A convicted criminal and member of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), a paramilitary group linked to a proscribed terror organisation, has close ties to Turning Point UK (TPUK), a right-wing student group in the United Kingdom, according to an investigation. The inquiry, titled Contract Killers and the Far Right, found that Allan Nesbitt, who is from Glasgow, Scotland, was willing to arrange physical attacks and killings for money.
The investigation began in 2021, when an undercover reporter joined TPUK, which describes itself as an independent offshoot of the US activist group Turning Point USA. The group has close ties to several senior members of the British Conservative Party and to leaders of Reform UK, the investigation said.
Undercover meetings with Allan Nesbitt and TPUK’s CEO
TPUK’s chief executive, Jack Ross, stood as a Conservative Party candidate in 2023. According to the investigation, Ross introduced the undercover reporter to Nesbitt and made clear that the two men had a long history together.
Footage shows Ross agreeing to pay Nesbitt thousands of pounds to stage a fake political rally intended to show support for lifting UK sanctions against Zimbabwe. Ross also told the reporter that, for a certain amount, Nesbitt and his contacts could arrange physical attacks, including cutting people’s faces, stabbing, shooting and killing.
To test Ross’s claims, the undercover operative invented a business dispute involving a fictional rival whom they said they wanted dealt with. In a private meeting in a London hotel, Nesbitt said he could “arrange whatever you need done”, but at a price. According to the investigation, this included killing the fictional person with help from his UVF connections.
Nesbitt told the reporters that the person could “have a bad accident” and would be “finished”. He also claimed he had personally killed before, describing an occasion when he stabbed a victim to death after a shooting was judged too risky. In a later video call, he showed a shotgun, a pistol and live ammunition, which the investigation said was intended to prove he could carry out the plan.
Alleged weapons smuggling and the UVF’s past
Nesbitt told the reporter that money paid for a murder would be used to arm the UVF in Northern Ireland. He said the money was raised and the weapons bought in Scotland, and that they were then smuggled into Ireland. He also said he had been involved in this smuggling for many years, and that people in Scotland had supplied weapons used during The Troubles. These claims are Nesbitt’s own and have not been independently verified in the investigation.
The Troubles began in the late 1960s, when Catholic and Protestant groups in Northern Ireland fought over whether the Protestant-majority region should remain part of the UK or join the Catholic-majority Republic of Ireland. The UVF was on the Protestant loyalist side and was responsible for some of the most notorious killings of the conflict, according to Patricia Devlin, a journalist who has investigated the group for years.
Devlin said the UVF killed more than 500 people between 1966 and 1999. She cited the 1971 McGurk’s bar bombing, which killed 15 people, and the 1974 Dublin and Monaghan bombings, which killed 33 people. After the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which at least officially ended the Troubles, the UVF transformed into a more traditional criminal gang, she said. “The movement has turned into drug gangs, while still using the name of the UVF,” Devlin said.
Roy McComb, a former deputy director of the UK’s National Crime Agency, said Nesbitt’s claims did not surprise him. He pointed to the long-standing relationship between loyalists in Northern Ireland and Scotland and said there had previously been evidence of firearms trafficking, intelligence sharing and activists moving between the two countries. He added that firearms “are simply tools that can be sold and that could be sold onto the far right”.
Far-right links and Turning Point UK’s response
The investigation also found links between TPUK and other far-right activists in the UK, including groups that have led protests against migrants and LGBTQ+ rights. Ciaran O’Connor, a senior analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, said TPUK was closely aligned with these groups and used events to mobilise support and demonise the housing of asylum seekers.
A former UVF member told the investigation that the far right in the UK was a “toothless tiger”, but that links to groups such as the UVF could change that. He said such connections could give the far right access to people who had been behind a terrorist campaign for about 40 years and who were still armed.
The investigation said it had notified Scottish police about Nesbitt and his weapons in the interest of public safety. Ross denied the findings “completely”, saying that everything he said to the undercover reporter was not meant seriously. The other parties featured in the investigation did not respond to requests for comment.
