The Fanatics Threatening
A Race War In Britain?
-James Pierson investigates militant fascism in British society
Picture the scene. You are a hardworking Suffolk Police officer doing what hardworking Suffolk Police officers do best: patrolling the streets, keeping law abiding citizens safe, and generally ensuring that sunny Suffolk remains peaceful and quiet. Then one day you receive a call on your radio from despatch. Apparently a man has just got off a train at Lowestoft. During the train journey he had been drinking cans of lager and had become abusive to other passengers and train guards. At the station he had urinated in public. Perhaps you sigh as you hurry toward the scene – despite the county’s predominantly rural makeup, the Suffolk urban conurbations of Ipswich, Bury St Edmonds, Felixstowe and Lowestoft have their fair share of pubs and clubs and it is unlikely that this will be the first drunk that you have had to deal with. Whatever the case, you arrive at the station and are confronted by an intoxicated man in his forties carrying a blue bag. You arrest him, take him to nearby Lowestoft Police Station, and while booking him in, you and your colleagues search him. It is then that the fun begins.
Neil Lewington was a jobless 44 year old who lived with his parents in Reading. On 
Thursday 30 October 2008, he took a train from his home town to Lowestoft to meet a woman that he had met on the Internet dating site ‘Hot or Not.’ But it was no box of chocolates that police found him carrying. For reasons known only to himself, Lewington had brought a veritable bomb making kit on his date.
The photographs accompanying this article are of the items that police found on Lewington that day, or later during a search of his bedroom. Lewington was found to be in possession of component parts for two improvised incendiary devices, including two digital clocks, batteries, wiring, and two cling-film wrapped blocks of firelighters, each containing an igniter and booster tube. Police also found a small screwdriver and two metal-hooked instruments, a mobile telephone containing racist images, and hand written notes titled ‘Device No 1’ and ‘Device No 2.’
The Metropolitan Police counter terrorism squad was called in and they conducted a thorough search of Lewington’s home. What they found was even more shocking. In his bedroom police found component parts for improvised incendiary and explosive devices, instructions on how to make such devices, recipes for an incendiary mixture and smoke bombs, hand-drawn diagrams for timer devices and detonators, electrical conversion charts, containers of sodium chlorate and sodium chlorate-based weed killer, component parts and equipment for improvised igniters and boosters, more than 100 pyrotechnic fuses, 15 improvised electrical igniters, 35 improvised boosters containing pyrotechnic material, modified timers, and firelighters.
Then there was an insight into his mindset and ideology. Lewington had accumulated a vast library of material suitable for the neo-Nazi terrorist. There was a handwritten manuscript called Waffen SS UK Members Handbook, containing a ‘Statement from the Command Council Waffen SS UK’ and sections called ‘Picking Target Areas,’ ‘Transporting Devices,’ ‘Targeting/Attacking Parts,’ and ‘Counter-surveillance.’ Police found racist jokes, press cuttings relating to terrorist activities, and books with titles such as: Homemade Ammo - How to Make It, How to Reload It, How to Cache It, and The Do-It- Yourself Gunpowder Cookbook.
Nobody really knows what Lewington planned to do with all this stuff. Police found no evidence of targets having been selected or concrete plans put in motion. What is 
known however is that he had long been interested in bomb making and had violently racist views. In his trial it emerged that his potential date in Lowestoft would not have been the first woman to come into contact with his strange predilections. He had had a number of relationships with women that he had met on dating sites, some of whom had stopped seeing him due to his open racism. One woman in particular told police that he had boasted of attending National Front marches and of having knowledge of firearms. Lewington also bought her son a Chemistry set, but took it back, saying that explosives could be made from the contents in conjunction with household items. Neil Lewington has since been jailed for possessing explosives and terrorism offences.
So what are we to make of Neil Lewington? Some people who claim to have known him have dismissed him on Internet forums as a fantasist. And certainly there is no evidence that he was part of a wider conspiracy. Similarly, he does appear to have had some deepseated personal problems. But the difficulty with simply dismissing him as a dangerous crank is that there appears to be a contagion going about. In the past ten years there have been numerous ‘cranks.’
Take Martyn Gilleard. Described as a ‘Nazi fanatic’ in an official Crown Prosecution Service press release following his conviction in June 2008, the 31 year old first came onto the police radar during an investigation into child pornography. In the early hours of Saturday 3 November 2007, the police struck, raiding his home in Goole, East Yorkshire. Finding the property empty, officers proceeded to search the residence and were amazed by what they discovered: extreme right wing literature, Combat 18 propaganda, ammunition, weapons, and improvised explosive devices. Counter- terrorism officers were called in and neighbours were evacuated.
The anti-terrorism officers found yet more material. They discovered more explosives, fuses, gun powder, camouflage clothing, balaclavas, a bomb making manual and outdoor survival guides. And just as they would with Neil Lewington, they discovered a handwritten notebook containing expressions of vehement and ferocious racism.
Like many of the so-called ‘cranks,’ Martyn Gilleard was obsessed with the idea of race war and wrote: “Be under no illusion, we are at war. And it is a war we are losing badly. Unless we the British right stop talking of racial war and take steps to make it happen we will never get back that which has been stolen from us. I’m so sick and tired of hearing Nationalists talk of killing Muslims, of blowing up mosques, of fighting back. Only to see these acts of resistance fail to appear. The time has come to stop the talk and start to act.”
Martyn Gilleard was eventually traced to his brother’s house in Dundee where he had fled having heard of the police search of his home. He was arrested and convicted the following year of terrorism offences, possession of ammunition, and possession of indecent images of children.
Then there is the case of Nathan Worrell, who came to the attention of police investigating the racial harassment of a mixed race couple. But unlike Gilleard, 
Worrell was in when police came knocking and refused to allow them entry. They were soon to discover why. After police had forced their way inside, they proceeded with their search, only to discover what has been described as ‘significant quantities of right wing material’ and ‘racially inflammatory material.’ They also found literature relating to explosives, fireworks, a large number of matches and a variety of chemicals.
Once again anti-terrorism officers were brought in and a library of bomb making manuals was unearthed, along with items that could be used in the construction of improvised explosive devices. Like Martyn Gilleard, Worrell was a member of the British People’s Party, a small far right fascist party that claim the notorious late British Nazi Colin Jordan as their spiritual leader. . But Worrell was also a member of a variety of other extreme right wing organisations including the British Nazi Party, White Nationalist Party, National Front and Ku Klux Klan.
Under questioning Worrell admitted to police to being a white nationalist and during his trial it was revealed that he signed his texts off as ‘88’ – code for Heil Hitler. The trial also heard how he had left racist stickers at the home of a couple and on a lamp-post. One sticker read: ‘Only inferior white women date outside their race. Be proud of your heritage.
Don’t be a race-mixing slut.’ While another from Combat 18 said: ‘It’s our country. Let’s win it back. Repatriation now.’ Worrell was finally jailed for six years.
Perhaps the most worrying case of all is that of David Tovey. A bodybuilding enthusiast and serial womaniser, police first became interested in Tovey during an investigation into a spate of racist graffiti in public toilets and other public spaces. The graffiti appeared to be written by a black supremacist, with legends such as ‘All whites are shit,’ ‘Die white pigs,’ and ‘Black power.’ Some referred to 9/11, with slogans such as ‘Die white Trade Centre scum.’ But police soon concluded that the graffiti had been penned by a white man. Tovey was caught on CCTV near one of the scenes and the police decided to pay him a visit.
Searching his home, it wasn’t long before officers discovered a cache of weaponry that beggared belief: A Spas pump-action shotgun like those used by US SWAT Teams, a Second World War Sten gun which he had reactivated, a Baikal pistol to which he had added a new barrel and silencer, a shortened Kestrel shotgun, and what looked like a side handled baton – but made of steel and hollowed out to make a single-shot firearm.
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