This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

A former member of the banned neo-Nazi group National Action has told a court how he revealed a plot to murder a Labour MP after becoming disillusioned with the group.

Robbie Mullen, 25, said he acted as a whistleblower after he heard about the plan to kill the West Lancashire Labour MP Rosie Cooper with a 19-inch machete. He said he contacted Hope Not Hate, a campaign group dedicated to combating racism and rightwing extremism.

On the opening day of a trial at the Old Bailey on Tuesday, Jack Renshaw, 23, an alleged National Action member, admitted preparing acts of terrorism by plotting to kill Cooper, as well as making threats to kill Victoria Henderson, a police officer, for investigating him over child sex offences.

Renshaw was allegedly given the blessing of Christopher Lythgoe, 32, from Warrington, said to be the leader of National Action, who, with regard to the plan, allegedly responded: “Don’t fuck it up.”

Lythgoe, who is on trial alongside Renshaw, is charged with encouraging Renshaw to murder Cooper on behalf of National Action, believing that the act would be committed. Lythgoe denies the charges.

The prosecution said that during a three-and-a-half hour meeting at the Friar Penketh pub in Warrington on 1 July 2017, Renshaw complained about the police investigation into him and said he was planning to kill Cooper, his local MP. He said he had already purchased the machete he would use to carry out the killing.

Renshaw allegedly said that after killing Cooper he would take some people hostage and demand that Henderson attend the scene. “His plan then would be to kill the officer who was, he said, his real target,” Duncan Atkinson QC, prosecuting, told jurors.

Lythgoe suggested targeting instead Amber Rudd, the home secretary at the time, but Renshaw said she would be too heavily guarded, the Old Bailey was told.

The plan was scuppered by Mullen, who was feeding information to Hope Not Hate. His handler from the campaign group, Nick Lowles, contacted the Labour MP for Stoke-on-Trent, Ruth Smeeth, to inform her that Renshaw was planning to murder Cooper. Smeeth immediately told Cooper of the threat and the police were called in.

Lythgoe denies giving Renshaw permission to murder Cooper on behalf of National Action. The pair, along with four other men, have denied membership of the group after it was banned in December 2016 for supporting the murder the previous June of Jo Cox, the former Batley and Spen MP.

Giving evidence at the Old Bailey, Mullen, from Widnes, Cheshire, who dropped out of school aged 13 or 14, said he joined the National Front aged 18 or 19 and became a member of National Action in August or September 2015.

He told jurors that the group stood for “the free white man” and was against “everything – Jews, blacks, Asians, every non-white.” Its aim was to “wipe them out by any means necessary – war, anything.”

He implicated all the defendants in the extreme rightwing organisation, saying they continued to be involved with it after the ban.



Asked by Atkinson why he had first contacted Hope Not Hate in April last year, Mullen said: “I honestly think to get out of National Action.”

Renshaw, from Skelmersdale, Lancashire, and Lythgoe are on trial with Garron Helm, 24, of Seaforth, Merseyside, Matthew Hankinson, 24, of Newton-le-Willows, Merseyside, Andrew Clarke, 33, and Michal Trubini, 35, both of Warrington. They deny belonging to a proscribed organisation.

Jurors were shown National Action propaganda videos of demonstrations across England and Scotland in which men wore skull masks, waved banners and made Nazi salutes.

Some of the defendants, including Renshaw, were identified in the footage, and Lythgoe and Hankinson also featured in a mixed martial arts training video, the court heard.

PC Matthew Fletcher explained the history of the self-styled “youth movement”, which was described as “virulently racist”. He told how it was based on neo-Nazi ideology and hatred of members of Jewish, gay people and ethnic minority communities.

National Action was the first extreme rightwing group to be proscribed since the second world war, and the 85th group to be proscribed in the UK overall.

Fletcher said the group was founded in late 2013 by Alex Davies and Benjamin Raymond, both university students. It targeted young men in their twenties using stickers around universities and “flash demonstrations” in towns and cities, the court heard.

The trial continues.