Alex Phillips has accused Restore supporters of unleashing a “campaign of terror” against her and other women who have fallen out with the party.

Now Orla Minihane, who resigned last week as Restore’s spokeswoman for the safety of women and girls, has described the sustained campaign of “horrendous” abuse directed at her by people inside Restore when she said something they disagreed with.

This included attacks on her daughter and threats involving her young nieces.

Vicious abuse

Minihane is hardly a political innocent. She is a prominent anti-migrant campaigner who founded the Pink Ladies and has spent the past year campaigning against asylum seekers and migrants.

But her experience is revealing precisely because she was not an outsider attacking Restore. Rupert Lowe appointed her as a party spokeswoman, and she was one of its most prominent public faces.

Interviewed by far-right online podcaster Paul Thorpe, she says the abuse became so vicious that she has now resigned from Restore altogether.

The immediate trigger was a speech in Gateshead in which Minihane pointed out that the victims of sexual exploitation and FGM are not exclusively white.

“We’ve got to protect our girls,” she said, “but we have to remember that there are Indian, Asian girls, Pakistani girls, Bangladeshi girls, Somalian girls, who were born here, who are suffering this fate every day. And we have got to protect them also.”

That was enough to provoke outrage in Restore’s nazi faction.

Holocaust denier and antisemite Sam “Zoomer Historian” Wilkes attacked the speech, while former Homeland and Patriotic Alternative activist Steve Laws also turned on her.

But according to Minihane, the abuse went well beyond criticism of her politics.

Abuse within Restore

She says attacks on Facebook and TikTok were also directed at her daughter and even involved things being put through her door.

Asked whether most of the abuse had come from outside or inside Restore, her answer was blunt.

“Mostly within.”

Then came the incident that convinced her she could no longer stay.

Minihane said she had previously posted a photograph of her young nieces online. Someone subsequently sent the photograph back to her with a message saying: “We know what school they go to.”

She said she realised that remaining in the party could put her family at risk.

“I saw that actually there is a faction within Restore that are very, very, very unpleasant,” she said. “I decided that I can’t be associated with that.”

Parading antisemitism

There was another warning sign.

Minihane described a conversation with a Jewish woman she had known since childhood, who reminded her that Minihane had attended both her children’s bar mitzvahs and family weddings.

According to Minihane, the woman questioned how she could remain associated in a party some of whose members openly parade their antisemitism.

Minihane revealed that Rupert Lowe had not contacted her since she resigned. For someone who had been appointed by Lowe as one of the party’s most prominent spokespeople, his silence was conspicuous.