Samples of Nazi regalia and far-right literature, including a manual on how to make a homemade pistol, found by police

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Special police units who searched the house of the man arrested after the killing of MP Jo Cox are believed to have found samples of Nazi regalia and far-right literature.

Thomas Mair was also known to have bought books from a US-based neo-Nazi group, including guides on how to build homemade guns and explosives, according to an anti-hate campaign group in the US. Among them was a manual on how to make a homemade pistol.

Sources say that the suspected killer was lucid when first questioned. A picture is now emerging of a deliberately targeted attack in which Mair lay in wait for the MP as she emerged from her constituency meeting on Thursday. Witnesses have confirmed that he shouted “Britain first” or “Put Britain first” as he attacked Cox, who was 41 and had two children. Britain First is the name of a far-right political party.



The developments came as David Cameron and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn visited Cox’s her constituency town of Birstall in West Yorkshire. In an emotional tribute, Corbyn said she was killed by a “well of hatred” and announced that parliament would be recalled.

Cameron said it was time for the UK to think about the need to “treasure and value our democracy”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Prime minister David Cameron and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn lay flowers at the scene where Jo Cox died. Photograph: Ian Hinchliffe/Rex/Shutterstock

in the US, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) published receipts that appeared to show Mair bought, among other books, a manual on how to make a homemade pistol from the National Alliance.

The receipts, some of which date back to the 1990s, showed Mair spent more than $620 (£436) on literature from the group, which advocates the creation of an all-white homeland and the eradication of Jewish people.

He bought books that instructed readers on the “chemistry of powder and explosives”, “incendiaries”, and a work called Improvised Munitions Handbook. The handbook included detailed instructions on constructing a pipe pistol using parts available in DIY stores.



Receipted items also included Ich Kämpfe, an illustrated handbook issued to members of the Nazi party in 1942.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest One of the published receipts. Photograph: SPLC

Heidi Beirich, the leader of the SPLC’s Intelligence Project, said the group had obtained transaction records from members of the National Alliance.

The far-right political party Britain First said after the attack on Cox that it was not involved in it and “would never encourage behaviour of this sort”.

There were also reports that Mair was named as a subscriber to SA Patriot, a South African magazine published by White Rhino Club, a pro-apartheid group. The club describes the magazine’s editorial stance as being opposed to “multicultural societies” and “expansionist Islam”.

The National Alliance was founded in 1974 by William Pierce, from an earlier group called the National Youth Alliance, which emerged from the support of the segregationist demagogue, Alabama governor and three-time presidential candidate George Wallace. A book by Pierce, who died in 2002, was an inspiration for the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people, according to the bomber, Timothy McVeigh.