National Action: Neo-Nazi group founder Alex Davies jailed

The 27-year-old founder of a banned white supremacist group has been jailed for his continued involvement with the organisation.

Alex Davies, from Swansea - described as the "biggest Nazi of the lot" - was convicted of being a member of National Action (NA), which was proscribed by the UK Government in 2016.

Following a trial, Davies was found guilty at Winchester Crown Court and was jailed for eight and a half years, with a further year on extended licence.

The court heard that National Action had split into regional factions with the aim of getting around the ban.

Davies was the "founder, galvaniser and recruiter" of NA, and had set up a "continuity group" known as NS131 - National Socialist Anti-Capitalist Action - which covered the southern part of the country.

Judge Mark Dennis QC said: “I’m satisfied the defendant played an active and prominent role in concert with his trusted associates in trying to disguise the continued existence of the organisation in defiance of the ban.”

Addressing the defendant in the dock, he added: “You are an intelligent and educated young man, but you have held, over a period of many years, warped and shocking prejudices.”

Judge Dennis said that by relaunching NA with the acronym NS131 in the South West, Davies had tried to hide it in “plain sight”.

He said: “This was a well-orchestrated and determined effort to flout the ban on the activities of National Action and continue to promote and strive to achieve the long-held objectives of the organisation.”

Those objectives involved the promotion of a violently white supremacist agenda with “hatred and venom” against vast numbers of people, the judge added.

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During the trial, prosecutor Barnaby Jameson QC described how NA had “terrorised” towns across the country with its call for an “all-out race war”.

The group was a throwback to Hitler’s Germany and based its logo and image on the Sturmabteilung – the paramilitary wing of the Nazi party, he said.

Davies, who formed NA while at Warwick University in 2013, told an undercover reporter at the time that he did not want to say what he would do to Jews, because it was “so extreme”.

In 2016, he travelled to Germany where he posed holding an NA flag and giving the Nazi salute in the execution chamber of the Buchenwald concentration camp - causing outrage in the country, where Nazi idolisation is illegal.

In his defence, Davies claimed that NS131 was not set up as a continuation of NA and had different aims and processes, and he was only “exercising his democratic rights”.

But comparing the two groups, the prosecution said: “The same name – National Socialist Anti-Capitalist Action (NS131) – take out the three middle words and you are left with a big clue: National Action.

“Same colours – black and white, colours of Sturmabteilung. Same look of designer Benjamin Raymond, a convicted NA member.

“The same ideology – a throwback to Nazi Germany.

“The same leader – this defendant, who makes it all happen. Same regional structure – adapted and redrawn following proscription, and so many familiar faces from the old guard.”

Mr Jameson added: “Who was at the centre of all this? The founder, the galvaniser, the recruiter, one Alex Davies of Swansea. He was probably the biggest Nazi of the lot.”

Davies is the 19th person to be convicted of membership of NA, the first right-wing organisation to be banned since the Second World War.