The 60-year-old believed he was preparing for a ‘race war’ against Muslims and stockpiled guns, explosives and homemade grenades

A criminal network peddling firearms on the streets of London run by a lorry driver preparing for a “race war” has been smashed by police.

Thomas McKenna, 60, ran a gun-conversion operation out of a caravan on a travellers’ site in South Ockenden, Essex.

McKenna was reportedly preparing for what he called a “race war” against Muslims that he believed was coming by stockpiling guns, explosives, and homemade grenades.

The 60-year-old converted blank-firing pistols into live guns and sold them to gangs across London.

Following a police raid, he was arrested and has now been jailed for 16 years.

According to police, he was a key supplier of firearms to criminals, and since his arrest, rates of gun violence in London have dropped significantly.

McKenna used social media to contact others about the “race war” he believed was coming, sending messages on TikTok saying: “get yourself ready”, and expected to use the weapons he had collected to shoot or kill Muslims.

Prosecutor Emily Dummett previously told Kingston Crown Court that McKenna sent messages describing plans to “kill”, “shoot”, “unalive” and “neutralise” Muslims and immigrants, “before there are too many”.

The court heard how in one message, he wrote: “Bro, that’s why I believe our only course for survival freedom is strike now while we have the numbers and hard unalive the f****** lot of them.”

He carried out his operation with self-taught DIY skills, converting guns using a lathe and a drill out of one of his three caravans.

Six reactivated blank-firing guns linked to McKenna have already been recovered by police, but officers believe he created more.

McKenna’s partner, 55-year-old bus driver Tina Smith, pleaded guilty to several charges, including collecting terrorist information and possessing banned guns.

In the caravan the couple shared, they kept improvised explosive devices containing black powder, nails, and fishing hooks.

The couple is believed to have slept in the caravan where the weapons were kept.

McKenna, Smith, and eight others have been convicted of involvement in the firearms operation that sold guns to gangs across London.

The 60-year-old was hit with a 16-year sentence on custody, with five years on extended licence, at Kingston Crown Court on Thursday, according to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).

Evening Standard

He used his accounts to encourage attacks on non-whites, share far-right bomb-making manuals and circulate pictures of neo-Nazi stickers in a playground in his local area.

A father has been jailed for more than four years after he used social media to try and recruit a “battalion” of followers to kill non-whites when he became radicalised after his wife left him.

Tygue Crowther, 36, from Cleckheaton, West Yorkshire used his account on Twitter, now X, to encourage attacks between October 2023 and June 2024 before it was shut down.

He also shared far-right bomb-making manuals on the Telegram social media site and circulated pictures of neo-Nazi stickers in a playground in his local area.

John Greaney, prosecuting, told Newcastle Crown Court many of the posts “voiced or implied support for the eradication of immigrants and non-whites”.

He added: “The posts also included video material showing graphic clips of attacks on non-whites and glorifying violence against non-whites at the hands of neo-Nazi thugs.”

His posts gathered “significant engagement”, including expressions of support from followers.

Crowther was also “actively seeking” to establish and develop a group he called the ‘United Whites Battalion’ (UWB), which he referred to in his X profile and his posts on X.

His posts were available to a wide audience at a time when “tensions over immigration and race relations were acute, as evidenced by responses from like-minded devotees of the extreme far-right doctrine,” Mr Greaney said.

The profile page of the account stated he was a “British, National Socialist, Accelerationist” and added: “No to immigration or multiculturalism. British people need to take action against the vermin entering our country.”

National Socialism was the ideology of the Nazi Party, and far-right accelerationism is a doctrine which seeks to encourage a race war by conducting terrorist attacks.

The main image was of a soldier wearing a skull facemask associated with the far-right while performing a Nazi salute against a backdrop of a rising sun, also linked to the far-right.

The profile picture had an octopus with a swastika image.

The octopus has become an antisemitic meme representing Jewish people controlling the world.

The title had a Union flag and stated: “Join UWB today”.

There was also a reference to the numbers 1488 in the biography, a code for a white supremacist slogan, and the words Heil Hitler.

Crowther claimed to a probation officer that he had been “preyed on by people on the far-right” after becoming “lonely, isolated and bored” when his wife left him in June 2019.

Judge Nathan Adams said he had “encouraged violence endangering life” by posting graphic videos glorifying violence on non-whites and supporting neo-Nazis.

“He put into the public domain offensive videos, and the duration was extensive and without filter,” he added.

“He was undoubtedly depressed and suicidal, but there is no clear link between that and his offending, and he appears to have been in a depressed state many years before.”

Detective Chief Superintendent James Dunkerley, head of Counter-Terrorism Policing North East, said: “Those that seek to divide our communities through sharing extremist material will be identified and brought to justice.”

Sky News

A lorry driver ran a workshop from his south Essex caravan converting blank-firing guns into deadly pistols to sell to criminals – and stockpiled weapons in preparation for a “race war”, a court has heard.

Thomas McKenna, 60, sent messages telling friends and associates to “get yourself ready” and “the time for protesting is over”, and distributed weapons to a criminal network which included Faisal Razzaq, the getaway driver in the fatal shooting of Pc Sharon Beshenivsky.

Prosecutor Emily Dummett told Kingston Crown Court McKenna wrote messages about plans to “kill”, “shoot”, “unalive” and “neutralise” Muslims and immigrants “before they are too many”.

“Bro, that’s why I believe our only course for survival freedom is strike now while we have the numbers and hard unalive the […] lot of them,” McKenna said in one message, the court heard on Thursday.

McKenna ran his gun conversion unit with a lathe and a drill, from one of three caravans he had at a large traveller site in Buckles Lane, South Ockendon.

He sent his partner, Tina Smith, 55, links to videos which showed how to make explosives.

The couple and eight others have been convicted for their involvement in a firearms conspiracy, with linked guns found across London and the South East.

The court heard in one message McKenna wrote: “I agree they (Muslims) have flooded our lands. It’s a hostile takeover, keep yourself safe.”

“It’s time to start slotting these monsters,” he wrote in another.

McKenna also made improvised explosives containing black powder and shrapnel. He and his partner, a bus driver, are thought to have lived and slept in the caravan which housed the weapons.

Officers raided the three caravans in November 2024 and found two loaded guns and two improvised explosive devices.

Other weapons recovered from the caravans include a non-firing replica AK47, ammunition, crossbows, hunting knives and knuckle dusters.

Documents were also found including a handbook called Poor Man’s James Bond, which experts say contained useful information for making explosives, the court heard.

Six reactivated blank-firing guns linked to McKenna have been recovered, but prosecutors believe he created more.

One of the converted pistols and ammunition was found at Razzaq’s home in Edgware, north London, the court heard.

“Converted top-venting blank firing pistols are a popular choice for criminals,” Ms Dummett said.

“They are easier to get hold of than original lethal purpose firearms, but can be used, in just the same way, to threaten, to seriously injure and to kill.”

Mitigating, Hossein Zahir KC said it is “not hard to convert” the guns McKenna made viable.

He said McKenna’s enterprise is “smaller scale and unsophisticated”.

Prosecutors say Razzaq, 44, who was convicted of manslaughter for his role in the fatal raid at family-run Universal Express travel agents in Bradford, West Yorkshire, in November 2005, received firearms for onward sale to criminal customers.

Other customers of McKenna’s converted guns include Allan Crosby, 44, of Etfield Grove, Sidcup, and Ryan Smith, 44, of Morants Court Road, Dunton Green, Kent, who were convicted of possession of firearms and modified ammunitions.

They are being sentenced alongside Tina Smith who admitted four counts and McKenna, who has pleaded guilty to 14 counts.

The charges against the two include collecting terrorist information and possessing a prohibited firearm.

Tina Smith shared McKenna’s mindset, prosecutors say, in one message writing: “Wow they have to be gone from this country, shoot them all.”

McKenna’s friend Ricky Dorey, 43, who lived on the same static caravan site, helped him find customers to buy the guns.

He and his brother Robert Dorey, 44, of Tilbury, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to sell or transfer prohibited firearms.

Patrick Loughnane, 59, acted as a communication link between Ricky Dorey and McKenna.

Abdul Saleh, 32, of Edgware, the Dorey brothers and Loughnane, of Hayes, west London, each pleaded guilty to conspiracy to sell prohibited firearms.

Razzaq admitted the same charge, and five other counts.

Loughnane’s partner Tammy Rigg pleaded guilty to possession of a prohibited firearm and possession of ammunition without a certificate.

The sentencing hearing for McKenna, Tina Smith, Crosby and Ryan Smith is set to conclude on February 6.

Razzaq, Saleh, the Dorey brothers, Loughnane and Rigg will be sentenced later next month.

Echo News

A 33-year-old neo-Nazi who set up a chemical laboratory and made explosives in a garden shed has been jailed for three years and nine months.

Unemployed heroin user Harry Whittaker, from Caddington in Bedfordshire, was found guilty of two counts of making explosive substances, and two of possessing explosive substances, at his trial at the Old Bailey in October.

He had already pleaded guilty to charges of possessing a round of ammunition and potassium cyanide.

The judge described him as a highly intelligent and articulate individual, and he did not accept that Whittaker’s autism had an impact on his ability to determine right from wrong.

The court heard Whittaker had been conducting experiments in a shed in the garden of the house he shared with his mother.

Paramedics were called when Whittaker had an allergic reaction to one of his experiments and went into anaphylactic shock.

Police were informed and disposal experts later carried out controlled explosions on white phosphorus – a chemical used in incendiary devices.

During his trial, Whittaker attempted to depict himself as a “nerd” who was simply enthusiastic about chemistry.

He told the jury he had been attempting to collect all the elements in the periodic table and described himself as a “mad scientist” who had acquired many of the chemicals he used from the online auction site eBay.

Whittaker told police he was “astounded” to be arrested and claimed he had no problem with anyone regardless of their creed or colour.

“Obviously, I’m not trying to take over the world, I’m just doing chemistry,” he said.

But the court also heard about racist messages he exchanged on WhatsApp with his father.

“Muslims turn my stomach,” he wrote.

And during a discussion about a mosque in nearby Luton, he discussed getting a tank and “driving it into that mosque on Friday afternoon and turning them into mincemeat”.

Police found the burned-out remains of a device labelled “…for use on Jews only” and “throw at swarm of Jews” and discovered another container labelled as “Zyklon-B” – the name of the substance used in the gas chambers of Nazi death camps during World War Two.

At the sentencing, prosecutor Emily Dummett accepted Whittaker did not plan to do any harm with his explosives, but claimed there was a risk to his neighbours and property.

She revealed a picture of Hitler and a Nazi flag had been found on his bedroom wall, as well as notebooks with antisemitic writings and drawings.

A syringe and a wrap of heroin were also found in his room.

The court heard messages to other members of his family revealed Whittaker to be a Holocaust denier.

In a text to his brother, he said he hoped the far-right campaigner Tommy Robinson would “lead us all into a civil war” and “kick out” people of Asian heritage.

Mitigating, Polly Dyer said her client had possessed the majority of the explosive substances for years, that they were of “low level” and there was no evidence that the experiments, which were “for fun”, would be used in any harmful action.

She said he had been held in solitary confinement while on remand in Belmarsh jail and showed the court a picture of Beethoven he had drawn while in his cell.

When sentencing, Judge Simon Mayo said that while the evidence of racism was relevant, he had to make sure the decisions he made were not driven by emotion.

He told Whittaker that he presented a significant risk of serious harm to the public.

BBC News