As some readers are aware, there was a very sad development in the overall 'freedom movement' earlier this month, when seven key members of the Freedom Alliance political party - including leader, Jonathan Tilt - resigned. They made this decision on the basis that the always stressful working conditions had now become intolerable, owing to a campaign of sustained personal attacks, directed at leader Jonathan and chair Kaela Banthorpe in particular. 

I was devastated to hear this, not only because Freedom Alliance was becoming an ever-more credible and robust vehicle of resistance to political corruption and global tyranny, but because several of the key members are personal friends of mine. As such, I know just how punishingly hard they have worked on Freedom Alliance - often around the clock and at enormous personal expense - to give the freedom movement a political voice. 

Since the resignation announcement, many people have asked the resigning members, and particularly former leader Jonathan, to issue a more detailed statement regarding exactly what happened to drive such drastic action, which he has now done. 

As I have previously played a very involved role in Freedom Alliance (initially acting as their communications officer, and standing in two council elections), and as I know a not insignificant number of members came through my public endorsements, I wanted to share Jonathan's statement on my site, to give others a clearer perspective of exactly what has occurred.

I personally haven't played a central role in Freedom Alliance for quite a few months, therefore many of the events and individuals Jonathan mentions in his statement are not matters that have involved me personally, so I can't comment further on them. What I can comment on, however, is Jonathan, who I have got to know very well over the last three years (he lives locally to me and was one of the first people I met when I started networking with like-minded people at the beginning of the pandemic).

I very much doubt there are many individuals who have displayed more commitment, tenacity, and dedication to the freedom movement than Jonathan, without whom - it is quite simple - there never would have been a Freedom Alliance - and it certainly would not have been able to mobilise itself as quickly and effectively as it did. Literally born in the backroom of a pub in West Yorkshire in mid 2020, by May 2021, the party was a fully fledged political force -  registered with the Electoral Commission (not a straightforward process), and with well over 1,000 members in its first year alone, by May 2021, the party had recruited over 150 candidates to stand in local elections all across the UK. While there were, of course, many people involved in this monumental achievement, the key driving force was always Jonathan - who, by December 2022, was the single remaining original member on the Executive Committee.

All that Freedom Alliance achieved, from its inception to the current time, has been accomplished on the smallest of shoestrings, as the party had no source of funding beyond membership fees and donations from supporters. Many generous volunteers gave up their time and skill for free (nobody who worked within the party was ever paid a penny), as well as investing their own personal funds in the party when money ran short. 

As a chartered accountant, Jonathan was always completely diligent, scrupulous, and transparent about the party's financial affairs, making sure to publish an annual statement on how all funds had been used at the end of the party's first full year. Moreover, as someone who actually knows him, I can tell you that any allegations that he has been in any way underhand or dishonest about finances are outrageous to the point of absurdity.  This is a man who worked around the clock for over two years for free, going part-time at his paid job to dedicate more unpaid hours to "the cause", and who - directly and indirectly - invested thousands of pounds of his own money in Freedom Alliance.

So for completely baseless accusations of financial impropriety to be levelled at him now, is nothing short of contemptible. By all means, have your differences with people, but to accuse them of mishandling (even stealing) money, when in fact they have done the exact opposite, is reprehensible.

It genuinely is a tragedy for the freedom movement that Freedom Alliance has lost people as dedicated and as driven as Jonathan, Kaela, and the rest of the resigning members.  To fully understand why this has occurred, please read Jonathan's statement below, which will cast some much needed light on what has, sadly, become a very dark chapter.

Politics, Parties and “We the People”.

By Jonathan Tilt

Following the recent resignation of myself and six other members of the Executive Committee of Freedom Alliance I have had a multitude of requests to explain in detail exactly what happened. Given the impact of our resignations on Freedom Alliance those who have invested their time, money and hope in that party are due an explanation.

This is my attempt at that explanation. It is inevitably my opinion and written from my perspective. Unlike some others recently involved in the party, I acknowledge that my opinion is one amongst many and that I do not have perfect insight into everything. What follows is simply my opinion. I will start by giving a brief history of the party.

Freedom Alliance was my idea. As resistance groups start to emerge and in the summer of 2020, I felt that those who were opposed to the state tyranny needed to be given a political option. I never wanted to start a political party. I scoured the Electoral Commission register of parties in search of someone, somewhere who was already doing this. The Libertarian party came very close but their level of resistance in the early days of the covid hysteria was too muted. Heritage Party and David Kurten were saying all the right things on Covid and lockdowns, but their wider social policies seemed to me to be incompatible with a genuine freedom party. So, I gently coerced a few others- Lien Davies, Miri and Mark Finch and Mick Dodgson into setting up a new party. Deep down I knew it would be hassle and aggravation and I haven’t been disappointed.

The initial plan was to have a freedom party local to West Yorkshire with candidates in the local election in Kirklees and Wakefield scheduled for May 2021.Once the website was set up though we quickly made contacts across the UK and particularly in Scotland. The party morphed into a national entity- and my heartfelt thanks go to Lien Davies for persuading that that was a welcome development and not something to run a mile from. 

As a group of amateurs trying to organise political resistance to a full-scale state tyranny we certainly made many mistakes. We undoubtedly offended many people. 

We were registered with the Electoral Commission in March 2021 and just 6 weeks later stood 160 candidates across elections in England, Scotland and Wales. Having taken in around £40,000 in membership subscriptions we invested heavily and deliberately in the Scottish and Welsh parliament elections. The gamble was to try and provide the freedom movement with a chance to express itself politically in those two nations. The gamble failed and we gained about 0.5% of the vote. We did far better in the English council elections where we had spent next to nothing and got as high as 11% in some areas.

Despondency crept in and many of our key members left. The party was saved only by the arrival of Kaela Banthorpe as Chair in the summer of 2021. Kaela’s energy, commitment and absolute determination to provide meaningful opposition to the WEF agenda drove the party forward for much of the next eighteen months. She was vital to its survival and I believe that is precisely why she was so consistently and viciously targeted by those who were trying to harm the party from the inside.

Fast forward to the Summer of 2022 which went well. We stood 48 candidates in the local elections in May gaining as much as 7% of the vote. June saw a focused and energetic campaign for the Wakefield by election, where we managed to beat many of the smaller and much better funded parties.

Then it all went badly wrong. Exhaustion and the difficulty of staying on the front foot when the freedom legions were all returning to old normal played their role. But there was much more to it than that.

September started with an approach from the Alliance for Democracy and Freedom Party (ADF) suggesting that we merge with them. This came out of the blue. Aware of the sense in consolidation we negotiated in good faith. As the discussions reached a conclusion both Myself and Kaela, separately concluded that merger would not be in the best interests of the either the party or the wider freedom movement. We felt that the two parties were not suited either culturally or politically. The Executive voted 6-3 against putting the merger to a members vote as we felt we could not recommend acceptance.  Separately two members of the Executive raised a motion of no confidence in the Vice Chair Di McMillan for her abusive and aggressive behaviour towards another member of the Committee during the negotiations. Di McMillan responded by resigning from the party. 

The ADF merger negotiations left the party in a battered state. The negotiations had become fractured with frequent insults targeted at those most opposed to the merger. We had also lost our focus and were unable to properly regain it for the parliamentary by elections in Chester and Stretford. But I do believe the party could have recovered had not Rachel Elnaugh arrived on the scene at our point of maximum weakness.

Rachel has a substantial personal following and arrived from nowhere and offered to be a general election candidate for us in Derbyshire Dales. We believed this was excellent news and exactly what the party needed. We were badly mistaken.

Rachel organised a Freedom Alliance event in Bakewell on 17^th November. We both spoke to a meeting of about 60 people. But about 20 of the people present had not come to hear about the covid and the globalists’ tyranny. They were a group of residents from the village of Cressbrook. Rachel and others had recently bought land in Cressbrook and the local residents took this opportunity to air their grievances about the way in which they believed Rachel and her friends were abusing a piece of land in the middle of their village. I don’t know the validity of the allegations but what annoyed me was Rachel’s private contempt for the residents and her inability to understand their concerns. Most of the group walked out having made their statements.

One Cressbrook resident stayed. At the end of the meeting he came and spoke to me privately saying that he was glad he had stayed and had learned a lot about the last two years from listening to me talk. He might even be tempted to vote for Freedom Alliance in the future but he could never vote for Rachel. He suggested that I needed to learn more about the “monster” that we had got into bed with and urged me to attend a private meeting with the residents’ group so that that learning process could begin. Out of loyalty to Rachel I declined the invite, something I regret doing.

The action now switched to or steering group telegram channel. Whilst the party was legally managed by an Executive group of upto 14 members the majority of the discussion and debate took place in the Steering Group which had about 60 of the most active members in it. It was relatively easy to be invited to join the steering group and we had deliberately designed the party to be highly inclusive and non hierarchical. 

Rachel’s interventions included the forceful suggestion that the party should de- register as a political party and become some sort of spiritual movement. This was followed up with the requirement that the entire Executive Committee be removed in favour of a totally flat structure in which the ill defined “We the people” would decide everything. When I tried to explain that the Electoral Commission require a Leader, Nominating Officer and Treasurer to be identified Rachel retorted that we just challenge them to a “trial by jury”. Perhaps jousting contests and walking on hot coals were next on her list. She did later concede privately to me, after having gemmed up on Electoral law, that if necessary she would be prepared to be the Leader.

The attacks on those of us who had built up the party over the last two years were relentless. We were accused of being distant dictators when in reality we were probably running one of the flattest and most inclusive parties in UK politics.

Rachel’s arguments tended to be laced with frequent references to “we the people” requiring that x or y happens in accordance with her wishes. From my perspective “We the people” never seemed to amount to much more than “I the person”. Yet we were the autocrats. Her interventions were relentless . She wanted us to change from using the cheap and reliable printers we normally used to an eco friendly printer who charged roughly ten times as much.

Banking arrangements do need covering as Rachel quickly focused on this. Freedom Alliance is an unincorporated club. After founding it in 2020 we tried extremely hard to secure a dedicated bank account. I think we made 14 separate applications. Eventually a helpful adviser at Danske Bank suggested I just forget it because “no one is going to offer a bank account to a new political party in the current environment”. Labour and Tory branches no problem but a new anti-statist party- forget it.

At that point the party nearly folded because of this problem. All we had was a PayPal account. I offered the party use of a dormant limited company with its own bank account. I’d set this up several years previously when I was looking at splitting my acupuncture business in two. I never did that, and the bank account and company had never been used. I put in place a covenant from the company, Tilstand Limited to Freedom Alliance guaranteeing that all balances held in the bank account belonged to Freedom Alliance. The company was effectively just acting as a banking agent to the party and was not charging any fee for that service. The arrangements were approved at that point and on several subsequent occasions by the Executive Committee. Running the party over the last two years has directly cost me several thousand pounds and indirectly cost far more than that. The accusation that I have in anyway personally profited is both wrong and deeply offensive.

As the website is now down I will happily provide copies of the Party’s financial statements to anyone who emails me at jonathantilt@hotmail.com

Rachel was aware of the banking arrangements soon after joining the party as she had received some information from external sources. She questioned me on the subject I replied with the explanation above and she responded that she had “No concerns” about the financial management of the party. Quite incredible then that she has subsequently made a spurious and opportunistic complaint about me to the Electoral Commission for the above arrangements. Even more incredibly the new leadership of the party have requested that the balance owing to the party be transferred into the personal bank account of one member of that leadership. 

I have no idea whether Rachel’s emergence and interventions were part of a coordinated external attack aimed at destroying the Freedom Alliance or whether they simply resulted from what seemed to me to be a hopelessly out of control egotistical loose cannon running amok in the middle of the party. Timing was important had the lunacy not followed on immediately after the turmoil of the ADF merger then we would have been in much better shape to repel it. But the key issue was support- or the lack of it. Rachel’s interventions in the Steering group typically received support from a couple of people. Myself, Kaela and a couple of others who tried to counter her absurd arguments received support from one or two people and hostility from several others. The vast majority of the 60 or so people in the group were reading the comments but not entering into the increasingly fractious debate. The impression we had was that the Steering Group did not support our attempts to counter the absurdities that were being peddled. Dozens of people from that group have since contacted me to apologise for their lack of support. Several have admitted to being scared of Rachel. 

This is the essence of the problem. To win this war we are going to all have to go places that at are times terrifying and take risks that we would sooner not take. Our enemies trade on our fear. Had we been supported by the numbers in the steering group who have now told us that they agreed with us we would not have resigned. 

At a more mundane level it reminds me of a conversation I had with one of our members during the Wakefield by election. This lady has an active presence in social media freedom groups and was supporting our campaign there. I contacted her to suggest that she could help us with leafleting or canvassing in Wakefield. Her reply- she couldn’t do that as she might be seen by someone who knew her. She added that as it was mid summer she couldn’t even use the cover of darkness to do a bit of covert leafleting for us. 

That for me is our biggest problem and at a more serious level has destroyed Freedom Alliance because even in a candidates group people were still intimidated by the high profile outsider who had just joined them.

Founding and leading Freedom Alliance has been an incredible experience. I’ve acquired skills and experiences that I wasn’t really planning to pick up in my fifties. I’ve made, what I’m sure will be, enduring friendships both within the party and the wider freedom movement. At times it’s been pure comedy and other times we have felt as if we really were standing on the front line fighting for freedom. I ‘ve had countless messages and over the past three weeks. One simply said, “thanks for giving me and my family hope during the darkest of times”. Ultimately for me the most important thing is that we tried.

Many people have played a significant role in helping run Freedom Alliance. A few are mentioned above but there are simply too many to thank here. The other members of the Executive who resigned, Lance Burkitt, Jackie Ward, Joanne Allman, Denise Boot and Jane Lord deserve my thanks, not for resigning, but for genuinely sharing the workload with Kaela and Myself. Miri and Mark Finch and Lien Davies whilst not actively involved in the party have continued to be a valued source of support and advice to me. Equally I would like to thank and mention Michelle Valerio and Lynnea Arnold in Wales and Carol Dobson and Mary Steven in Scotland for their exceptional efforts during the parliamentary elections in May 21.

What to do now? I still believe that the political route is one that we must fully utilise in opposing the planned and emerging tyranny. It gives us a platform from which to broadcast the truth. And through the potential to get people elected, especially at council level, it gives us the opportunity to genuinely frustrate the WEF’s plans. My guess is that there are 15-20% now fully awake in the UK. If they all started voting rather than the 2% that generally do so the freedom movement would have a powerful additional weapon. For those in our movement who believe that voting is beneath them I can guarantee you that the WEF and their agents don’t bother themselves with such foibles. 

I could join another political party and hopefully stand as a candidate for them. For me the Libertarian Party is now the only viable and genuinely pro freedom party in England. I could help coordinate a loose collective of freedom independents to stand for election and as a model that is immune to infiltration this is an attractive option. Or I could offer my support, experience and guidance to anyone who wants to launch Freedom Alliance Version 2.0- I won’t be doing that myself. If anyone genuinely wants to discuss the latter two ideas please feel free to email me at jonathantilt@hotmail.com.