NATIONAL ACTION: Christopher Lythgoe jailed for being member of banned terror group

The leader of National Action Christopher Lythgoe, of Greymist Avenue, has spent more than five weeks on trial at the country’s most famous courthouse, the Old Bailey.

The 32-year-old was arrested following a raid on his home by police investigating a plot to murder Labour MP Rosie Cooper and a female police officer.

It came just over a year after fellow Labour MP Jo Cox was shot and stabbed to death in her Batley and Spen constituency by neo-Nazi Thomas Mair.

The plan was foiled by a whistle-blower Robbie Mullen, who leaked details of a meeting at the Friar Penketh pub in Warrington town centre to campaigner group Hope Not Hate in July last year.

READ: Man tries to avoid arrest by jumping through window in his boxers

VIDEO: Two people taken to hospital after car flips onto roof in town centre

PICTURED: Lythgoe and Hankinson were on trial alongside four others at the Old Bailey

Jack Renshaw, 23, from Skelmersdale, Lancashire, has pleaded guilty to preparing to engage in an act of terrorism in relation to the plot and threatening a police officer.

A gladius sword was uncovered at Renshaw's home following a police raid. 

He has also been convicted of stirring up racial hatred in speeches in 2016, it can now be reported.

Lythgoe was charged with being a member of National Action after it was banned by the Home Secretary over its support for the murder of Mrs Cox.

He was also accused of encouraging the murder of West Lancashire Labour MP Ms Cooper by telling Renshaw not to 'f*** it up' during the meeting on July 1, 2017.

PICTURED: The Friar Penketh in Warrington town centre

A jury deliberated for 20 hours at the Old Bailey to find him guilty of membership of National Action but not guilty of encouraging Renshaw.

Prominent member Matthew Hankinson, 24, from Newton-le-Willows, was also found guilty of belonging to National Action and was jailed for six years.

The jury acquitted Garron Helm, 24, from Seaforth, of the same charge.

Mr Justice Jay described National Action as having a 'truly evil and dystopian vision' of waging a race war.

PICTURED: Police raided Christopher Lythgoe's home in Woolston

Without Lythgoe's obsessive determination to keep it going it would have 'withered and died on the vine'.

While numbers were too small to achieve its aims, there was a real risk it could have inspired acts of terror by its perverted ideology, the judge said.

Mr Justice Jay told Lythgoe: "You are a fully-fledged neo-Nazi complete with deep-seated racism and anti-Semitism.

He added that Lythgoe 'did nothing to stop or discourage' the plot to kill Ms Cooper.

PICTURED: The seized gladius sword

He told Hankinson that he was also a prominent member who hated ethnic minorities and Jews, and advocated violence.

Ms Cooper sat in court as the men were jailed.

The MP said in a statement: "I think it's awful that any public servant - teacher, nurse, doctor, police, MP - should be targeted and threatened with violence simply because of the job they do.

"To that end, I'd like to thank Robbie Mullen, whose information saved my life.

"I'd also like to thank Lancashire and Merseyside Police and the counter-terrorism police who have supported me greatly, and who have kept me, my staff and the general public safe."

VIDEO: Police footage of a converted warehouse in Howley which was used as a training camp for an ‘imminent race war’

National Action is the first extreme right-wing group to be proscribed by the Government since the Second World War.

At its height, it had a membership of up to 100 young white men, drawn from universities.

Dressed in black skull masks, they would gather for flash demonstrations, waving banners and making Nazi salutes.

Jurors were told that warehouse worker Lythgoe had regarded the death of the 41-year-old MP as a 'little victory'.

He reacted to news of the ban by telling members that they would 'just shed one skin for another'.

The prosecution alleged they continued to meet in pubs and train together at a new mixed martial arts gym in Howley.

The defendants denied being members of National Action.

PICTURED: National Action posters were shown to the jury 

In his sentencing, Mr Justice Jay said that, under Lythgoe's leadership, National Action meetings continued on a 'modest' scale.

"They kept alive an aspiration which was truly insidious and evil - the idea that this country should be purged of its ethnic minorities and its Jews, that the rule of law should be subverted, and that once the ideological revolution had taken place this national socialist worldview would triumph", he said.

"The idea that there could be such a triumph without violence is arrant nonsense, despite the weasel words to the contrary."

The judge added: "Fortunately, and I can take this into account to some extent in the defendants' favour, the truly evil and dystopian vision I am describing could never have been achieved through the activities of National Action, a very small group operating at the very periphery of far-right wing extremism.

"The real risk to society inheres instead in the carrying out of isolated acts of terror inspired by the perverted ideology I have been describing."

Jurors were unable to decide whether Renshaw had remained a member of National Action after it was banned, or whether two other men - Michal Trubini, 35, of Dutton Court, Howley, and Andrew Clarke, 33, from Prescot - were guilty of the same charge.

To read our live coverage from the opening day of the hearing click here.