A judge said Philip Murphy – who has a long history of committing serious violence – intended to intimidate and incite

A man used his revving motorbike to “incite” the crowd outside a hotel which was controversially earmarked to house asylum seekers, a court has heard. Philip Murphy also used the bike to “push” a police officer who was trying to keep the peace at the Llanelli demo before riding his machine into the hotel grounds.

Swansea Crown Court heard Murphy, from Swansea, has a long history of serious violent offending including multiple convictions for assault occasioning actual bodily harm and inflicting grievous bodily harm. A judge said the 55-year-old defendant had gone to the hotel to intimidate and to incite the crowd to get out of control, and said the consequences of his actions could have been very serious.

Caitlin Brazel, prosecuting, said the incident happened at lunchtime on October 1 last year at the Stradey Park Hotel in Llanelli. She said a large crowd of people had gathered outside the establishment, and that at the front of the crowd was Murphy on his orange motorbike.

At the time of the incident the hotel was at the centre of long-running demonstrations and protests revolving around Home Office plans to use it as a hostel for asylum seekers. The scheme was eventually dropped.

The prosecutor said Murphy repeatedly and excessively revved the engine on this motorbike and edged the machine forward towards officers. Police told the defendant to stop and to move back but he continued to rev the engine, saying he couldn’t hear what the officers were saying. On a number of occasions officers pressed the kill switch to turn off the bike’s engine but Murphy simply started the machine again and continued revving the motor and edging the machine forward using it to try to “push” a constable out of the way. The 55-year-old’s demeanour was described as “aggressive” and the PC became concerned for his safety and safety of his colleagues.

The court heard Murphy managed to get through the police line and rode his bike into the hotel grounds where officers tried to stop him and ask for his details but he rode off. However, the registration of his motorbike had been noted and checks showed the defendant to be the registered keeper.

When officers went to his house on October 14 they saw the orange bike parked outside and found a skull and crossbones face covering and helmet matching the items worn by the rider outside the hotel in the property. Officers seized the bike

Murphy, of Redwood Court, Heol Emrys, Penlan, Swansea, had previously pleaded guilty to assaulting an emergency worker when he appeared in the dock for sentencing. He has 23 previous convictions for 69 offences between 1982 and 2002 including affray, obstructing a police officer, reckless driving, wounding, two for inflicting grievous bodily harm, and five for assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

Andrew Evans, for Murphy, said with the help of his partner the defendant had reflected upon his behaviour and had realised he should not have gone to the hotel in the first place and certainly should not have behaved in the way he did. He said it was clear from the contents of the detailed pre-sentence report on his client that “there are deficits in his thinking” and he said Murphy understood the seriousness of his position and understood that the court could send him into custody.

Recorder Mark Powell KC said claims made by Murphy to the author of the pre-sentence report that he did not really realise what he was doing outside the hotel were “nonsense”. He said the defendant intended to “intimidate” and to “incite”, and said in revving the engine of his bike Murphy was also “revving up the crowd”. The recorder said police had been trying to keep control of a difficult situation and “the last thing they needed was for some idiot to turn up on a bike”, and he told Murphy “effectively you were inciting the crowd to get out of control”. The judge said the consequences could have been “very, very serious”.

With a one-quarter discount for his guilty plea Murphy was sentenced to 12 weeks in prison suspended for 12 months. He must also complete a rehabilitation course and do 150 hours of unpaid work in the community.

The judge said Murphy had used his bike as a weapon and had the prosecution sought a court order for the defendant to forfeit the machine he would certainly have granted it, adding: “Had it been up to me, you would not have seen that bike again.”

Wales Online

Tommy Robinson supporter Marco Gill received 4 years in prison for targeted harassment of Nick Lowles, attempting to buy a gun and several bomb threats to hotels housing migrants.

In December 2023 Marco Gill, from Rossendale, plead guilty to five offences and was today sentenced to 4 years in prison. Over a six-month period Gill ran a campaign of harassment against HOPE not hate, especially targeting our CEO Nick Lowles.

Gill began his campaign of harassment within days of the release of Tommy, Nick Lowles’ expose of Tommy Robinson, real name Stephen Lennon.

It began with regular nuisance phone calls to our office line where he would repeatedly play a recording of people chanting “Oh Tommy Tommy, Tommy Robinson.” Our investigation later proved that much of Gill’s harassment was inspired by his support for the far-right activist Steven Lennon (AKA Tommy Robinson).

Not content with phone calls he then acquired the home address of two HNH staff members and began harassing them with unpaid takeaways, often late at night. Lowles received at least 48 such deliveries in a clear attempt at intimidation.

He also paid an as yet unknown individual in bitcoin to “swat” Lowles. Swatting is a method of deceiving an emergency service into sending a police response team to another person’s address. In the US, swatting has often led to armed officers storming an innocent person’s house.

Gill also plead guilty to three separate bomb hoaxes to hotels housing asylum seekers and calling the BBC and alleging that a man was trapped in a room where there was a gas leak. These offences are contrary to Section 51(2) of the Criminal Law Act 1977. The call to the BBC led to their Salford headquarters being evacuated.

The Gun

Most worrying is that Gill was found to have attempted to buy a gun online from America in the spring of 2023. Security services in the USA intercepted his attempt to order a .38 calibre Smith and Weston pistol.

The weapon was subsequently seized upon arrival in the UK and swapped with a fake replacement containing surveillance equipment before being forwarded onto Gill’s address. Police then seized the fake gun, the phone he used to order it and arrested Gill.

Tommy Robinson Supporter

In July 2023 HOPE not hate was contacted by the National Crime Agency, who informed them that a young man had been arrested for an unspecified crime and on his phone was the home address and phone number of Nick Lowles. The NCA merely said that he was a Tommy Robinson supporter but at that time they were unaware of the man’s campaign of harassment.

It was only when Lowles made a statement to the NCA that we were informed of the person’s name. Within minutes we discovered that he had been arrested for attempting to by a gun and within half an hour our research time discovered his social media profile. From there, we quickly learnt the extent of his radicalisation and the campaign of harassment he had waged against HOPE not hate.

We quickly discovered that Gill had recorded his pro-Tommy Robinson phone calls to our office and published them on his private Telegram account under a pseudonym. He even posted screencaps of one of the takeaways he ordered to Lowles home.

It’s clear Gill was a supporter of Lennon and was whipped up by his attacks on HNH. Gill’s Telegram account was a member of the ‘Tommy Robinson’s Official Telegram Chat’ channel where he is known to have posted numerous messages.

Gill appears to have joined the Tommy Robinson chat in the spring of 2022 and his radicalisation was brisk. Shortly before he was arrested, he had been advocating attacking pro-migrant activists and antifascists. He even offered his research services to the administrators of the Tommy Robinson chat.

While the National Crime Agency never discovered why Gill bought a gun, largely because Gill refused to answer questions during his interviews, it is not hard to see a link between this and his increasingly aggressive behaviour and racist narratives.

Gill’s harassment of HOPE not hate, and of Nick Lowles especially, came at a time when we were being viciously targeted by Tommy Robinson in anger at the release of Tommy and our repeated exposes of his financial shenanigans. Robinson’s online abuse led directly to dozens of death threats and threats of violence and intimidation. While most were from anonymised accounts, others were quite brazen in their threats.

At exactly the same time that Gill was sending takeaways to our houses, key Robinson sidekick Danny Tommo, was sending WhatsApp messages to Lowles threatening to come round and visit others in the household. Danny Tommo, real name Daniel Thomas, has previous been jailed for an attempted kidnapping in a drugs deal that went wrong.

Gill may have acted alone but he is just the latest troubled and vulnerable young men to have been wound up by Robinson’s hateful and violent rhetoric.

“For 6 months, myself and my colleagues were subject to a campaign of harassment by Marco Gill. He was determined to make our lives a misery including targeting my home on Christmas Day.

I want to thank the National Crime Agency for taking action on this case. Whilst it is important that justice was served, this case highlights the need for a greater focus on far-right extremism.

Marco Gill is a young man radicalised online who became obsessed and determined to do something about it. Sadly, this isn’t the first time we’ve experienced harassment, threats and abuse, and it likely won’t be the last.“

A statement from our CEO, Nick Lowles

Hope Not Hate

A teenager described by police as holding neo-Nazi beliefs has been convicted for having plans to attack a synagogue in Sussex.

Mason Reynolds, 19, from Brighton, faced one charge of possession of an article connected with the preparation of an act of terrorism.

Police searched Reynolds’ address where they found bomb instruction manuals and a note detailing his plans to attack a synagogue in Hove.

Reynolds was found guilty of the charge at Winchester Crown Court on Friday. He will be sentenced on 14 June.

Police said Reynolds shared extreme right-wing videos and praised attacks by far-right terrorists.

They said he was also the administrator of a Telegram channel which shared far-right extremist, antisemitic and racist views, as well as manuals on bomb building and how to 3D print firearms.
‘Cause pain’

“Mason Reynolds sought to spread hate and encourage acts of terrorism,” said Nick Price, head of the CPS Counter Terrorism and Special Crime Division.

Reynolds had previously pleaded guilty to five offences of possessing information which may be useful to a terrorist and five offences of disseminating terrorist publications.

Reynolds’ guilty verdict and with his earlier guilty pleas showed “that he not only held neo-Nazi beliefs but wanted to act on them to cause pain and suffering, which fortunately has been prevented and the public protected due to the work of the policing and prosecution team,” Mr Price said.

BBC News

Laurence Fox has been ordered to pay £90,000 in damages each to two people he referred to as “paedophiles”.

The actor-turned-politician lost a High Court libel case with former Stonewall trustee Simon Blake and drag artist Crystal.

The remarks on X, formerly Twitter, came in an exchange about Sainsbury’s marking Black History Month.

Mrs Justice Collins Rice said the comments were “gross, groundless and indefensible”.

In a post after the ruling, Mr Fox said he intended to appeal.

The Reclaim Party founder – who said at the time that he would boycott Sainsbury’s – counter-sued the pair over tweets accusing him of racism and attempted to sue broadcaster Nicola Thorp for the same reason.

In January, the court ruled in favour of Mr Blake and former RuPaul’s Drag Race contestant Crystal, whose real name is Colin Seymour, and dismissed Mr Fox’s counter-claims.

The judge did not make a ruling on whether describing Mr Fox as “a racist” was “substantially true”, after finding the three tweets in his counter-claim were unlikely to cause serious harm to his reputation.

On Thursday, Mrs Justice Collins Rice said in her written ruling: “By calling Mr Blake and Mr Seymour paedophiles, Mr Fox subjected them to a wholly undeserved public ordeal.

“It was a gross, groundless and indefensible libel, with distressing and harmful real-world consequences for them.

“They are entitled by law to an award of money, to compensate them for those damaging effects, and to ensure that they can put this matter behind them, vindicated and confident that no-one can sensibly doubt their blamelessness of that disgusting slur and that they were seriously wronged by it.”

The judge said there was “no element” of punishment for Mr Fox in the judgement, with the damages due “purely compensatory”.

She said Mr Fox could be found guilty of contempt of court if he repeated the allegations against Mr Blake and Mr Seymour.

Mrs Justice Collins Rice said she accepted evidence from both of them that they experienced Mr Fox’s libel as “distinctively homophobic”.

The judge added that Mr Fox had tried to “attach blame and discredit” Mr Blake and Mr Seymour during the litigation, and hold them responsible “for a range of his own life’s adversities”.

She said the damages could have been a “multiple” higher had his victims not been “self-possessed, articulate, resourceful and resilient”, and had “powerful support publicly and privately” to avoid their lives and prospects being “ruined” by the ordeal.

Mr Fox, 45, unsuccessfully stood for London mayor in 2021 and went on to host a weekly GB News show before he was sacked in October last year over comments made on air about a female journalist.

He previously made his name as an actor, starring in ITV series Lewis, and is part of the well-known Fox acting family, which includes cousins Emilia and Freddie, brother Jack, father James and grandfather Robin. He has two children with ex-wife Billie Piper.

Ahead of Thursday’s ruling, Mr Fox described the original judgement as a “bullies charter” and said he disagreed “profoundly” with the result.

He vowed to appeal in a post on X and said: “You get the same wonga if you lose a leg at work. So surreal it’s almost funny.”

BBC News

Ian Delaney, formerly known as Ian Davison, was jailed for ten years in 2010 for offences including preparing acts of terrorism and is now back behind bars

Ian Delaney, aka Ian Davison (Image: Counter Terrorism Policing North East)

A white supremacist who once kept a chemical weapon in his kitchen cupboard has been sent back to prison for having “the most horrific” child abuse images.

Ian Delaney, aka Davison, was first person in the country to be convicted and jailed for producing a chemical weapon when he was locked up for 10 years in 2010 for offences including preparing acts of terrorism. Police had found deadly ricin in a jam jar when they raided his suburban home in County Durham in 2009.

Known as Ian Davison at the time, Delaney was a member of the Aryan Strike Force and he had set up a website for the group, which promoted violence against “non-white ethnic groups”. He was released in June 2014 but is subject to notification requirements under the Terrorism Act until the year 2045. This means he must keep the authorities informed about his internet access, phone devices, banking and other aspects of his day to day life.

He was jailed for breaching those requirements between March 2015 and January 2016 by failing to declare he had an internet enabled phone. Now, appearing at Newcastle Crown Court via video-link from HMP Frankland, he has been jailed for 44 months with a one year extended licence for further breaches of the order by having phones, a laptop, email address and cryptocurrency accounts that he had not informed the authorities about, as well as having vile images of child abuse and growing cannabis.

Prosecutor Peter Ratliff told the court a hard-drive and laptop seized during searches at properties linked to Delaney in 2021 contained thousands of child abuse images. Mr Ratliff said the hard drive contained a total of in excess of 3,000 child abuse images, with 1,281 being of the most serious category.

Delaney’s HP laptop contained a further 3,000 images, with 1,400 of them being the most serious category.. Mr Ratliff said the images were of the “most horrific nature” and added: “A detective constable reported that in his career these were by far the most extreme images and videos he had ever had to view.”

Further searches at Delaney’s home and allotment revealed he had been growing cannabis, with intent to sell it. Around £3,000 worth of the drug was found at his allotment.

Delaney, 55, of Longhirst, Coulby Newham, Middlesbrough, Teesside, admitted five charges of failing to comply with notification requirements, making indecent images of children as well as production of cannabis and possessing the drug with intent to supply.

As well as the latest prison sentence, he now has to sign the sex offenders register and abide by a sexual harm prevention order for ten years.

Tom Bennett, defending, said Delaney had become increasingly isolated but has support from his partner.

Detective Constable Dave Medd from the Paedophile Online Investigation Team (POLIT) at Cleveland Police said: “This was one of the worst cases I have dealt with due to the disturbing nature of the images.

“The victims in these images suffer horrendous ordeals, and as a force we’re committed to doing everything possible to bring those who access such images to justice.”

Head of Counter Terrorism Policing North East, Detective Chief Superintendent James Dunkerley said: “Those subject to notification orders are strictly monitored, and breaches of any kind are taken extremely seriously and will be prosecuted.

“We continue to work tirelessly alongside our partners to identify any further offending and ensure that individuals are brought to justice.”

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