Police eyes on white supremacists – vigilance urged by MPs

From There's Nothing British About the BNP:

Nothing British, in partnership with the Centre for Social Cohesion, have published a report by Edmund Standing and Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens that highlights the potential threat from white supremacists committed to an agenda of violence against racial minorities.

Read the Blood_&_Honour report here.

The report is covered in today’s News of the World, here with Patrick Mercer MP calling for greater vigilance.

Denis MacShane MP writes in the forward to the report,

Like their jihadist counterparts, neo-Nazis are filled with hate, are conspiratorial and are prepared (and determined) to use extreme violence to achieve their political aims. If we want to reduce the threat we face from far-right extremism, it is imperative that new systems be put in place, allowing pre-emptive strikes against this budding threat.

The report lists three incidents of recent neo-Nazi-related threats:-

● In July, Yorkshire police raided a neo-Nazi terror cell with international links. They seized the largest suspected terrorist arsenal since the IRA bombings of the early 1990s. Twenty properties were raided and over 300 weapons and 80 bombs were discovered by counter-terrorism detectives. The hardware included rocket launchers, grenades, pipe bombs and dozens of firearms. Several people were charged, and over 30 were questioned over the incident.

● In September, Neil Lewington, a follower of B&H, was jailed indefinitely for attempting to launch a bombing campaign against non-white Britons. In his flat, police discovered a bomb-making factory and neo-Nazi literature. Court reports said that Lewington wanted to emulate his ‘heroes’ – David Copeland, the Soho bomber, and Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma bomber.

● In May, Terence Gavan, a card-carrying member of the BNP, was arrested after police raided his home. In January 2010, he was convicted on terrorism charges and sentenced to 11 years in prison, after a stockpile of nail and ball-bearing bombs, shotguns, improvised explosive devices and pistols was found at his house.

It is important not to overstate these neo-Nazi anecdotes. Britain is not about to turn into the Fourth Reich. Al-Queada remains the bigger threat.

However, it is important that we remain vigilant towards people with an ideological commitment to creating violence between people of different races. In 2001 security services tracked young Islamist radicals at outward bound camps that seemed harmless at the time. Four years later, some of those men had become terrorists who sought to kill innocent civilians on July 7 and 21, 2005.

We must not make the same mistake again.