Secret footage has revealed how a Neo-Nazi group posing as a fitness club could be preparing for a ‘race war’. 

The group, named ‘Active Club England’, is using extreme fitness and fraternity as a way of recruiting members, before giving them weapons training and idolising notorious figures such as Adolf Hitler. 

An investigation by ITV News, which will be broadcast tonight, has revealed how a recruitment drive in the aftermath of last year’s summer riots attracted an influx of new members. 

The group has gathered more than 100 people, with one branch beginning biweekly training sessions at a park in Vauxhall, south London, in the shadow of the MI6 building.

It has become one of Britain’s largest white supremacist groups, with a minimum of eight branches operating across the UK. 

Active Club has also established itself in the US and Europe over the last five years, seeking to promote a ‘warrior culture’ while using Nazi insignia. 

Recent recruits to the club include a convicted criminal previously imprisoned for a knife attack in a supermarket.

The knifeman, Jay Barlow, 28, who calls himself ‘Glenn’, joined near the end of last year after he was sentenced for separate offences, ITV News reported. 

Disturbing footage shows the group taking part in boxing training sessions in a London park, where they discuss plans to rent an indoor gym where they can bring weapons. 

Some members are dressed in threatening halloween masks to hide their identities

One member talked of printing 3D firearms and another said: ‘I’ve got about a grands worth of throwing knives and axes and all that and I got a bunch of bows and s*** as well, archery bows.’ 

Another man replies: ‘Archery is nice.’ 

Some members are dressed in threatening Halloween masks to hide their identities, while getting the group together to pose with an England flag. 

Hooded men are seen strolling through parks in a pack before training to fit the club’s strict fitness standards. 

Another clip reveals the selection process for new recruits, with a mysterious caller who goes by ‘Lance’ asking the undercover ITV reporter about his ethnic background, his religious beliefs and what he believed was ‘wrong with the country’

Footage shows the mystery leader conducting the telephone interview – lasting half an hour – before allowing the undercover reporter to join the group.

The reporter went on to film more than 100 hours of undercover footage across eight meetings.

Recruits were told to buy a second phone to communicate with other members over the encrypted messaging app Threema and to keep it separate from their everyday identity.

They circulated fitness standards, which new members were expected to meet within six months or face ejection from the group.

Most sessions involved an hour of high-intensity training where members were expected to meet these strict fitness targets and some involved boxing sessions.

Within their first six months, new recruits were required to lift 60kg on a flat bench press and 110kg in a deadlift.

Guidelines circulated on Telegram stated: ‘Fitness and robustness of mind, body, and spirit are not just expectations but core pillars of our worldview.’

One training session occurred near Milton Keynes, Bedfordshire, when they referred to recruiting members as young as 16.

One online message said they were attempting to ‘appeal to the youth with a sense of adventure and edginess.’ 

The group poses with an England flag inside a gym during a training session 

Hooded men stroll through a park before training to reach the club’s strict fitness standards

Before training they posed with the St George’s flag and then performed a Nazi salute, which they referred to as a ‘Roman salute’ in order to obscure its purpose.

They referred to other areas where they had groups: ‘Anglia’s good and West Mids, around Liverpool is good.’

One member asked: ‘Who rioted? The n***ers or the humans? N***ers, because one of theirs got shot.’ Another referred to black people as ‘ooga boogas’.

‘I much more enjoy when they kill each other,’ one member said. ‘Cause one gets killed and the other gets life, so it’s like two birds with one stone’.

Another commented: ‘If we didn’t have black people, we’d be in a better situation without police. We could just do whatever the f**k we want. We’d drive them out ourselves.’

They also told racist and antisemitic jokes, asking: ‘What’s the difference between a Jew and a dollar? I’d give a shit if I lost six million dollars.’

The group is reportedly creating plans to hire a permanent indoor space in London to ‘practise knife defence without getting arrested’. 

Meanwhile, two members have allegedly discussed getting resources together to purchase ‘ten acres of land’ to accommodate the group.

At a meeting of members outside the Sainsbury’s Local near the station in Vauxhall, South London, they were told to turn their phones off and given the location for training in nearby Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens.

They ended the sessions by performing a Nazi salute and posing with a St George flag, then went on to cafes and pubs to discuss ideology.

One member said: ‘How cool would it be if they got us for the Nazi salute that we done here yeah? And with the MI6 building in the background?’

Another member referred to being vegetarian like ‘Like Uncle Addy’ – a reference to Adolf Hitler – and in online postings, they celebrated Hitler’s birthday with a cake decorated with a swastika.

At later meetings, members used racial and antisemitic slurs and one member said: ‘We’re here to defend ourselves when the s**t hits the fan and after the s** is over, there’s going to be a power vacuum and someone needs to step up. We’re here to take power whenever the opportunity arises.’

During a meeting a week before Christmas, the group was joined for a drinking session by ‘Glenn’, AKA Jay Barlow, in which he complained: ‘You see in like France and Germany, it’s easy to get things like AKs [assault rifles] and big proper guns. A lot of people are 3D printing now.’

He also shared a video with other members in which he abused a man in the street telling him to ‘f**k off back to where you came from.’

During another training session he boasted: ‘I bit an Albanian guy in the face once. I was marching out of the gym and that. We just locked eyes.’

‘He run over the road, cornered himself in some tower block. I said right, let’s have it then boy.’

Barlow told the group: ‘I don’t hate black people because they’re black, I don’t like their culture, I don’t like the way they behave, I don’t like the way they act. It’s not their skin colour, it’s them.’

Active Club England issued a statement saying it was a ‘fraternal organisation for young Englishmen, dedicated to the development of a culture of brotherhood, physical fitness and self-improvement.’

‘We are unapologetically for the English people and our continued existence in our ancestral homelands. We stand for total victory through cultural rebirth,’ they added.

Neil Basu, former head of Counter-Terrorism Policing, described Active Club England as the ‘successor to National Action’, a group aimed at young recruits which was banned after celebrating the murder of MP Jo Cox.

‘It’s very clear – the racism, the white supremacy, the antisemitism – it’s severe. These are people preparing to commit acts of violence,’ he said.

‘Eventually they will attract somebody who has no problem with that whatsoever, because we’ve seen a lot of vulnerable, mostly young, men who are attracted to violence, searching for a cause, and here is a cause being presented to them.’

The group is part of a growing trend for far-right fitness clubs which seek to train members for what they see as an imminent ‘race war’.

Ashley Sharp, 43, a prison officer from Barnsley, was jailed for eight years in November 2023, after a court heard he was the founder and ‘commander’ of the White Stag Athletic Club, established to train others to be ‘soldiers’ for their racist cause.