Quick Facts
Biography
Alan Lake is the pseudonym used by Alan Ayling, a computer expert from Highgate, London. Until 2011 he was a director of Pacific Capital Investment Management. Ayling has been described by the media as a millionaire, and as the "chief financier" of the English Defence League (EDL), which Lake reportedly has "fiercely denied". He did admit to having "given some money to help some EDL things happen" in his first television interview, on Norwegian TV 2. According to EDL leader Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, Ayling has never been a member of the EDL, and the EDL has not received funding from him. Responding to media claims saying the opposite, Lennon said that "he [Ayling] spoke at two demos and he wore a suit, and all of a sudden he was a millionaire funder."
Lake is considered a central figure in organising international anti-Islamist contacts. Lake spoke at a seminar on Islamisation in Malmö, Sweden, in 2009, organised by the Sweden Democrats. Lake has since said that he continues to maintain good relations with many of the party's members and that he is a good friend of MP Kent Ekeroth. He has considered that the state "might as well" execute Islamists who seek to impose sharia law in the UK. and according to The Guardian he has called for discussion about killing the Archbishop of Canterbury, Prime Minister David Cameron and deputy PM Nick Clegg for allegedly supporting sharia law for Britain. Ayling also founded the far-right "4 Freedoms" website.
Lake rarely speaks with the press. According to Professor Nigel Copsey, Lake represents the more "respectable" intellectual wing of the EDL. In October 2011, Norwegian police formally investigated Lake to discover any potential ideological influence he may have had on mass murderer Anders Breivik. In January 2012, after the true identity of "Alan Lake" was revealed, Ayling was suspended from his management post at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in the City of London.