CAA in touch with Home Office as former National Action members caught at a secret knife combat training camp
A shocking undercover investigation by ITV News has confirmed that former members of the violent, antisemitic neo-Nazi group, National Action, are still meeting in secret. This is despite the group being banned by the British Government in December 2016, following a long campaign by Campaign Against Antisemitism and others. The ban makes it a criminal offence for the group to exist or meet, with a jail term of up to ten years for anyone convicted of being a member or supporter.
Undercover filming by ITV News caught individuals with links to the banned group together at a training camp for far-right sympathisers in the Peak District earlier this month. The weekend billed itself as a “survival camp” with boxing and street fighting sessions, as well as how to deal with a knife fight. The group discussed the killing of Jo Cox MP as ITV News filmed secretly.
One of the participants was Garron Helm, a prominent former member of National Action. Helm was jailed in 2014 for sending an antisemitic tweet to Jewish MP Luciana Berger. The tweet showed a picture of Ms Berger with a yellow star superimposed onto her forehead, a reference to the Nazi practice of forcing Jews to wear distinctive yellow stars. Referring to the MP as “a communist Jewess”, the tweet bore the message “You can always trust a Jew to show their true colours eventually” along with the hashtag “#HitlerWasRight.”
Also at the camp was a man who calls himself James Mac, who was photographed last year at National Action demonstrations. Mac made antisemitic comments during the meeting, saying: “They carry on like somebody’s died. You know like if a family member died and somebody got off, they carry on like that, just about somebody who bad-mouthed them. This is the way these Jews carry on.”
The video appears to show criminal offences being committed which we expect to be prosecuted.
Campaign Against Antisemitism is monitoring developments closely and is confident that British authorties will respond appropriately and quickly to this very disturbing revelation. We are in contact with the Home Office.
