Britain First's Far-Right Rally This Weekend Was a Complete and Utter Embarrassment.

The far-right group, notorious for "invading" mosques and shouting at restaurateurs for serving halal chicken, called a protest this weekend against plans to build "the biggest mosque in Europe" in the Staffordshire town of Burton on Trent.

I wasn't sure why this would be a problem – freedom of religion is very much A Thing in the UK – and given that Burton on Trent has a population of around 65,000, I had my doubts as to how true it was. After spending literally 30 seconds researching it on Google, my thoughts were confirmed: the plans were to build an extension on to an existing mosque, which would then accommodate a minimum of 1,500 people. South London's Morden mosque can hold 10,000, meaning the Burton one wouldn't even be the largest in the UK, let alone Europe.

Still, Paul Golding – Britain First's party leader – had sent a video from Budapest to the organisation's Facebook page to encourage people to actually show up. At almost 1 million Facebook fans, the Christian group's online presence is kind of astounding; chances are someone in your newsfeed – maybe that guy from school who had loads of pet lizards, or your shut-in aunt – will regularly share their posts about "supporting our troops" or how we should all "treat extremists like paedos". Thing is, while these regularly receive thousands of Likes, it's rare that the turnout at their rallies surpasses more than a couple of hundred.

"People just watching this video who aren't quite involved in Britain First yet need to get to Burton on Trent," said Golding from Hungary, where he'd been meeting with "fellow patriots".

"You might be saying, 'I'd like to come along, but I'm not too sure about safety.' Our protest marches are always safe," he continued, reassuringly. "There is no reason why people can't come along."

It was decided: I would go along and have a safe experience in Burton on Trent, finding out what Britain First are all about
.

I headed into a car park, where flags and banners were being handed out. Within moments, one of the uniformed Britain First security detail came over, grabbed my collar and told me to "fuck off right now unless [I wanted] to get hurt".

As I was in the process of fucking right off, a guy draped in a Union Jack got very much in my personal space and shouted: "I'm gonna smash your face in if you take another picture."

I decided at that point that I didn't want to join Britain First. Golding had promised I would be safe; his followers had immediately let him and the reputation of his far-right street team down.