National Action founder Alex Davies convicted of remaining member of neo-Nazi terrorist group after ban

Davies created a new group, NS131, in a bid to evade the proscription of his original organisation

(PA)

The founder of Britain’s first neo-Nazi terrorist group has been convicted of remaining a member after it was banned by the government.

Alex Davies, now 27, started National Action as a student in 2013 and then founded successor group NS131 when it was proscribed three years later.

A jury at Winchester Crown Court found him guilty of membership of a proscribed group by a majority of 11 to one on Tuesday, after more than 14 hours of deliberations.

Judge Mark Dennis QC said that it was “inevitable” that he would be jailed at a sentencing hearing at London’s Old Bailey on 7 June.

The trial heard that Davies recruited young neo-Nazis across the UK and had links with white supremacists in the US and Europe.

His group became notorious for violent propaganda, celebrating the assassination of Jo Cox and protests where members performed Hitler salutes and called for race traitors to be “gassed”.

The British government banned National Action as a terrorist group in December 2016, making membership a criminal offence.

Winchester Crown Court heard that Davies received an email from the then-leader Christopher Lythgoe saying that the group would continue underground by “shedding one skin for another”.

Six months later Davies founded NS131, which was banned as an alias of National Action in September 2017.

Giving evidence to his trial, he claimed it was not a group but an “online magazine”, although a promotional video had ended with the message: “Join your local NS [Nazis].”

Following the ban of National Action, he remained in contact with members as they split into other regional factions operating under new names, such as Scottish Dawn.

Davies travelled from his home in Swansea to meetings with neo-Nazi associates as far away as Manchester, Leeds and Warrington.

He insisted he was not continuing the group’s work and had been seeking support for his new idea of building “nationalist communities” in Britain.

But the court heard that almost every other person who attended the same meetings had admitted or been convicted of continued membership of National Action.

Davies did not deny his neo-Nazi views but said they were “not on trial” and branded the government’s ban of NS131 “political repression”.

After the court heard that he had posed for a photograph performing a Hitler salute inside Buchenwald concentration camp, Davies insisted that he was not a “bad person” and has “the same moral compass as anyone else”.

Prosecutor Barnaby Jameson QC said Davies had founded “a tiny and secretive group of white jihadists arming themselves for direct and violent confrontation”.

“They were not armchair neo-Nazis - the ultimate aim of the group was to exploit racial tensions as a means to an all-out assault on the democratic order,” he added.

“National Action’s response to the ban was simply to regard it as an obstacle on its path to violent revolution.”

Davies told the court he “started playing an active part in nationalist politics” around the age of 16, joined the youth branch of the British National Party in 2010 and was a Ukip activist when he formed the idea for National Action.

He was studying for his A-levels at a college in Swansea during the period, and had come into contact with his fellow National Action organiser Ben Raymond.

Alex Davies speaking at a 2016 National Action demonstration in York, in front of a banner containing the words ‘Refugees not welcome: Hitler was right.’ (CTPWM)

Davies said his goal was to create a “nationalist Britain, which would be a white Britain”.

National Action launched in summer 2013 and Davies started a politics degree at Warwick University that autumn, but dropped out the following year after a newspaper article exposed his involvement with the group.

In a message to a fellow neo-Nazi at the time of the 2016 ban, Davies wrote: “It’s nothing to get worked up about. I’m sure we’ll come up with some creative way to overcome the obstacles put in front of us.”

The court heard that Davies recruited several former National Action members into NS131 and organised camps where they practised boxing and knife fighting.

He told his trial that the camps were to learn self-defence and “have a good time”, rather than to instigate violence or wage a race war.

The defendant added that he was “baffled” when other members of National Action were found to have stockpiled knives, weapons, guns and bomb manuals.

He told the court that his associates’ speeches and online posts about hanging and gassing “race traitors” was just “cloud cuckoo land nonsense stuff”.

The police unit that investigated Davies said he was among 19 people convicted of National Action membership, while other activists had been convicted of terror offences.

National Action members at a 2016 training camp that included crossbow practice (CTPWM)

Former member Jack Renshaw admitted plotting to murder his local MP, while Jack Coulson built a pipe bomb. British Army soldier Mikko Vehvilainen had stockpiled guns, knives and ammunition.

Superintendent Anthony Tagg, of the West Midlands Counter Terrorism Unit, said Davies’ conviction was the culmination of a series of investigations that started in 2016.

“Through some careful investigation, following the evidence, we’ve been able to successfully prosecute Davies as the founder of that group,” he told The Independent.

“When the group was proscribed we’ve been able to show evidence that he continued to operate as National Action, just under a different name, a different guise - NS131.

“What he was doing, the people he was associating with, and the activities he was undertaking were absolutely the same.”

Supt Tagg said Davies thought he was “clever” and gave advice to other National Action members on how to dodge the ban, as well as giving his interpretation of terrorist proscription laws to the court and arguing with a prosecutor about he could be questioned on.

“Davies clearly thought he was a clever individual, and that by rebranding National Action as NS131 he would be able to continue his activities,” he added. “What we’ve shown is that’s not possible, that we will find them and bring them to justice for what they’re trying to do.”

The officer said that following the prosecutions, and the banning of three National Action successor groups, the group had been “dismantled”.