How whistleblower thwarted neo-Nazi plot against Labour MP

The week after the Manchester Arena bombing in which 22 died and hundreds were injured, several men in their 20s and early 30s arrived in the city to view its aftermath for themselves.

But unlike the many others who visited the site to leave flowers and cards, the men – members of the banned far-right terrorist group National Action – had not come to pay their respects.

“They went not to condemn the bombing or pay tribute to the victims of the jihadi bomber,” said Matthew Collins of the anti-fascist campaign group Hope Not Hate. “They went to admire his work. That is what the police don’t understand. They may look like a bunch of skinny schoolboys in the main, but they carry with them an absolutely horrendous death wish.”

That the Observer learned of this macabre gathering is thanks to a disaffected former member of the group who blew the whistle on its activities, a move that last week led to the jailing of Christopher Lythgoe, 32, and Matthew Hankinson, 24, for being members of National Action.

Robbie Mullen, 25, exposed the hate-filled operations of an obscure organisation that hitherto had been best known for endorsing the murder of the Labour MP Jo Cox, a move which in December 2016 led to it being proscribed, making it the first rightwing group to be banned in Britain since the second world war. But his actions have also helped shine light on how the UK’s increasingly fragmented far right attracts young men to its cause.

Founded in 2013 by university students Alex Davies and Benjamin Raymond, National Action is a neo-Nazi group whose members express a hatred of Jewish people, gays and ethnic minorities.

Towards the end of its brief life, though, it had turned into something else altogether, Collins suggested.

“They weren’t even a neo-Nazi group, they were nihilists. Lythgoe’s inspirations were the IRA, the INLA, the Baader-Meinhof group, the Khmer Rouge. You’re looking at a group that towards the end admired jihadists. As a group they just wanted to be terrorists and kill people.”

It is a chilling and troubling assessment and one that shows how fluid the far right in Britain has become.

Mullen, whose father died when he was 16 and who finished school at just 14, first encountered the group at a National Front demonstration in Manchester. He had left home, had no girlfriend and was feeling isolated.

“When we first met him he assumed he would go to prison, he didn’t know what it would be for, almost like a rite of passage,” Collins said.

Mullen’s mother had been horrified when Nick Griffin, then leader of the far-right British National Party, was elected an MEP in 2009 but her son had embraced the BNP – motivated by what he had read on the internet about immigration and grooming gangs led by Asian men.

He got a job with his stepbrother installing satellite TV dishes in places such as Burnley. “He saw upfront an image of Britain he’d only ever seen on the internet and it reaffirmed a lot of the prejudices he’d already taken on board from watching the BNP online,” said Collins, who had been in the far right himself for six years.

Membership of National Action was conferred only after an assessment. If someone turned up at a meeting and started flinging around racial slurs such as the N-word, “he was out”, said Collins. “And if they dressed like a skinhead they were out. They had to look as normal as possible. For a group that was pretty weird anyway that was a big ask.”

Once inside National Action, Mullen initially felt at home. “He was surrounded by friends,” Collins said. “It was not like old men grooming him, it was people his own age that had self-radicalised to such an extent they thought they were superior to anyone on the far right. They’d had fist fights with the EDL [English Defence League], with the National Front, [South] Yorkshire Casuals – a far-right anti-Muslim group. They saw themselves as physically and intellectually superior.”

But Mullen grew disillusioned. The organisation, he realised, was simply obsessed with violence. He wanted to leave, to spend more time with his PlayStation and his dog. He started leaking information to Hope Not Hate. Collins promised they would use his intelligence to dismantle the group.

But the promise had to be jettisoned when, last summer, Mullen disclosed that he had been in a pub when a plan to target Rosie Cooper, the Labour MP for West Lancashire, was discussed. “We removed him from his home that night,” Collins said.

At the start of the trial, Jack Renshaw, 23, pleaded guilty to preparing to engage in an act of terrorism by purchasing a machete. The jury failed to reach a verdict on whether he was a member of National Action.

Cooper was in court when Lythgoe, who was found not guilty of encouragement to murder, and Hankinson, were sentenced. She thanked Mullen for providing information which she credits with saving her life.

Mullen himself now faces an uncertain future. “He tried to get a job,” Collins said. “But he was placed on a terrorist watch list, so who’s going to employ him?”

In the longer term, Hope Not Hate hopes to secure funding to pay for Mullen to go into schools to educate youngsters about the threat the far right continues to pose.

As for National Action, Collins suggested it was finished. Several of its members have fled abroad, others gone to ground in the UK. But its influence lingers – spawning copycat groups including Scottish Dawn and NS131.

“It’s worrying,” Collins said. “It’s not those guys who will commit a terrorist act, it will be some lonely kid in a bedroom who feels inadequate and will be encouraged to do something.”