The wife of British man Sam Melia, who was jailed for two years for designing stickers bearing slogans such as “it’s okay to be White”, has revealed three disturbing reasons why the judge chose a custodial sentence.
In a video filmed outside Leeds Crown Court on Friday after Melia, 34, was jailed, his wife Laura Towler said Judge Tom Bayliss KC justified the prison sentence by saying he wanted to deter others, because of “sensitivities” around Muslim grooming gangs, and because the stickers “undermined the government’s efforts to deal with immigration”.
“He said [the sentence] needed to act as a deterrent to other people … I’m very angry because he’s been convicted for his ‘intentions’ behind stickers that are legal, and no crimes have been committed because of these stickers, and because they’re true,” Ms Towler said.
Ms Towler, deputy leader of British nationalist activist group Patriotic Alternative where Melia was Yorkshire Regional Organiser, said another reason Judge Bayliss had ignored a probation report that recommended a suspended sentence was because of the “particularly sensitive social climate” around Muslim rape gangs targeting underage White girls.
“Because grooming gangs were in the news, and Sam was talking about grooming gangs, that makes it sensitive to talk about it. Well, you’re not going to talk about it if they’re not in the news,” she said.
“Another thing [the court] said as well was, if you get involved in activity like Sam has done, you undermine the government’s attempts to deal with immigration. The government who have facilitated record-breaking levels of immigration for 14 years, apparently it undermines their attempts to stop immigration.”
Patriotic Alternative leader Mark Collett said: “This is the definition of state repression. This is a man being sent down for thought crimes as a way to warn others not to think the wrong thing.
“We are living in a multicultural anti-White tyranny, and this shouldn’t be a reason to step back but should be a wake-up call that we need to do more, because if we don’t these miscarriages of justice will just keep coming.”
Ms Towler also revealed on social media that while Judge Bayliss had labelled Melia “obsessed” with British fascist Sir Oswald Mosley after a book and canvas were found in his house, she had testified in court that both were hers.
“The judge knows that these items are mine as I testified in court and under cross examination from the prosecution I was able to talk about Mosley fluently to the point where he tapped out of the conversation. I also provided receipts,” she wrote.
“So why is he suddenly acting like he doesn’t know this? And owning books and a picture doesn’t mean you’re ‘obsessed’ anyway.”
She also said that recruitment for Patriotic Alternative was up 700% since the sentencing, showing the sentence was having the opposite effect to the judge’s stated intention.
Melia was arrested in April 2021 for running an online collection of downloadable stickers for an activist group called “Hundred Handers”.
He told the court during his trial that the stickers, which were put up by activists across the UK and abroad, were intended to start conversations.
The stickers contained slogans including: “Second-generation? Third? Fourth? You have to go back”, “mass immigration is White genocide”, “they seek conquest not asylum”, “there is a war on Whites”, “love your nation” and “White lives matter”.
Judge Tom Bayliss KC said during sentencing: “The publication of this kind of material is corrosive to our society.”
“For the first time since the 1930s, a real risk of gross, potentially violent, antisemitism is becoming normalised on our streets. It has been used before to tear at the heart of Western democracy. It must not be allowed to do so again.”
But in 2017 Judge Bayliss – who in 2016 posted a photo of himself giving a raised fist salute in front of a Nelson Mandela statue – gave a paedophile a suspended eight-month sentence for possessing child sex abuse material.
In 2022 he gave the same sentence to another paedophile, Bilal Akalwaya, 51, who admitted to have sex with a friend’s dog and possessing hundreds of images of children as young as three being sexually abused.
