probation service simply isn’t fit for purpose, staff don’t have the time, funding or specialist training to properly monitor individuals.’
A Prison Service spokesman said: ‘This Government inherited a prison system in crisis which has left too many prisons breeding crime rather than preventing it. We are determined to deliver punishment that works and keeps the public safe.
‘Harmful ideologies and intimidation are not tolerated in our jails and officers work with law enforcement colleagues to take action wherever extremist behaviour is identified.’
