Nicola Wilding’s family journey reflects a complex portrait of shifting political identities and social anxieties within working-class Britain. Her recently published memoir, *These Wild English*, traces three generations of her family’s experiences, capturing the tensions that led her mother, Sandra, a lifelong Labour voter and care worker, to engage with the far-right English Defence League (EDL).

The story begins in 2013, when Wilding, a television producer based between Glasgow and Cumbria, received a letter from her brother, Billy, then serving a prison sentence for attempted carjacking. He relayed that their mother had attended her first EDL march, surprising the family given Sandra’s previous political leanings. Initially, Wilding was bemused and believed the involvement was a passing phase. However, over the following years, her mother’s ongoing participation in EDL activities, including her posting of imagery commemorating soldier Lee Rigby, indicated persistent anger and fear rather than a simple dalliance.

Sandra, who died in 2024, was never an official EDL member but was drawn to the marches by a “spark of notoriety” and a fear rooted in personal experience. Wilding explains that Sandra’s third husband was a British Army corporal and that the family’s repeated postings at military barracks—including in Northern Ireland, Cyprus, and Colchester—heightened their sense of vulnerability. The murder of Lee Rigby in 2013 by Islamist extremists appeared to trigger Sandra’s activism, reinforcing anxieties about safety in a multicultural society that, Wilding notes, was markedly different from the one in which her mother was raised.

Wilding acknowledges the difficulty in grappling with these transformations within her own family and the wider social context. She stresses the importance of understanding the fears that drive people like her mother, rather than dismissing their actions outright as expressions of prejudice or racism. “If a lot of people are reacting with fear, we have to acknowledge that,” she says. Wilding also expresses frustration over society’s inability to have constructive conversations about such issues without fear or polarization.

Despite her mother’s alignment with some far-right symbols and slogans, Wilding refuses to categorize Sandra as racist. She highlights Sandra’s four decades of caregiving for people from diverse backgrounds and suggests that her mother was “misguided” rather than malicious. Wilding wrestles with this ambiguity throughout her memoir, seeking not absolution but understanding of “lives that are neither deserving nor undeserving but simply unheard.”

Wilding’s account sheds light on the broader question of why many working-class voters feel alienated from traditional political parties and turn toward groups like the EDL. Her family’s story reveals the intersections of economic hardship, social change, and emotional identity that influence political shifts in contemporary Britain. Through candid reflection, Wilding calls for more nuanced engagement with these issues, emphasizing the need to create a society where all groups feel seen and included.