In January, 2018, at a court in Lancashire, Renshaw was convicted of “incitement to racial hatred.” He was sentenced to three years in prison. In June, he was convicted of four counts of inciting a child to engage in sexual activity. Later that summer, Renshaw appeared with five other suspected members of National Action at the Old Bailey, London’s oldest and most important criminal courthouse, in the murder-plot trial. On the first morning, Renshaw unexpectedly pleaded guilty to preparing an act of terrorism, but he and the others remained on trial for membership in a proscribed terror organization. From the witness box, Renshaw told the court that his plot was intended to “send the state a message—if you beat a dog long enough, it bites.”

When it was Mullen’s moment to give evidence, he entered the witness box wearing a navy-blue suit and a red tie bought for the occasion. The press box was full of journalists; rows of barristers, in gowns and horsehair wigs, were arranged behind long wooden benches; and there were six defendants in the dock, staring at him. He looked at his former best friend Matt Hankinson, who shook his head. Until that point, Mullen had felt that his actions had been justified. But when he saw Hankinson his stomach turned.

“It’s the ultimate betrayal, isn’t it?” Mullen told me recently.

Mullen testified for three days. At times, he told his story with clarity. He recounted that, when Renshaw had unveiled his murder plot in the pub, Lythgoe had told him, “Don’t fuck it up.” (Lythgoe denies saying this.) But Mullen was riled by the leading defense barristers, who were all Queen’s Counsel, the finest trial lawyers in Britain. Mullen believed that they were using “big words” to patronize him. One of them interrupted Mullen while he was testifying to complain that she could not understand his northern accent. Another barrister, Crispin Aylett, who represented Lythgoe, suggested that Mullen had trouble reading.

Aylett also said that Mullen was untrustworthy and corrupt: “You’ve exaggerated aspects of your evidence, told lies, all to get Christopher Lythgoe and others convicted and to bolster your credibility with your paymaster, HOPE Not Hate.” Mullen reacted so angrily that the judge told him he was close to being found in contempt of court.

Mullen kept himself in check for the rest of the trial. On July 18, 2018, Lythgoe was found guilty of membership in National Action, but not guilty of encouraging Renshaw to murder Cooper. Hankinson, too, was found guilty of membership. The jury was unable to reach a decision on the question of Renshaw’s membership. He and two other suspected N.A. members were ordered to return to the Old Bailey for a retrial in 2019, which meant that Mullen would be required to give evidence again. His heart sank.

“I identified most with the popcorn-loving protagonist who hosted a monthly book club in her home.” Facebook

Twitter

Email

Shopping

In April, I took a long drive with Mullen. We passed the pub where the plot was hatched, the houses where he had lived, his mother’s new house, his school, his places of work, and his new safe house. His mood seemed much brighter. A few weeks earlier, at the Old Bailey, I had watched him testify at the retrial. Wearing the same navy-blue suit, he spoke clearly, and did not take the bait from the barristers. He never looked at the defendants. He told me that he had made peace with the fact that the people in the dock were no longer his friends.

During cross-examination, a defense barrister, Alan Kent, asked Mullen about his political views.

“Are you racist?” Kent asked.

“No,” Mullen replied.

“Are you anti-Semitic?”

“No.”

“And previously you would have said you held those views?”

“Yes.”

As this exchange ended, a look of contentment appeared on Mullen’s face, as if he were considering his transformation afresh. Lowles told me that Mullen, even at his lowest moments, would say, “Whatever else happens in my life, I’ve saved someone’s life.” But it was increasingly clear that Mullen also felt pride in his subsequent moral courage. Even if he still had an incomplete understanding of his own politics, he knew what he stood against. Collins told me that, at a recent Manchester United match, Mullen had noticed a man openly displaying swastika tattoos. Mullen wanted the man to be ejected, and alerted other fans, who were similarly outraged. The man left the stadium.

On the drive, Mullen told me how strange it was that he had ever been a neo-Nazi. As a child, he had never knowingly met a Jewish person. How had he got it into his head that a Jewish cabal controlled powerful institutions to the detriment of white Englishmen? He recalled bleakly humorous incidents from his past in National Action. At one rally, in St. Helens—a town whose population is overwhelmingly “white British” and Christian—one member with a megaphone had shouted at passersby, “Your enemy is the Jew!” Mullen told me, “People in St. Helens were, like, ‘What’s a Jew?’ ”

Mullen and Collins had co-written a book, “Nazi Terrorist: The Story of National Action,” which was published this month in the U.K. But Mullen still wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with his life. He was taking things “month by month.” He suspected that he would move back to Widnes one day. If he could secure a visa, he and Collins planned on visiting New York in June.

During our drive, for the first time in the seven months we’d known each other, Mullen asked me several unprompted questions. The deficit of empathy Collins had first noticed in him seemed to be evaporating. He told me a story about going to a café in London, across the road from the Old Bailey, and bumping into the female barrister who had commented on his accent. Out of court, he said, she was “really nice” and “really friendly.” He bore her no ill feeling. “I know it’s her job,” he said.

Mullen also told me excitedly about a plan to take his ten-year-old nephew on a surprise vacation to Malta. He had saved up his salary from HOPE Not Hate to buy tickets. The arrangements had been made, and Mullen had stashed his nephew’s suitcase at his house. He would reveal the surprise only when they arrived at the airport. Not long afterward, I received a text from Mullen in Malta. It was about how much he had delighted in his nephew’s joyous reaction. “He didn’t have a clue ahha!” he wrote.

Around this time, I also met with Collins, who seemed burdened by the events of the previous two years. He was vexed that, at the retrial, a jury had been unable to reach a majority verdict on any of the charges. Although Renshaw was sentenced, on May 17th, to a minimum of twenty years in prison, Collins was worried about Andy Clarke, the former N.A. member, who was now free. Clarke’s uncles, some of Liverpool’s most notorious gangsters, are currently serving long sentences for drugs and for gun offenses. Collins feared for Mullen’s safety.

Collins told me that the risk to his own life remained high—both from people he betrayed in the nineties and from far-right figures whose activities he had disrupted more recently. He noted that, not long ago, the police had visited his partner at their house, to tell her they had credible information that she and her family were in danger. Nevertheless, Collins told me, he was more certain than ever that tracking white supremacists was urgent work. The attack on mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, had just occurred, killing fifty people. Rosie Cooper had made a statement to Parliament, thanking Mullen and HOPE Not Hate for saving her life. Collins also enjoyed the acclaim that accompanied his work with HOPE Not Hate. Since the Renshaw trial, he had become a minor celebrity in leftist circles. Recently, at a fashionable restaurant in Manchester, Conrad Murray, the manager of the Stone Roses, came to our table, hugged Collins, and told him, “Well done, mate.”

Yet Collins was exhausted and in debt. The phone in his pocket never stopped buzzing. Collins’s partner had said to him recently, “I can’t live like this.” Collins told me, semi-seriously, that he had considered applying to become a train driver. I said that this sounded like an improbable change of career. Collins agreed, but noted, with a thin smile, “I’m not going to live forever doing this job. Either the life style will kill me or a Nazi will.” ♦