National Action remains active

Evidence has emerged that the neo-Nazi group National Action (NA) has been secretly operating from Cheshire despite being banned last December by the Home Office under anti-terror legislation. Marked as a terrorism offence, under this ban, any members found affiliated with the group or involved in meetings or any other affiliated activity could face a jail term of up to 10 years.

A new report released by Hope Not Hate has revealed that the group has reorganised and regrouped under the new leadership of Christopher Lythgoe, 33 from Warrington. Claiming that the group is “actively recruiting, training and working out of a converted warehouse in Warrington,” the report continues to further detail the exact location of the facilities.

Explicitly identifying NA to be preparing for a “race war”, the report further claims that sources have identified NA to be training dozens of members from the warehouse, running sessions using knives and baseball bats with members occasionally being “ferried to a local hospital to deal with injuries sustained.”

Earlier this year in March, ITV news revealed through an exclusive, undercover investigation that several affiliated members of the group had attended a weekend training camp for far-right sympathisers in the Peak District. The ITV report dubbed it as a “survival camp” with activities involving sessions training to deal with knife attacks as well as street-fighting skills.

The undercover reporter secretly filmed Garron Helm, a former high-ranking member of NA, discussing the murder of Jo Cox, stating: “I mean, she did have it coming.” According to the ITV report, Helm revealed that the UK security services had already issued a warning about NA meetings. “They basically said: ‘Listen, if we see three or four of you meeting up and we deem it to be an NA meeting, rather than friends meeting, then we will just come after you with everything we’ve got’.”

With increasing evidence from both the investigations by Hope Not Hate and ITV news of the active white supremacist NA activity, the response by counter-terrorism police remains to be seen.