Neil Wilby Media

Much has been written elsewhere on this Neil Wilby Media website about the darker corners of the internet in Greater Manchester and, particularly, the famous old East Lancashire mill town of Oldham. Infested as it is with assorted racists, criminals, the far-right remnants of the BNP, Combat18, EDL and UKIP and, more incredibly, axe-grinding ex-cops, councillors and other political wannabes.

A group of vile trolls whom, appositely, self style as The Rabble (or Raja’s Rabble) follow a cult that operates behind an array of disgraced, frequently-banned Recusant Nine social media channels. Under the leadership of the Region’s most persistent, mendacious liar and widely known conspiracy theorist, Raja Miah. Long-term unemployed and based in neighbouring Tameside, where, curiously, he has lived in upmarket splendour in the commuter town of Mossley since 2004.

Miah’s only visible involvement with Oldham, since 2013, has been the founding, running and subsequent collapse of the Collective Free Spirit school in Chadderton, leaving a trail of safeguarding and governance concerns and ‘missing’ sums of money approaching £3 million. Yet he claims to speak for ‘my town’, ‘our town’ and ‘the townsfolk who support me’, which number around 150 at present, having peaked at or around the 200 mark. The Rabble has funded him, his plush, lavishly equipped apartment, top of the range BMW car and high-powered motorbike, to the tune of an estimated £40,000 over the past four years. It helps , of course, if your best friend, business partner and finance guru is Mohib Uddin, a senior tax inspector with Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs.

The Borough’s population at the 2021 census was 242,100. His recent crowd-funder to support a purported campaign to be a Member of Parliament in Oldham West and Royton attracted, on his own admission, just 50 supporters and attained only 10% of its target funding. The episode left him ‘not feeling at his best’, he told The Rabble on his Facebook page on 29th July, 2023. Humiliated, or banned (or both), he hasn’t posted since.

When the very existence of the conspiracy theory cult, in which they are so deeply ingrained and some have invested so much of their State benefits, is threatened, that, invariably, brings out the worst of The Rabble. So it has proved over the past few days as they round on anyone critical of Miah, or them.

The author of this article, Neil Wilby, his social media outlets, and those who comment on them, are a regular target for vile, gratuitous attacks. One such contributor, and also a previous victim of Miah and his Rabble, is a widely respected, much loved, former two-time Mayor of Oldham, Ginny Alexander.

Elected as civic head in May, 2019 she served a second, universally popular term in 2020/21 as the effects of the Covid epidemic descended on the Borough.

Her husband, Adrian Alexander, although better known as ‘Alex’, served as Deputy Mayor during the previous municipal year and had been set to take on the chains of office himself until he was ousted from his Saddleworth West and Lees seat by Liberal Democrat Sam Al-Hamdani in the local elections on 2nd May, 2019.

Ginny Alexander was appointed instead, with her friend and civic chamber colleague, Cllr Jenny Harrison as Deputy – the first time councillors in the Borough had elected a female duo.

Alex took the not inconsiderable consolation prize of being Mayor’s consort.

Ginny, was born in Oldham and represented St James Ward during her years as a councillor, had overwhelming cross-Party support for the first citizen role and was nominated by members of the Labour, Liberal Democrats and Conservative Groups on the Council. Her and Jenny were to go on and make history when another friend, Cllr Elaine Garry, took on the Mayoral chain in May, 2022, thus making the first ever trio of successive Oldham Mayors. 

In a moving first Mayoral speech, Ginny said:

“I cannot explain to you how happy and grateful I am. I know my parents would have been extremely proud of me to take this important role as the Mayor of Oldham.”

Moving the motion, Cllr Harrison said Cllr Alexander’s parentage – a Russian father and Hungarian mother who moved to Oldham from war-torn Europe – was an example of the ‘richly diverse heritage in our Borough’.

Amongst the charities that benefited from the Mayor’s two years of fundraising in 2019/2020 an 2020/2021 were: The Steven Gartland Foundation Trust, Christies Oldham, Dr Kershaws, TOG Mind Oldham, Action Oldham, Pennine Pen Animal Rescue Oldham, RSPCA Oldham Branch, and Mahdlo.

Ginny worked all her life since leaving school at 15 years of age, and since the death of her mother in 2008, has been a carer for her brother who has mental health issues. Although she has suffered serious illness herself over the past year, but is making a steady recovery.

With Alex, a former noted and feared Oldham rugby league player, they ran various public houses in Cornwall and London before coming back to her home town. Adrian Alexander was signed by Oldham RLFC in 1979 from Twickenham-based Harlequins FC, where he played alongside, and against, most of the famous rugby union players in that era. He was Harlequins captain and also played for Middlesex, the Barbarians and an England XV. A fans’ favourite at Watersheddings in his playing days, he was appointed as Oldham RLFC’s first ever Ambassador in 2020.

Announcing the appointment, Club Chairman at that time, Chris Hamilton, said Adrian, former Roughyeds prop-forward — a man who was also well known and highly respected in local political circles — was “a big character in more ways than one”.

Alex also served the Borough as a committed and uncompromising Labour Party ward councillor for eight years and was involved in many charitable activities and community projects during that time. He also chaired the influential Saddleworth District Executive.

But all of this outstanding public and civic service – and sporting fame and popularity in the town’s rugby league colours – counts for nothing in the eyes of Raja Miah and his Rabble. Whose collective achievements over the same period could probably be written on the back of a postage stamp:

Alex and Ginny are friends of Neil Wilby (said, disarmingly by former team-mates, and after a few pints of beer, to be ‘the greatest rugby player never to win anything’) and must be hated and smeared in a particularly damaging way:

The ‘Treble Winners/@harrymguire’ Twitter feed has all the characteristics of the many fake, trolling accounts set up over the past three years by key Rabblers with criminal convictions and far right associations. One of them was, in fact, convicted of being amongst a group of around a dozen men of starting the Oldham 2001 riots. Another, one of Raja Miah’s closest lieutenants and an acolyte spotted in Tommy Robinson’s vehicle at the Oldham Limeside riots in 2019. A third is the Borough’s most notorious burglar and scammer, preying on elderly, vulnerable pensioners.

As Ginny has commented, robustly:

“They are a complete pair of idiots [Miah and @harrymguire]. Neither of us were educated at university and we have never been in the National Front.

“Hope they have proof”.

Which, of course, being Miah and The Rabble, proof there will be none. Even with the trolls’ own well-rehearsed connections to the far-right. It’s the casual, vile damage to the reputation of a highly popular, hardworking, high-achieving married couple that takes absolute priority. Simply for exercising their right to freely express opinion on a well known Facebook page.

As for the ‘encouraging the burning of a Bangladeshi man’ this is the Facebook conversation between Neil Wilby and an old friend, former Leeds City Police (later West Yorkshire Metropolitan Police) detective sergeant, Dave Stanton:

Firstly, Ginny Alexander is nowhere near the part of the interchange that mentions the Tandoori oven and it would take a wild stretch of the imagination that the retired detective, and almost retired journalist, wanted Raja Miah burned in an oven. It was a comedic comparator that related to the image attached to the post. In which he is pictured ‘nibbling a samosa’, a favourite pastime of The Rabble. Nothing more or less. Similarly, Dave’s comment referred to ‘sucking on a lemon’ as seen on Miah’s plate by the sharp-eyed old detective.

Admission of defeat by the belligerent and confrontational Miah is never an option in any setting, that is well rehearsed by him in the public domain; particularly, in the proceedings to which the conversation referred to: He pleaded ‘not guilty’ eighteen months ago and continues to provide running commentary on his Recusant Nine channels about the entrenched belief that his arrest and prosecution over suspicion of harassment was, and is, ‘politically motivated’.

But how could The Man From Mossley miss three routine opportunities rolled into one? Paint himself as victim, feed his regular violent fantasies (both good and regular money spinners for him) and smear a journalist, whom he absolutely detests and describes as ‘a racist piece of shit’.

If, as Raja states, he has reported the alleged transgression to Greater Manchester Police, it may likely join hundreds of others in a thick file marked ‘Time-Wasting Crank’: If Neil Wilby wanted to ‘intimidate’ Miah, which, assuredly as a court reporter he would not interfere in any criminal justice process, he would be present at Bolton Magistrates’ Court on 9th August. For reasons carefully explained to Ginny Alexander, that is not the case, at things stand.  

After reading this article, Miah claims on Twitter he decided to report his Tandoori oven concerns not only to GMP, but also to a different, unspecified police force. From whom, he says, he obtained a crime reference number – and he now looks forward to Neil Wilby’s arrest on that basis. He doesn’t mention the outcome of his crime report to GMP, but claims they ‘can’t be trusted’. 

As for witness (and journalist) intimidation that is a subject to which The Rabble, and their cult leader, are particularly adjacent. Turning up as a scruffy mob in court precincts, concourses and inside courtrooms, behaving abominably and attempting to confront, and deter, reporters from attending and doing their job. More crucially, to frighten the principal witness and any of that person’s friends or associates. Specifically in the case of Miah, he has been reported repeatedly over alleged breaches of bail resulting from either his own actions, or acting in concert with at least one other, in what appear to be attempts to coerce the principal witness to walk away. Naming her, in contempt of a court anonymity order, and continuing to openly harass her on one of his Recusant Nine social media channels last week.

All the Tandoori oven nonsense, and the smearing of the Alexanders, is a Raja Miah and Rabble distraction from that discovery. That’s the reality.

UPDATE: The Neil Wilby Media Facebook page had a lengthy visit from a devout member of The Rabble after this article was published on the page yesterday afternoon (Wednesday 2nd August, 2023). ‘Aron Gold’, one of hundreds of fake accounts deployed by that group to troll and smear critics of Raja Miah, ended a series of ludicrous comments and insults to commentators by posting just two words: ‘Pedo protectors’. 

He had presaged that vile slur by positing: “No offence to anyone before you go suing a working class man…I just don’t see why you can’t let the Rabble do what they want?”

Follow Neil Wilby on Twitter (here) and Neil Wilby Media on Facebook (here) for signposts to any updates.

Page last updated: Thursday 3rd August, 2023 at 09h25

Thank you for reading and a polite request: If you feel this article is of value and in the public interest, and wish to make a contribution to the running costs of this website, it would be very much appreciated. Donations can made securely (and anonymously if required), via Buy Me A Coffee at this link or via PayPal at this link.

Corrections: Please let me know if there is a mistake in this article. I will endeavour to correct it as soon as possible.

Picture credit: Oldham Council, Twitter

Right of reply: If you are mentioned in this article and disagree with it, please let me have your comments. Provided your response is not defamatory it will be added to the article.

© Neil Wilby 2015-2023. Unauthorised use, or reproduction, of the material contained in this article, without permission from the author, is strictly prohibited. Extracts from, and links to, the article (or blog) may be used, provided that credit is given to Neil Wilby Media, with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.