Anti Fascism,  Terrorism,  UK Politics

Neo-Nazi on trial for soliciting murder of Jews: the BNP connection

This is a cross post by Edmund Standing

Michael Heaton (AKA ‘Wigan Mike’, leader of the ‘British Freedom Fighters’ skinhead gang) and his friend Trevor Hannington are back in court tomorrow for their second appearance on charges of terrorism offences and soliciting murder:

TWO suspected neo-Nazis due to appear in court tomorrow are alleged to belong to the same extreme right wing organisation as a County Durham father and son arrested on terrorism charges.

Trevor Hannington, 58, and Michael Heaton, 42, are accused of being “administrators” of the Aryan Strike Force website and used wall posts to encourage others to murder Jews.

They are due before the Old Bailey tomorrow facing a string of terrorism and public order offences dating back to January 2008.

Also alleged to have links to the Aryan Strike Force are former pub DJ Ian Davison, 41, and his son Nicky, 18.

Ian Davison was brought before City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London last June accused of stashing deadly poison and explosives at his North East home.

He was arrested along with Nicky, of Grampian Place, Annfield Plain, near Stanley, on June 2, when counter-terrorism detectives raided his home on Myrtle Grove, Burnopfield, County Durham.

He is currently remanded in custody charged with offences under the Terrorism Act including acquiring a quantity of the toxin ricin, explosives and other manuals and disseminated them to others, encouraging others to commit acts of terrorism.

He also faces two offences of possessing a record containing information likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism. One of those charges relates to a manual containing information and instructions on the use or production of firearms, explosives and chemicals, the other relates to information and instructions on the use or production of explosive substances and related items.

Heaton, unsurprisingly, has links to all the key far-right organisations in the UK. He’s a friend of the Combat 18 splinter group the ‘Racial Volunteer Force’, whose leading members have numerous convictions for offences including publishing bomb making instructions and inciting violence against ethnic minorities. Here are some of the RVF scum on a day out to commemorate Blood & Honour founder Ian Stuart Donaldson:

Heaton and his BFF goons like nothing more than to attend gigs organised by the pro-terrorist Blood & Honour organisation. When he’s not at Blood & Honour gigs or BFF ‘socials’, Heaton lives on the internet, and one of his online haunts is the Blood & Honour ’28 Forum’:

Amongst the other members of this forum we find – surprise, surprise – BNP members and supporters:

Heaton also likes to show his support for the BNP, and he and his BFF crew dragged their knuckles along to Blackpool during the BNP’s European Election victory celebrations, where they proceeded to harass anti-BNP protestors by shouting racial abuse, chanting the names of Nazi concentration camps, and giving Nazi salutes, before four of them were bundled off in a police van. Heaton was arrested and charged with racially aggravated harassment.

This isn’t Heaton’s only link to the BNP. As I revealed back in July 2009, Heaton and the BFF organised a sieg heiling ‘social’ in April of that year which was held at a pub owned and run by BNP West Midlands regional organiser and failed electoral candidate, Alwyn Deacon. Here’s Heaton and his skinhead followers enjoying the hospitality at Deacon’s place:

While Deacon may – more than a bit implausibly – argue that he wasn’t aware of who Heaton and the BFF were (although they’re hardly inconspicuous), not every BNP activist can feign ignorance.

Take Beverley Kerry, a BNP activist from Derbyshire. Kerry is an enthusiastic supporter of the BNP and volunteers for the party. She delivers BNP leaflets:

And she worked as a steward at this year’s BNP ‘Red, White & Blue’ festival:

You can see her in this RWB video, which she uploaded herself.

Kerry is good friends with Heaton, as shown by posts on the Vanguard News Network race hate forum of which she is UK moderator. Here she is writing about her membership of the Aryan Strike Force forum and giving Heaton a Nazi greeting:

And here she is talking about phoning Heaton following his arrest for soliciting murder:

It’s hardly surprising that Heaton and Kerry are on good terms. When she’s not busy promoting the BNP on VNN, Kerry also moderates and participates in a number of other neo-Nazi forums including a major Blood & Honour forum (as she acknowledges here and here), the Covert Tactics forum, and Stormfront. Kerry has proudly boasted of ‘moderating/being admin on the most extreme nazi forum on the internet’, as well as calling the Holocaust the ‘Holohoax’, and talking about her Skrewdriver tattoo:

Kerry remarks:

Not the sort of thing you want the press and voters to see, is it?

Certainly not! Nor, presumably, would the BNP be too happy if the electorate were aware that some party supporters count amongst their friends a man facing charges of soliciting the murder of Jews…