“If you are a member of something, it means you’ve accepted membership. Anything with ‘ship’ on the end, it’s giving you a clue: it’s telling you that’s maritime law. That means you’ve entered into a contract.”
This isn’t your standard legal argument and it is becoming clear that I am dealing with an unusual way of looking at the world.
I’m in the library of a hotel in Leicestershire, a wood panelled room with warm lighting, and Pete Stone, better known as Sovereign Pete, is explaining how ‘the system’ works. Stone is in his mid-50, bald with a goatee beard and wearing, as he always does for public appearances, a black T-shirt and black jeans.
With us are six other people, mainly dressed in neat jumpers. They’re members of the Sovereign Project (SP), an organisation Stone founded in 2020, which, he says, now has more than 20,000 paying members.
As arcane as this may sound, it represents a worldview that is becoming more influential – and causing problems for authorities. Loosely, they’re defined as “sovereign citizens” or “freemen on the land”.
Their fundamental point is that nobody is required to obey laws they have not specifically consented to – especially when it comes to tax. They have hundreds of thousands of followers in the UK across platforms including YouTube, Facebook and Telegram.
Increasingly, they are coming into conflict with governments and the law. Sovereign citizens have ended up in the High Court in recent months, challenging the legalities of tax bills and losing on both occasions.
In October, four people were sentenced to prison for the attempted kidnapping of an Essex coroner, who they saw as acting unlawfully. The self-appointed “sheriffs” attempted to force entry to the court, one of them demanding: “You guys have been practising fraud!”
The Sovereign Project is not connected to any of those cases, nor does it promote any sort of political action, let alone violence. But they have agreed to sit down and, over a few hours, take me through their thinking.
Instead, they are focussed on issues like questioning the obligation to pay taxes, as Stone explains, referencing the feudal system that operated in the Middle Ages.
“Do you know about the feudal system when people were slaves and were forced to pay tax?” he asks.
“Now, unless the feudal system still operates today, and we still have serfs and slaves, then the only way that you can pay taxes is to have a contract, you have to agree to it and consent to it.”
Another member, Karl Deans, a 43-year-old property developer who runs the SP’s social media, says: “We’re not here to dodge tax.”
Local government tends to be a target beyond just demands for tax. Stone speaks of “council employee crimes”.
I ask whether, considering the attempted kidnapping in Essex, there is a danger that people will listen to these accusations of crimes by councils and act on them.
“Well that’s proved,” Pete says. “We only deal with facts.”
Evidence suggests this approach is becoming an issue for councils across the UK, as people search online for ways to avoid paying tax.
Sky News analysis shows that out of 374 council websites covering Great Britain, at least 172 (46%) have pages responding to sovereign citizen arguments around avoiding paying council tax. They point out that liability for council tax is not dependent on consent, or a contract, and instead relies on the Local Government Finance Act 1992, voted on by Parliament.
But the Sovereign Project’s worldview extends beyond council tax. It is deeply anti-establishment, at times conspiratorial. Stone suggests the summer riots may have been organised by the government.
“The sovereign fraternity operates above all of this,” he says. “We look down at the world like a chessboard. We see what’s going on.”
He explains that, really, the UK government isn’t actually in control: there is a shadow government above them.
“These are the people who control government,” he explains.
“A lot of people say this could be the crown council of 13, this could be a series of Italian families.”
Professor Christine Sarteschi, an expert in sovereign citizens at Chatham University, Pittsburgh, says she’s worried about the threat sovereign citizens may pose to the rule of law, especially in the US where guns are readily available.
“The movement is growing and that’s evidenced by seeing it in different countries and hearing about different cases. The concern is that they will become emboldened and commit acts of violence,” she says.
“Because sovereigns truly believe in their ideas and if they feel very aggrieved by, you know, the government or whomever they think is oppressing them or controlling them… they can become emotionally involved.
“That emotional involvement sometimes leads to violence in some cases, or the belief that they have the power to attempt to overthrow a government in some capacity.”
Much of this seems to be based on an underlying and familiar frustration at the state of this country and of the world.
Stone echoes some of the characteristic arguments also made by the right, that there is “two-tier policing”, that refugees arriving in the UK are “young men of fighting age”, that the government is using “forced immigration to destroy the country”.
Another SP member, retired investment banker David Hopgood, 61, says: “I firmly believe it is the true Englishman – and woman – of this country – that has the power to unlock this madness that’s happening in the West.
“We’ve got the Magna Carta – all these checks and balances. We just need to pack up, go down to Parliament and say: It’s time to dismiss you. You’re not fit for purpose.”
The members of the Sovereign Project are unfailingly patient and polite in explaining their understanding of the world.
But there is no doubt they hold a deeply radical view, one that is apparently growing in popularity.
