CST urges Rudd to ban neo-Nazi group
THE COMMUNITY Security Trust has backed moves to have an extremist group responsible for a series of attacks and threats on prominent British Jews proscribed as a terrorist organisation.
The government is said to be considering whether the neo-Nazi National Action group should be classified as a terrorist organisation after concerns about the resurgence of the far-right in the UK.
Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary, warned the Jewish community about the growing threat from farright extremists at a conference on Wednesday.
CST has now referred two speeches made by Jack Renshaw, a senior member of National Action, to police. The charity says he should be prosecuted for incitement to racial hatred.
In one speech, Mr Renshaw said: “Hitler was right in many senses — but you know where he was wrong? As nationalists we need to learn from the mistakes of the National Socialists and we need to realise, you do not show the Jew mercy.”
In a second, he said Britain took the “wrong side” in the Second World War by fighting the Nazis “who were there to remove Jewry from Europe once and for all”. Dave Rich, CST deputy communications director, said: “This is exactly the kind of language that incites hate crimes and the authorities need to act.” National Action has proven to be among the most extreme neo-Nazi groups operating in this country in the past two years. The group has concentrated on recruiting younger extremists into its organisation and provoked outrage when it lauded Thomas Mair, the white nationalist who murdered Labour MP Jo Cox . Garron Helm, a National Action Merseyside member, was jailed for sending antisemitic messages to Luciana Berger, Britain’s youngest Jewish MP, in February last year. Ms Rudd warned that the far-right were using “increasingly sophisticated” methods to recruit new members. She told the Israel-UK policy conference, organised by Bicom and the Jewish News, that the Jewish community knew “all too well the reality of having to live with the threat from terrorism and hate crime”. Cross-party MPs have launched an anti-hate crime campaign. Backed by the government, #BetterThanThat will seek to raise public awareness and to work to reduce hate crime in Britain. More than 20 NGOs and community groups have backed the campaign, including the Board of Deputies, Jewish Leadership Council and Union of Jewish Students.