The Liverpool Street Guardians: concerned citizens, or a ‘fascist organisation’?

“I won’t have anyone print these lads in a bad light. Because it’s not a vigilante, racist group. These are people who are just sick of people getting hurt.” 

I’m stood on Ian Nethercote’s doorstep listening to him talk about the Liverpool Street Guardians, a volunteer-led group who patrol the city centre at night — allegedly to help the homeless and protect vulnerable women. The Guardians are not vast in numbers; a recent photo on Instagram — where they currently have about 3,800 followers — shows a group of about 20 people, mostly men, dressed in black and navy, their faces blurred out. 

Despite this, they’ve had an outsized impact since their first social media posts in April. The right-wing TalkTV host Mike Graham has covered them on his YouTube channel, and online discussion of them stimulates interminable comment threads and polarised views: some call them "concerned citizens"; others a "fascist organisation" who "prey on the vulnerable." And they’re already inspiring imitators: just two weeks ago, a similar volunteer security group — “the Patrol” — began posting on Facebook and Instagram. 

Months ago, a colleague and I began trying to contact the Guardians to no avail. That’s what's brought me to Nethercote’s door in the sheeting rain: he tells us he set up the “Liverpool Street Guardians CIC”. (The Guardians claim he set up the CIC without their knowledge and changed the name after they asked him to.) He tells me he’s accompanied them on multiple patrols (the Guardians dispute this version of events, saying he only attended one “interview”) and Nethercote describes to me the sights he’s witnessed in the “terrifying” and “dangerous” context of the city’s nightlife.

Some of his social media activity on a now inactive account is concerning — in 2023, he described a Pakistani rapist as something which “has to be planned by government”; posted about Islam that "it’s not irrational to be afraid of an ideology that wants you dead", and wrote, “After watching so much immigrant violence on white British lately I’ve decided to fight instead…I’m going to fight fire with fire. Honestly fuck it, I’m all in”.

But meeting him in person, I’m starting to think I’m at another dead end. Nethercote says he withdrew from the Guardians for unrelated personal reasons, giving the CIC away. (On Companies House, it’s now the “Powerbell Boxing Academy.”) But he’s adamant the Guardians are still necessary. “They’re fucking angels, these people,” he says.

Speaking of angels, in May, Merseyside Police introduced nine ‘Halo Points’ — safe-space lampposts with an intercom that connects to a 999 operator, all watched over by CCTV. This is part of Operation Halo, the police’s strategy to tackle violence against women and girls. But the Guardians and the Patrol maintain that the city centre is unsafe — their social media implies it requires their surveillance. Is this true?

Last week, I began to head out in the evenings, hoping to speak to the Guardians or the Patrol, and to assess the groups’ claim that the city centre’s nightlife has become dangerous. 

Walking up William Brown Street in daylight, with its cobbled road and neoclassical buildings on the left, you might never guess it was a trouble spot. After dark, it’s a different story: on the right is St John’s Gardens, where in 2024 a man in his thirties was raped; a few months later, a 16-year-old girl was, too. Last Friday evening, the Patrol on Facebook marked it out as one of their “hotspots”, where they “regularly see groups of grown men hanging around in the gardens.” One of two men I came across playing backgammon by street light had heard of the Patrol, but there was no sign of them that night.

A policeman sitting in a patrol car stationed nearby confirmed he wasn’t there in response to any particular incident and while he’d heard of the volunteer patrol groups, he didn’t wish to comment on whether their presence has drawn Merseyside Police’s attention to areas like this. A police officer at the Halo Point at the corner of Temple Court and Victoria Street was chattier on the topic: “Fair play to them, if they think they’re helping.”

A police spokesperson later clarified via email that Operation Halo wasn’t introduced in response to a spike in offences, but following a 2023 “Strategic Threat Risk Assessment” which identified where violence against women and girls offences were more likely to occur. But according to Merseyside Police’s latest statement of accounts, despite crime decreasing across Merseyside between the 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 financial years, sexual offences increased by 16.32%. 

Trawling through the city streets until 2:30am, I witnessed drunken people, and women who could well be vulnerable, but no obvious predatory behaviour. 

On Saturday, I was sitting on the wall of St John’s Gardens when a number of navy or black-clad men piled out of cars or massed nearby; almost immediately, rowdy men singing “Gold” by Spandau Ballet slunk away into the night. 

“Alright lad, how’s it going?” one of the new arrivals said, not entirely friendly — it was the capital-L “Lad” the police might deploy when you’re halfway through what you drunkenly thought was a furtive piss up the Victoria Monument.

Explaining I was a journalist writing about nighttime safety, I shook the man’s gloved hand. As he confirmed what I already knew — that these are, at last, the Liverpool Street Guardians, a second man walked over to me. I heard him called George.