2018 begins with White Terrorism trials

An alleged self-proclaimed Nazi has appeared at Preston crown court charged with stirring up racial hatred at two far-right demonstrations in Blackpool and North Yorkshire. The 22-year-old man from Lancashire, who cannot be named for legal reasons, appeared at Preston crown court on Tuesday accused of breaching section 18 of the 1986 Public Order Act by using “threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour” intended to stir up hatred against Jewish people.

He pleaded not guilty to the charges. The charges relate to two speeches given by the defendant, the first in March 2016 at a demonstration by a group called North West Infidels in Blackpool and the second later the same year at a meeting of the Yorkshire Forum for Nationalists, attended by people from various far-right groups.

The jury was played a recording of the Blackpool demonstration in which a man could be heard describing Jewish people as “parasites” and arguing that Britain had taken the wrong side in the second world war. “We should have been fighting the communists,” he said. “Instead we took the side of the communists and fought the national socialists who were there to remove Jewry from Europe once and for all.”

The man added: “Yes, I am a national socialist, I’m not scared of that label. You can call me Nazi. You can call me fascist. That is what I am.”

Meanwhile six alleged neo-Nazis have appeared in Westminster Crown court charged with joining the banned terrorist group National Action. Nathan Pryke, 26, Adam Thomas, 21, Claudia Patatas, 38, Darren Fletcher, 28, Daniel Bogunovic, 26, and 24-year-old Joel Wilmore werearrested in coordinated raids by armed police across the Midlands and North last week. They all indicated that they would plead not guilty to a charge of being concerned in commission, preparation and instigation of acts of terrorism by being members of National Action, and will face trail in Birmingham later in the year.

Lastlly, at Woolwich crown court a man drove a van into a crowd near a mosque in a terrorist act intended to kill as many Muslims as possible, a jury has heard.

Darren Osborne, 48, denies murdering one man, Makram Ali, and injuring others in Finsbury Park, north London, on 19 June. Jonathan Rees QC, for the prosecution, told the jury at Woolwich crown court on Monday: “On 19 June 2017, at just after a quarter past midnight, the defendant, Mr Osborne, deliberately drove a heavy Luton box van into a group of Muslims who had gathered in the junction of Seven Sisters Road and Whadcoat Street, in the Finsbury Park area of London.

“The evidence establishes that the defendant was trying to kill as many of the group as possible. In the event, he killed one person, a 51-year-old man called Makram Ali, and in addition injured many others, some of them seriously.”

Rees said the hatred and extremism shown in the note Osborne wrote, which was recovered from the van he used to stage the attack, showed Ali’s death and the injuries to others near the mosque was a terrorist act.

Rees told the jury: “Although there is no terrorist offence for you to consider in this case, the prosecution say that the note and the comments he made after his detention establish that this act of extreme violence was, indeed, an act of terrorism, designed to influence government and intimidate the Muslim community, and done for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, ideological or racial cause.”

These cases are part of a long history of far right terrorist activists in Britain the following :

Thomas Mair brutally murdered of Jo Cox MP. There is overwhelming evidence that Thomas Mair was inspired by fascist politics:

Eyewitness reports suggest that he shouted, Britain First” as he launched the attack

The Southern Poverty Law Centre, a hatewatch group in the US, have uncovered receipts showing that he purchased $620 of books from the neo-Nazi Nationalist Alliance including fascist propaganda and guides to making improvised weapons.

The far-right Springbok Club described him as “one of the earliest subscribers and supporters of ‘S.A. Patriot’”.

He had at least two letters published in the South African Patriot in Exile (which succeeded the SA Patriot)  in 1991 and 1999. In these he condemned “White liberals and traitors” who he blamed for the downfall of Apartheid. He stated that he had “faith that the White Race will prevail, both in Britain and in South Africa, but I fear that it’s going to be a very long and very bloody struggle.”

According the the Southern Poverty Law Centre, in 2000 Mair attended a meeting with members of the BNP and William Pierce, then leader of the Nationalist Alliance. They also suggest that John Tyndall (former BNP leader) was aware of Mair.

Police searching his house are reported to have discovered Nazi regalia and far-right literature.

A photo on the website of Britain First appears to show Mair alongside other members of the group’s “Northern Division”.

At his first court appearance he gave his name as “death to traitors, freedom for Britain.”

In September 2015, Mark Colborne was found guilty of preparing terrorist acts. He had purchased the ingredients for making cyanide. His politics appear to have been… unique, but notes expressed hatred for “non-Aryans” whom he referred to as “blacks and Caucasian idiots”

In January 2015, Zack Davies attacked Sarandev Bhambra, a Sikh, with a machete and hammer shouting “white supremacy”, “this is revenge” and “this is for Lee Rigby.”

In 2014, Bret Atkins and Jamie Snow, has their sentences extended after they tried to send a letter bomb to a Halifax solicitors from prison. According to the police,they chose “victims purely on the grounds of their race or religion… expressed deeply racist and anti-Muslim views and sent a series of threatening letters designed to instil fear in their recipients” before moving beyond mere threats.

In March 2014, Ian Forman was found guilty of a plot to blow up mosques in Merseyside. Forman frequently expressed his racist ideology and views against the disabled to friends and workmates.

In 2014, Michael Piggin a teenager from Loughborough was tried at the Old Bailey accused of planning a “new Colombine”. Piggin was a self-proclaimed member of the English Defence League. His bedroom was decorated with a swastika and newspaper cuttings about Norweigan fascist terrorist Anders Breivik. His plans were detailed in a Che Guevara notebook, the cover of which he had supplemented with a swastika, SS runes and the slogan “EDL no surrender British and proud” When he was arrested in February 2013, police discovered an arsenal of bombs and weapons including partially assembled petrol bombs and pipe bombs.

In 2013, Pavlo Lapshyn placed bombs outside three mosques in the West Midlands. The only reason nobody died was because he’d got the timing wrong. It later emerged that he’d stabbed Mohammed Saleem, an 82 year-old Muslim grandfather in April of that year.

In 2010, father and son Nicky and Ian Davison were both found guilty of terrorist offences. The pair were members of the neo-Nazi “Aryan Strike Force”.