Far-Right on the rise warns Security Minister

The Government’s security minister has warned of the rise of far-Right extremism in Britain, as the latest Home Office figures showed a sharp rise in arrests for domestic terrorism offences.

The number people held for suspected domestic terror offences jumped nearly five-fold in the past 12 months in Great Britain.

Far-Right terrorist suspects drove the  increase, security sources told the Telegraph.

Speaking after the Finsbury Park terrorist attack, Ben Wallace, the security minister, said: “What I can say on this case is this individual, so far as we know at the moment, was not known to us, but we are aware of a rise in the far-Right."

He said online propaganda was helping fuel far-Right radicalisation, just as it was feeding Islamist extremism.

He said: “One of the biggest problems we all have is multi media today.

“The speed and grooming that these people involve themselves in, whether Islamic or far-Right, are something we all have to grapple together.”

Home Office Figures released last weekshowed that while international Islamist violence continues to account for most terror arrests, the number held for domestic terrorism in Great Britain, which is dominated by the far-Right, leapt from 10 to 48 last year.

The jump came after a neo-Nazi group called National Action in December became the first extreme Right-wing group to be banned as a terrorist organisation.

The anti-Semitic and white supremacist group had celebrated the murder of the Labour MP Jo Cox by Right-wing extremist Thomas Mair.

Aaron Winter, an academic at the University of East London who researches far-Right extremism, said neo-Nazi groups had increasingly pushed an anti-Muslim agenda.

He said: “In the past number of years, from 7/7 but also more recently, there’s been organisation around anti-Muslim activism.

“There’s an increasing mobilisation against Muslims."

He said recent years had seen "increased activism and plots, increased public statements about calling for violence", from Right-wing extremists, but police had also been paying more attention to their activities.

He said there had been an increase in hate crimes such as arsons at mosques, as anti-Muslim rhetoric became more prevalent.

Police in London recorded a spike in the number of Islamophobic incidents after the London Bridge terrorist attack earlier this month, with 20 recorded on June 6 - compared with a daily average of 3.5.

The tally was the highest this year and more than after the Paris attacks in November 2015, and the murder of Lee Rigby in May 2013.

A former police chief last week warned that online anti-Muslim sentiment had been "relentless" after the London Bridge attack that killed eight.

Mak Chishty, an ex-Metropolitan Police commander who had been the country's most senior Muslim officer before his retirement, said: "The backlash has been something of a different scale."

Extremists were hoping to “feed off the tension” caused by Islamist terrorist attacks to plot violence of their own, the Government’s independent terror law watchdog warned earlier this year.

David Anderson QC, said in February: “The threat from extreme Right-wing terrorism in the UK is currently fragmented but the massacre perpetrated by Anders Breivik in Norway is a warning against underestimating the threat.

“Both the Government and the courts treat the threat with the seriousness it deserves. Extreme Right-wing ideology can be just as murderous as its Islamist equivalent. A sophisticated network is not a prerequisite for mass slaughter.”

A quarter of those referred to the Government’s Channel programme, which seeks to protect those vulnerable of being radicalised, are now singled out for suspected far-Right extremism.

The increase in far-Right arrests has contributed to a jump in the proportion of white suspects being held under counter-terrorism legislation.

In the year to the end of March, there were 113 arrests of white people, compared with 68 in the year before - an increase of 66 per cent.

The white ethnic group accounted for 37 per cent of all terrorism-related arrests in the 12 months, compared with 26 per cent in the previous year.

Dr Alan Mendoza, executive director of the Henry Jackson Society think tank, said: "The Government must ensure urgently the security services have all the resources they need to investigate and prevent extremism-inspired attacks of whatever origin."