NF gang jailed for torture plot
01 November 2002
A National Front (NF) gang, led by their youth organiser Simon Northfield (23), received jail sentences totalling 25 years at Kingston Crown Court after pleading guilty in November to a plot to kidnap and torture black people. The eight-strong gang had driven to Tooting, south London on 29 September 2001, in a white van loaded with weapons, searching for black youths to attack. The plot was apparently in response to the attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September, although the media has downplayed this motive. The gang's actions aroused the suspicions of park employees who contacted the police. Officers arrested the driver and his companion and found five more people, dressed in black combat jackets and boots, inside the vehicle. The men were equipped with "a kidnap and assault kit" that included balaclavas, handcuffs, batons, knives, CS gas, a knuckleduster and an imitation gun. A map of London with a mosque marked out was also found.
Raids on the homes of the men uncovered more weapons, including 33 knives, a sword, a knuckleduster and photographs of the men dressed in nazi and Ku Klux Klan uniforms. The searches also revealed NF and Combat 18 propaganda. Northfield who was a National Front "officer" and is a close associate of leading NF activist and convicted Loyalist gun-runner, Terry Blackham. In February 2000, he had admitted attacking members of the Anti-Nazi League while taking part in an anti-asylum seeker demonstration in Margate, Kent. NF literature describes Northfield as a builder and a leading figure in the Young NF.
Northfield was jailed for 4 years and 4 months for conspiracy to cause racially aggravated assault and possessing weapons. Police also found racist NF literature at the home of James Kennett, who was jailed for three and a half years; he had a previous conviction for putting NF stickers on an Asian-owned shop. The other members of the gang who admitted conspiracy to cause racially aggravated assault were: Paul Lewis (3 years), Paul Connell and Thomas Slade (3 years and 9 months), Paul White (3 years and 10 months). Two juveniles were also jailed for 18 months each. Three of the men had previous convictions for racist attacks.
In October another white supremacist, David Tovey, from Oxfordshire was found guilty of racially aggravated damage to property and firearms and explosives offences. Tovey, who was arrested after being observed writing anti-white graffiti in a public lavatory in an attempt to incite racial hatred, was convicted at Oxford crown court in October after police raided his home and found British National Party (BNP) literature and an enormous arsenal. Among the weapons found were a Sten sub-machinegun, Spaz pump-action and Kestrel shotguns, a pistol and silencer, body armour and CS gas. Even more disturbingly, police found a quantity of British Army P4 explosive. The odourless plastic explosive is known to be widely available on the black market, and police have belatedly begun an investigation into its route from the army onto the underground market.
Tovey was sentenced, after undergoing psychiatric tests, to eight years for the firearms and explosives charges in November. He received a further three year sentence for two counts of racially aggravated graffiti, to run consecutively. Police have said that Tovey was planning to emulate the nazi nailbomber, David Copeland, a BNP supporter who exploded a series of bombs in London in 1999, killing three people and injuring over 100.