Extremist views aged 15 gained authorities’ attention
THE founder of the first right-wing group to be banned since the Second World War first came to the attention of the authorities because of his extremist views aged 15.
Alex Davies was the co-founder of National Action (NA) while studying philosophy at Warwick University in 2013 when he was 19.
But it was four years before this that he first referred to the Prevent counter-terrorism programme, although he told his trial that he did not engage at this stage because they “did not contact him”.
It was with the creation of NA with co-founder Benjamin Raymond that Davies helped form an organisation that went on to “terrorise” city centres up and down the country with its rallies calling for an “all-out race war”.
National Action, described in court as a “throwback” to Hitler’s Germany, soon hit the headlines after an undercover journalist infiltrated the group and exposed its fascist views calling for black, ethnic minority and Jewish people to be expelled from the UK.
Davies was reported as telling the journalist that he did not want to say what he wanted to do to Jews “because it was so extreme”.
Following the publicity and a campaign on campus, Davies, the son of an engineer and a kitchen worker, was asked to leave the university and he went on to focus on his role running NA.
National Action went on to spread its “white Jihad” message by social media, stickers, posters and demonstrations, with one in Liverpool ending in violence following a confrontation with antifascist campaigners.
In court, Davies, from Swansea,
described himself as “not suited” to violence and he denied that he supported the murder of Jews while stating that he believed the Holocaust did not happen.
But the jury was shown a photograph of him holding the NA flag and performing a Nazi salute in the execution chamber of the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany in May 2016.
And it was “celebratory” tweets posted by NA following the murder of MP Jo Cox in June 2016 that led to the group’s ban under terrorism laws.
Davies was also pictured attending a number of paramilitary training camps, both while as a member of NA but also with NS131 – the continuity group he set up after his original group’s proscription.
Barnaby Jameson QC, prosecuting, told the jury NS131 was just NA acting under a new name, focusing on the southern part of the UK.
He said: “If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, there’s a racing certainty it is in fact a duck.”