During the middle ages, monks would travel to the village of Llanafan Fawr in mid-Wales to visit the church and relics of St Afan, a son of the king of Gwynedd, martyred by foreign pirates centuries before.
Today, a different sort of pilgrim can be found there. Two hilly, wooded parcels of land in Llanafan Fawr have been bought by the Woodlander Initiative (TWI), a land-buying scheme led by Simon Birkett, a far-right figure with links to Patriotic Alternative, the UK’s largest fascist group. Critics say Wiltshire-based Birkett’s aim is to create a racially exclusive settlement; he has cited Orania, a whites-only town in South Africa, as an inspiration for the project.
