Far-right terror threat on the rise in Britain

In recent decades, right-wing activity had been confined to small groups with an older membership

Stung by an attack on Muslims in London a year ago, Britain is facing a growing threat from far-right extremists fuelled by online hate speech, forcing the authorities to react.

In a country hit by five attacks in the space of six months in 2017 that killed 36 people, “the biggest threat is from Islamist terrorism”, Home Secretary Sajid Javid said earlier this month.

But “extreme right-wing terrorism is also an increasing threat”, the interior minister added as he unveiled a new counter-terror strategy.

A government report found that four attacks have been carried out in Britain over the past five years “by lone actors motivated to varying degrees by extreme right-wing ideologies”.

Among them was Darren Osborne, a 48-year-old from Cardiff, who a year ago on Tuesday drove his rented van into a group of Muslim worshippers near Finsbury Park Mosque in north London, killing one man and injuring 12 others.

The father-of-four’s radicalisation ramped up in a matter of weeks, fed by compulsive reading of hate material online.

In February, Mark Rowley, the then head of counterterrorism policing, said that four extreme right-wing plots were foiled last year and described the trend as “worrying”.

In recent decades, extreme right-wing activity in Britain had been confined to small, established groups with an older membership, which promoted anti-immigration and white supremacist views but presented a low risk to national security.

Neo-Nazi groups

But the emergence of the neo-Nazi group National Action in 2014, and similar fringe outfits like Generation Identity, has helped forge a new, younger pool of extremists, according to the “2018 State of Hate” report by the anti-racism organisation Hope Not Hate. The report’s “online hate” section cited prominent British figures among those with the biggest reach on social media.

They included Stephen Lennon — known as Tommy Robinson — founder of the English Defence League, which he left in 2013.

They also included Paul Joseph Watson, whose videos have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times, and commentator Katie Hopkins, who in 2015 compared migrants to “cockroaches”.