Host of ‘vile, racist’ podcast to be sentenced for stirring up hatred
The self-proclaimed 'avowed racist' and Adolf Hitler supporter, James Allchurch, will appear in court on Monday.
A white-supremacist podcast host is to be sentenced after stirring up racial hatred on his “vile” show Radio Aryan.
James Allchurch, 51, from Pembrokeshire, Wales, was convicted by a jury in March following a trial at Swansea Civic Centre.
The self-proclaimed “avowed racist” and Adolf Hitler supporter will appear in court on Monday after he was found guilty of 10 out of 15 counts of distributing audio material to stir up racial hatred over a two-year period.
He was warned he faces years in prison over the recordings by Judge Huw Rees who described them as “a stain on humanity”.
Each charge related to a separate episode uploaded by Allchurch between May 17 2019 and March 18 2021 to a public website called Radio Aryan, which was later renamed Radio Albion.
Guests on the show included convicted National Action co-founder Alex Davies, from Swansea, who was jailed at Winchester Crown Court in June last year for being a member of a banned far-right organisation.
A number of other known extremists from the UK and US also featured on the podcast talking to Allchurch, who went by the alias Sven Longshanks – a reference to King Edward I who was also known as Edward Longshanks and was responsible for expelling Jewish people from England in 1290.
During the trial, the jury listened to a total of around nine hours of recordings in which Allchurch and his guests can be repeatedly heard using extreme racial slurs and propagating racist ideology while discussing topics such as grooming gangs, immigration, slavery and crime.
Prosecutor Jonathan Rees KC described the audio files as “highly racist, antisemitic and white supremacist in nature”.
Mr Rees said: “The very purpose of Radio Aryan was to spread his propaganda about racial conflict.”
Allchurch denied the podcast had encouraged hatred or racial violence. Giving evidence, Allchurch told the jury his use of racial slurs was not intended to cause offence, and that he believed he was using “accurate terminology”.
He also claimed his audience was “other nationalists who, at the time, used similar or worse terminology.” The court heard how Allchurch was arrested by officers at his home on December 17 2019.
He told the police he was disabled and unable to work, and that he spent up to 12 hours a day creating the podcast episodes and maintaining his website, which accepted donations via a Bitcoin link.
He claimed not to be a member of a proscribed far-right organisation. After the jury returned their verdict, Judge Rees said: “The language the jury has had to put up with is vile language, and it is unacceptable in my view that anybody should wish to express themselves in this way.
“What I have heard over the last fortnight I regard as a stain on humanity.” He told Allchurch, who has remained on bail until his sentencing hearing, that he should expect a sentence of immediate imprisonment.
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