The co-founder of a neo-Nazi group who is accused of being a member after it was banned has told a court he set up the organisation with the aim of creating a “white Britain”. Alex Davies, 27, is on trial accused of being a member of the proscribed organisation National Action (NA) after it was banned on December 16, 2016.
Barnaby Jameson QC, prosecuting, has told the trial at Winchester Crown Court that the UK Government banned the group after it had “terrorised” towns across the country with its call for an “all-out race war”. Following the ban Davies, who is from Swansea, set up a “continuity” group, NS131, which stood for National Socialist Anti-Capitalist Action and which itself was later banned by the Government, Mr Jameson said.
Davies told the court that he denied continuing being a member of NA after the ban and said he had not attempted to defy it. He said of the ban: “I felt it was an unprovoked move but in some respects, given the provocative nature of the organisation, I understood the thinking behind the proscription. I understood why people in the Home Office would be concerned about what National Action was involved in – not so much what it was doing at the time but the trajectory it was on.”
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Davies said he had not attempted to challenge the proscription although others had. He said: “I felt it was an opportunity to reassess what we had been doing and to start with a blank slate and come up with ways of doing things that would be more productive.”
Davies said he advised the members of his region of NA not to break the law and his understanding was the organisation would be “disbanded” following the ban. He added that he did not believe he was “banned from exercising our democratic rights” but only from being a member of NA or promoting it.
Davies told the court that he had previously been involved in several other organisations which included Ukip, the BNP, the Hunt Saboteur Association, and British Movement. He was also a member of Western Spring, which he described as an “organisation that aims to create white communities”. Describing himself as a national socialist he said: “I view the nation as a family – you can’t choose what family you belong to, you can’t choose what nation you belong to.” He added that he believed “workers should control the means of production, working class working for themselves rather than the greedy bosses”.
Davies said that it was his idea to set up NA in the summer of 2013 before he went to Warwick University to study philosophy. He said that he left after one year after his link to an NA demonstration in Liverpool was exposed by an undercover reporter for the Sunday Mirror.
Davies said that he set up NA because as a “national socialist” he was “politically homeless” after the BNP had “imploded”. He said that he did not believe in “fomenting a race war” because it would “create harm to my own people”.
Davies said the aim of the group was to “bring young people into nationalism” and to create a “nationalist Britain which would be a white Britain”. He admitted that he posed carrying out a Nazi salute for a photo in the execution chamber at Buchenwald concentration camp in May 2016.
Davies said that he was “ashamed” of his actions and added: “It was a disgraceful thing to do where people have died and desecrate their memory, whatever side of the political spectrum they may have fallen on.” He said that he had not agreed or been involved with Twitter posts put out by NA accounts which “celebrated” the murder of MP Jo Cox in June 2016. The defendant said: “I felt bad that she died, I feel sorry for her kids, I feel sorry for her husband.” Davies, from Swansea, denies membership of a proscribed organisation between December, 17, 2016 and September 27, 2017, and the trial continues.
