Neo-Nazi group National Action founder Alex Davies faces jail after guilty verdict

The judge told Alex Davies he will inevitably face jail when he is sentenced next month, as Rhys Williams reports

A man has been found guilty of being a member of a neo-Nazi group after the organisation was banned.

Alex Davies, 27, from Swansea, was convicted of being a member of National Action (NA) after it was proscribed by the government in December 2016.

It comes after an ITV News investigation in 2017 revealed that members of Britain’s first far-right terrorist group were still meeting in secret “training camps” despite the ban.

The group had celebrated the murder of the MP Jo Cox by a far-right terrorist and its own Strategy and Promotion document calling for "extreme forms of racism and anti-Semitism".

The jury at Winchester Crown Court had heard that the UK government banned the group after it had “terrorised” towns across the country with its call for an “all-out race war”.

Former PPI salesman Davies was convicted of setting up NS131 – which stood for National Socialist Anti-Capitalist Action and which itself was later banned by the government – as a continuity group.

He told the court that NS131 was not set up as a continuation of NA and had different aims and processes.

The court heard Davies was the “founder, galvaniser and recruiter” of the white supremacist terror group, and was judged by an expert to be “so extreme you can’t go any further”.

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After founding NA in 2013, Davies told an undercover reporter that he did not want to say what he wanted to do to Jews “because it was so extreme”.

The trial also heard that Davies had visited the former concentration camp Buchenwald in Germany where he gave Nazi salute in the execution chamber.

In 2017, undercover filming by ITV News caught individuals with links to the banned group together at a training camp for far-right sympathisers in the Peak District.

The weekend billed itself as a “survival camp” with boxing and street fighting sessions, as well as how to deal with a knife attack.

Then in 2018, an ITV News investigation revealed that Davies had his first contact with counter-extremist authorities when he was just sixteen years old.

In classified files seen by ITV News, Davies was identified as the “driving force” behind NA, and that he “simply considered black and Asian races inferior to white people.”

Davies founded NA while a fresher at the University of Warwick, where the philosophy student used the campus as a launching pad for his fascist views.

He toured the country handing out National Action leaflets and held vocal protests in town and city centres across Britain.

In the classified files seen by ITV News, it was warned that Davies was “attempting to indoctrinate others… particularly young white men.”

Speaking after his conviction, Detective Superintendent Anthony Tagg from the Counter Terrorism Unit in West Midlands Police, said Davies was the 19th person to be found guilty of being a member of National Action.

“The prosecution and then the conviction of Alex Davies brings to conclusion for us a series of investigations which started back in 2016,” he said.

“The organisation National Action sought to spread hatred in communities across the country. It sought to espouse an extreme right-wing ideology to bring on a race war.”

“There will be others across the country I'm sure now who hold a similar view and similar ideology as Alex Davies.

“However, I can reassure you that where we find evidence of that we will seek to investigate it and we will seek to bring to justice those who hold views that cause division in communities across the country.”

National Action first came to the attention of the force when racist stickers were found at Aston University in Birmingham, and Dep Supt Tagg called on the public to report any racist literature.

“If you see something that you're not happy with, if you see stickering or posting, then please come forward and report that to the police so that we can investigate that and prosecute those who are responsible for pushing for that extreme ideology," Dep Supt Tagg said.

“We will also ask communities if there are people who you're concerned about loved ones, people, within friends and family who are concerned are being exploited by people who hold extremist ideologies, then again, please come forward so that we can support those individuals and divert them away from individuals who cause to radicalise them.”