HOPE NOT HATE LONGREAD
NOTE: This long read was originally published in May 2019 after HOPE not hate exposed a terrorist plot.
It’s been well over a month since it was finally reported that Jack Renshaw, the nazi terrorist who wanted to kill his local MP, was also a convicted paedophile.
By the time this became worldwide news, those reeling in the dark recesses of Britain’s tiny neo-Nazi and fascist movement had already long been aware of the truth.
The fact that Renshaw had asked people to attend one of his trials (for inciting racial hatred), but not his “other” trial (at which he was found guilty of grooming two underage boys), gave those who had been close to him a fair idea something was askew.
Luckily for Renshaw, his trials relating to child sexual exploitation (CSE) could not be reported because he also faced a trial for the plot (we exposed) to murder Rosie Cooper MP and police officer Victoria Henderson.
The non-reporting of his conviction for CSE allowed Renshaw precious time to play the ‘race martyr’ and build sympathy and support that would even, he hoped, extend to his horrendous plans for murder.
We are currently watching British neo-Nazis and fascists bending over backwards to distance themselves from their previous association with Renshaw – or attempt to exonerate him of all his proven crimes.
Of course, the British far right has never been overly fond of truth telling. A mission has begun within far-right factions to either totally dissociate themselves from Renshaw, or, better still, manipulate further a climate where people appear to have greater faith in conspiracy theories than the unpalatable (and obvious) reality.
In some cases it is all of the above.
It is in this bubble of conspiracy and defeat that those who knew Jack Renshaw are desperately hoping to ‘prove’ – by avoiding facts and evidence – that he was somehow ‘fitted up’ for crimes of which he was found guilty.
This is a young man who has left a large mark over them all.
He began his political career when he joined the British National Party (BNP) as it faced an almost unimaginable electoral decline. He soon became a senior member of the party’s youth wing (the YBNP), a group of boys and girls entrusted by former BNP leader and MEP Nick Griffin with protecting the party’s ideology that Griffin himself had so carefully crafted.
Griffin’s plan was that once he left the party, his successor would be someone he had groomed for the role.
Sadly for Renshaw, Griffin was removed from his post in October 2014, driven from the party after months and months of wrangling that followed both his bankruptcy and him losing his seat in the European Parliament.
But for just a brief and unfulfilled period, Renshaw was widely tipped to lead a recovery of the electoral fortunes of the British far right. In a race against time, Griffin intensified pressure on the youth wing in which Renshaw had been so central, so that he could rise to the challenge.
In January 2014, with only four months left as an MEP, Griffin summoned the YBNP leadership to meet with him to discuss a “radicalisation” of the BNP – a party that by then had shed dozens of councillors, lost a member of the Greater London Assembly, and was very soon to lose its two MEPs.
We reported on the special summit here. It was also Griffin’s attempt to stave off the growing influence of National Action (NA), a new group emerging on the far-right that had disturbed him even more than Stephen Lennon’s (‘Tommy Robinson’) English Defence League (EDL).
Unceremoniously dumped by the BNP during a ‘palace coup’ that October, Griffin was unable to motivate the YBNP to launch a successful defence of his realm. Griffin and the YBNP acrimoniously parted company with each other and with the party after a few weeks of bitter infighting, threats and intimidation. Most of the YBNP leadership moved into National Action.
Nazis in suits, which had so characterised the rise of the BNP, gave way to Nazis in paramilitary uniforms (Britain First), drunken brawls in car parks (the EDL) and a plethora of conspiracy gangs who didn’t like what they read so instead clung to conspiracy theory and cheap lager.
And then there was National Action. A colourful, almost whimsical distraction of young boys – wallflowers who had never kissed a girl and had seemingly never wanted to.
Renshaw was gay; he struggled with his sexuality. In an environment where people exhibit horrific and violent homophobic behaviour, you do well to keep your head down and your sexuality a secret.
It was late in 2014, while Renshaw was mounting a defence of deposed BNP leader Nick Griffin, that the homophobes in the party – apparently aware he was gay – turned on him.
Steve Squire, a Soho pornographer entrusted by the party’s new leadership with driving away the YBNP members, singled out Renshaw for homophobic abuse.
When questioned in 2017 by the police as to whether he was gay, Renshaw responded that homosexuality was unnatural. Gay porn was found hidden in his home. He was still ashamed of being gay.
After the BNP, Renshaw made his way, via a brief skirmish in the EDL, to National Action. He completely gave up on both the idea of ever leading a far-right party and also on the electoral process.
Former BNP Deputy Leader Simon Darby, who for years was the BNP’s combative but monotone press spokesman, now steadfastly refuses to believe Renshaw is guilty. Darby was for years the BNP’s version of Saddam Hussein’s notorious spokesman, ‘Comical Ali.’ He could always spot and pontificate an unlikely conspiracy.
According to Darby (long accused by his detractors of being an MI5 agent) Renshaw would never “hurt a fly” and was stitched up by the state because they needed a “right-wing bogey-man so badly…”
It’s an interesting theory, Simon, but I hardly think we’re going to see Nigel Farage sending pictures of his unclothed self to young boys any time soon.
According to Heritage and Destiny (H&D) magazine, convictions of NA members for terrorism are not just the (obvious) result of a heinous plot dreamed up by HOPE not hate, but also the result of Nazis using Facebook! Yes, it was all down to “Jewbook” as some of them prefer to call it.
H&D makes no mention of and assumes no responsibility for telling its reader(s) that Renshaw’s horrendous speech in Leeds (where he called for Jews to be hunted and murdered and for which he was also later convicted) was made at the Yorkshire Forum. This, of course, is a group to which the magazine is heavily aligned.
Instead it claims the London Forum and its associate forums were dismissed by National Action as “fuddy-duddy failures”. That is entirely untrue. The London Forum and its funder, Larry Nunn (aka Max Musson), were cited by National Action’s founders as huge spheres of influence and potential funding.
The truth is, as those behind Heritage and Destiny well know, the tie-in between National Action and the Forums was constant. National Action members continued to frequent Forum events, even after the group was banned.
A self-proclaimed “fuddy-duddy” like Peter Rushton, who just so happens to write for Heritage and Destiny, should know this. He addressed National Action rallies and was often seen hanging out with them.
Further, as well as Renshaw calling for murder at the Yorkshire Forum in 2016 (when National Action was still very much legal), the London Forum actually presented NA co-founder Alex Davies with an award for the speech he made to them in the same year. National Action’s leadership did not just hanker over closer ties to the Forum(s), they got it. Heritage and Destiny is more than a little disingenuous – for a change.
When it comes to addressing the murder plot itself, according to Heritage and Destiny:
“No conspiracy was entered into to bring this about and no feasible murder plan was prepared.”
How bizarre. Renshaw stalked his proposed victim(s), planned where to murder the MP Rosie Cooper, bought a 19 inch sword for the purpose, checked it would take Cooper approximately three minutes to bleed out and, oh yes, actually admitted his intentions at the Old Bailey. Is that not enough?
Well, it’s simply to enable people like Heritage and Destiny, the London Forum and those others who knew Renshaw, to ignore established facts and evidence in order to cast doubt on his conviction. We do appear to live in an age where evidence – even an admittance of guilt – no longer matters. So damaging were Renshaw’s actions, condemning him is simply not good or convincing enough.
If you’ve already invested decades of your depressing political life in defending and promoting Adolf Hitler, then convincing yourself and others there was a Jewish conspiracy behind this plot, and behind Renshaw’s paedophilia, is hardly asking for a massive leap of faith.
Few people will be capable of, or particularly interested in, forensically challenging the next nazi they meet in a pub who tells them Renshaw was the victim of a conspiracy greater than 9/11.
And it’s not just Renshaw from which many want to disassociate themselves. Heritage and Destiny, the London Forum and its subsidiaries deny that throughout their existence they gave support to National Action.
However, not only did members of the Forums invite NA members to give lectures, they actually rewarded them for it. NA co-founder Alex Davies received the Jonathan Bowden Oratory Prize from them in 2016. Bowden, for those who did not know him, was a very posh nazi who died shortly after being found wandering the streets naked and clutching a Samurai sword in 2012.
Alex Davies who co-founded NA and part-funded its secret training headquarters and gym in Warrington, has never been prosecuted or for his role in two other subsequently-banned neo-nazi groups that followed National Action.
Nowadays, Davies is apparently running around claiming he is an ‘animal rights’ activist. Like most others who avoided prosecution or conviction in various NA trials, he appears to have been on the government’s Prevent programme at the time he was building a terrorist group. Jihads, nazis and animal rights activists are apparently the three prime targets for Prevent and the counter-terrorist teams around the country.
Larry Nunn, who funded the Bowden Prize and currently has plans to build a ‘white homeland’, steadfastly refuses to acknowledge Renshaw is a paedophile and believes that the case and the murder plot are dubious. Unlike most of his brethren, Nunn acknowledges knowing Renshaw but instead feels it better to blame Mossad for his crimes.
Those crimes have left an indelible mark on former National Action members. It was Renshaw’s plot to murder Rosie Cooper that led police to look at the phones of people accused of membership. And if he had not been grooming children, he would never have felt the need to murder an MP and a policewoman.
Since it was banned in 2016 a number of former members of NA have had to face up to an uncomfortable truth: that while some were training and preparing for race war, lusting after children and genocide, the people who recruited and encouraged them are still free. We maintain that paedophilia was rife within NA, both in practice and in its future planning.
I have alluded to this further in the book about the group’s activities, Nazi Terrorist.
When way back in 2016 HOPE not hate exposed Ryan Fleming as a convicted paedophile, National Action went into a tailspin, one that comprised a mixture of joy, mirth, outrage and indignation.
They were indignant that one of their own had been exposed and, further, of the shame it could bring upon the rest of them. Of course, not every member of NA was a predatory paedophile, but in a group dominated by sad, lonely and disturbed teenage males, they had few red lines on the subject. In fact, one objector to the growing penchant for paedophilia was driven from the group and abandoned when they later faced prosecution for NA related activities.
Much of NA’s internal communications were dominated by talk of raping people. Few of them ever raised any kind of objection to this internally. Renshaw, when reviewing the evidence against Fleming, was positively delighted. National Action’s co-founder and spokesperson, Ben Raymond, was also vociferous in not just defending Fleming, but also his crime.
The exposé of a convicted and open paedophile in their ranks was as close as NA ever came to a public split. According to our mole Robbie Mullen, who would later rise to be the right-hand man of the terror group’s eventual ‘real’ leader Christopher Lythgoe, arguments about paedophiles and paedophilia in NA only came to the fore when it was an actuality presented to them. Only then did some actually baulk at the reality of the situation and the direction NA in which was heading.
The response of ordinary members to Fleming’s exposure was viewed by some in the group’s leadership as these members’ failure to grasp revolutionary, supposedly ‘avant garde’ ideas about the increasing tie-in between Nazism and Satanism.
Mullen was not the only person in the group to find Fleming loathsome, but he (Fleming) was overwhelmingly popular in the group, despite being open about his lust for young children. Not only did Fleming openly brag about his Satanism and fetish for young boys and girls, he also praised and lavished admiration on Myra Hindley and Ian Brady, the notorious Moors Murderers who’d tortured and murdered Lancashire schoolchildren in the mid-1960s. The rest apparently had to accept that Fleming’s penchant for smearing his home with excreta and menstrual blood was all part of some revolutionary act.
When the story of Fleming’s conviction actually broke, it became clear that some people in NA already knew of it.
On the nazi internet forum Stormfront, Raymond angrily responded to open criticisms of the group and Fleming, writing:
“There is absolutely no question of caving into this ridiculous hysteria, what Ryan did was heroic and the morally correct thing to do – none of you have a clue…”
He did not just defend the individual, he actually defended and lionised the sexual assault on a vulnerable young man. In the same diatribe defending Fleming, Raymond also antagonised the National Front (NF) by writing that he knew they too had someone in their ranks of similar ilk to Fleming.
Under cross examination at the first Old Bailey trial of Jack Renshaw and others last year, Christopher Lythgoe – the man who had tried to ostracise Ben Raymond from the NA leadership – laid the blame fairly and squarely at Raymond’s feet for the terror group’s obsession with starting a race war.
Time after time in court, when the leader was confronted with NA’s ranting about such a conflict, Lythgoe would name Raymond as the author of such articles. Lythgoe would receive eight years for leading the group, but for founding, publicising and encouraging the group Raymond remains free as a bird.
Raymond’s name also got more than the odd mention at the Birmingham trials of Patatas, Thomas, Deakin and others too last year.
Barely a day or recollection of an incident went by, including logs of conversations in the ‘Pew Die Pie’ secret chat log of which they were all members, without Raymond being mentioned. And yet despite logs being entered into evidence against the defendants, guess which member of the group has still evaded prosecution? And as for Patatas and Thomas, they so believed the conspiracy theory that Jews poisoned tap water, they refused to bath their child.
Straight after NA’s ban in 2016, Raymond was behind the formation of another Nazi group, Scottish Dawn. That group was eventually banned in September 2017, the same day 11 suspected members of National Action (including Raymond and Davies) were arrested in connection to both membership of NA and the plot to murder Rosie Cooper MP.
Despite Raymond’s constant presence on internal communications and Davies’ bank records showing he handed over money to Christopher Lythgoe to open NA’s secret gym, Raymond and Davies have still not been prosecuted.
Raymond continues to sail close to the wind. Now living in a house-share in Swindon, he recently persuaded a young female to report HOPE not hate to the police for alleged harassment, foolishly landing her unwelcome and unjust scrutiny.
Now back creating and publishing violent memes as well as issuing threats to this writer that I should leave the country, one does wonder how he manages to live such a charmed life. Given that we now know his claims to live off a large inheritance are a lie, just how does the 30-year-old afford to spend his entire life doing nothing but smoking cigarettes and travelling to meet other nazis?
Over on Radio Aryan, which regularly hosts Alex Davies and Ben Raymond, Steve Stone takes a break from his mother’s apron strings and regular lashings of Alphabetti Spaghetti to share his conspiracy theory on the subject. Aside from unwise speculation on current trials, he tells his listener that Renshaw and others were found ‘not guilty’ of membership of National Action at their recent trial, which is incorrect.
But for Stone the real conspiracy is that Renshaw was charged with terrorism at all. He claims that plotting to kill an MP is not terrorism. He appears to believe the plot was somehow uncovered through mindreading and that Renshaw had only bought a “toy sword, basically” to carry out his murder attempt.
Moreover, he argues that Renshaw’s admission to the murder plot was made so he could escape a lesser charge of membership of National Action. This carried a sentence of up to 10 years in prison which, in Stone’s world, would have been preferable to the up-to-30 years he was warned he faced for the murder plot.
In the end Renshaw received a life sentence with the judge decreeing he should serve a minimum of 20 years imprisonment. This apparently proves to Stone that Renshaw’s earlier conviction for child sexual exploitation was a “frame up.” He does seem (like with many other things) to have his evidence back-to-front.
For the record, Garron Helm (who made a 12 page statement to the police and was of course, on the Government’s Prevent programme) was found not guilty, while Andrew Clarke and Michal Trubini (whose names Stone conveniently forgets) were not found ‘not guilty’, rather the juries at their trials couldn’t reach a verdict.
Joining Radio Aryan for this charade is none other than Larry Nunn, again defending Renshaw. Nunn feels people have not been told the truth about the plot and that its details have never been published. Here it is again, Larry.
Nunn also suggests that because Renshaw hid the sword he wanted to use for the attack, he could not have been serious! It does seem that Renshaw certainly has more brains than Nunn. After all, at the time Renshaw was hatching his plot, he was also in the middle of being investigated for child sex offences. Was he supposed to leave his proposed murder weapon next to where he kept his apparatus for child sexual exploitation, to make it easy for the policewoman he also wanted to murder? Apparently so.
Nunn complains that there is a “mood of oppression” facing people like Renshaw and the wider “nationalist movement”. I’m fairly certain, however, that nazis who stay within the law and do not incite racial hatred, groom children and get involved in murder plots, do actually enjoy the same rights and freedoms as other people. Perhaps Nunn’s comments should be food for thought?
The lengths to which these far-right factions will go to justify or deny the crimes for which Renshaw was convicted speaks volumes for the moral abyss into which they’ve sunk (or probably always been).
Satananism, paedophilia, rape fantasies and rank misogyny have become common currency amidst the wider morass of dysfunction, thuggery and Nazi ideology.
Matthew Collins’ new book, Nazi Terrorist, the story of banned terrorist group National Action, is available from HOPE not hate now.
Visit our hub, The Plot To Murder An MP
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