Two from West Yorkshire jailed for being members of neo-Nazi hate group National Action
Alice Cutter and former partner Mark Jones were jailed alongside co-accused Garry Jack and Connor Scothern today (Tuesday) for playing "significant" and "trusted" roles in National Action, which was proscribed in December 2016 by the then-home secretary Amber Rudd.
Former Miss Hitler beauty pageant contestant Cutter, 23, had sent messages in which she joked about gassing synagogues, using a Jew’s head as a football, and exclaiming “Rot in hell, bitch” after hearing of the murder of MP Jo Cox.
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Hide AdThe court heard yesterday (Monday) how "frustration with a lack of activism" in her native Yorkshire led Cutter to join the NA’s Midlands sub-group, whose membership was “determined to defy the ban”. She had also made an attempt to recruit a 15-year-old girl, albeit unsuccessfully, to the group.
Nazi-admirer Jones meanwhile played “a significant role in the continuation of the organisation” after its ban in 2016.
A former member of the British National Party’s youth wing and a rail engineer, the 25-year-old was described at trial as a “leader and strategist” who played a “prominent and active role”.
Jones had originally been the group’s London regional organiser, and acknowledged posing for a photograph while delivering a Nazi-style salute and holding an NA flag in Buchenwald’s execution room during a trip to Germany in 2016.
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Hide AdBoth he and Cutter are from Sowerby Bridge in Calderdale, West Yorkshire, with the couple making it “part of a pattern” in “targeting individuals for recruitment at a time when National Action was a banned organisation”.
Extreme right-wing group National Action (NA), labelled “racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic”, was banned after a series of rallies and incidents, including praise of the murder of MP Jo Cox.
Cutter, who entered the Miss Hitler beauty contest as Miss Buchenwald – a reference to the Second World War death camp – had denied ever being a member, despite attending the group’s rallies, in which banners reading “Hitler was right” were raised.
She was told by a judge: “You never held an organisational or leadership role”, and that she had been a “trusted confidante” of one the group’s leaders, as well as being in a “committed relationship” with Jones.
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Hide AdProsecutors described Cutter and Jones, both of Sowerby Bridge, near Halifax, West Yorkshire, as well as Jack and Scothern as “active” group members, even after the ban.
Jack, 24, of Heathland Avenue, Shard End, Birmingham, had attended almost every meeting of NA’s Midlands sub-group.
He also had a previous conviction, from before the group was banned for plastering Birmingham’s Aston University campus with NA’s racially charged stickers, some reading “Britain is ours, the rest must go.”
Scothern, 19, of Bagnall Avenue, Nottingham, was “considered future leadership material” and had distributed almost 1,500 stickers calling for a “final solution” – in reference to the Nazis’ genocide against Jews.
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Hide AdCutter was jailed for three years, while Jones received a five-and-a-half-year prison term.
Jack was sentenced to four-and-a-half years in prison, and Scothern was handed a sentence of detention for 18 months.
Speaking ahead of sentencing, the director of public prosecutions Max Hill QC described NA members as “diehards” who “hark back to the days of not just anti-Semitism, but the Holocaust, the Third Reich in Germany”.