THE HATE MACHINE

David Copeland is portrayed as a lone bomber, yet mounting evidence suggests a far-right conspiracy may be behind his crimes LAST April was a busy period for Nazi terrorists in Britain. It wasn't just David Copeland - the nail bomber now serving six life terms for his lethal attacks on London's black and gay communities - who planned a campaign of murder and mayhem across the UK. At least three, and possibly four or five, other men linked to far right extremist organisations were also embarked on racist bombing campaigns.

In Chichester an Asian store was fire-bombed by a group linked to the far right. The bedsit of Stuart Kerr, the man convicted, was almost identical to Copeland's, with newspaper cuttings about race crime and Nazism pinned to the walls. Kerr was sent to jail for 12 years. Police intelligence believe Kerr did not act alone.

Police in Chesterfield also stumbled upon a plot to bomb local May Day celebrations around the same time that Kerr was bombing Asian shops. A stolen car was stopped and found to be filled with explosives after two men fled the scene. Police intelligence are sure this was a planned attack by rightwingers. Nobody has ever been caught. And in west London, police made a find of rudimentary bomb- making equipment and right-wing literature and jailed one man. Coincidence? Not according to Scotland Yard's Anti-Terrorist Squad. One very senior ATS source said that it was beyond comprehension that these three incidents were not related in some way to Copeland's bomb attacks in London.

"The more we think about these incidents in the light of what Copeland was doing, the more we are sure that this is more than just coincidence. In a country like the UK, one bomb in a month is an exception - but four in a four-week period? The odds are against that."

Does this imply that David Copeland was not acting alone? Without question Copeland built and planted the bombs himself - he had no physical accomplice. But did others know what he was planning? Was there a decision, somewhere within the ranks of the far right, to begin a campaign against Britain's ethnic minorities, our gay community and the left wing? The question that needs to be answered is: was Copeland directly inspired by others to begin his terror campaign? If so, behind the London bombings was a conspiracy within the extreme right-wing, not a mere lone Nazi.

Despite ATS sources hinting heavily towards some kind of conspiracy, Scotland Yard is rigidly sticking to its line that Copeland acted alone. Initially, the Metropolitan Police said Copeland not only acted alone, but that he was also not a member of any recognised right wing organisation. They were wrong. Copeland was a member of the BNP and also the National Socialist Movement - a splinter group of the extreme right wing terror organisation Combat 18, sometimes described as C-18's political wing. Copeland lied to the police about his membership of Nazi groups. He claimed he knew no- one in C-18, when in fact his organisation worked hand in glove with them. Did Copeland also lie when he said "I did them (the bombings) on my own"?

BNP and C-18 sources, as well as anti-fascist groups and police sources have detailed Copeland's passage through these right-wing organisations for the Sunday Herald. Initially, he was nothing more than an unremarkable Nazi. He joined the BNP in 1997, attending branch meetings in the Newham area. Newham is the stomping ground of Tony Lecomber, number three in the BNP, and a man convicted of a violent assault on Jews and a 1987 nail bombing, as well as possession of grenades and detonators.

Copeland rose to become a BNP steward at the party's annual rally in 1997. This was no isolated loner. Copeland was a man in the midst of growing revolutionary movement. The current BNP leader Nick Griffen says Copeland resigned because the BNP wasn't paramilitary. That is true. As a group it isn't paramilitary, but the BNP is a broad church, including those who devote themselves to ultra-violent racist attacks and who share membership with organisations such as C- 18.

Copeland shifted to the National Socialist Movement - an extremely hardline organisation which advocates racial violence. Run by three men, Steve Sargent, the brother of Charlie Sargent, a convicted killer and one of the former leaders of C-18; Tony Williams, a former close friend of current BNP leader Nick Griffen; and David Myatt, a champion of immediate race war. At least one NSM member is suspected of the murder of elderly CND activist Hilda Murrell. Copeland came under the tutelage of Williams, and shortly after joining, in February 1999, he was promoted to regional organiser for Hampshire. By that time he was already beginning to buy his bomb-making equipment. The plot had been hatched.

Once Copeland was arrested on May 1, Williams almost immediately decided to disband the NSM - which has around 100 to 150 members. By the middle of the month the organisation was up and running again with Sargent now at the helm. The NSM were openly describing Copeland as a hero. Sargent has now taken to signing his letters with the phrase "Together we can Cope the Land" under the nom de guerre Albion Wolf.

Sources within a number of extreme right-wing groups claim there was talk throughout early 1999 of bombing attacks both in America and the UK around the time of the millennium. There is speculation that Copeland might have decided to bring forward the deadline for race war, and attacks on ZOG - the Zionist Occupation Government, a catch- all to describe the British establishment, government, police and media.

So why has this bitter concept of terrorism and race war taken hold within British fascism, which until the mid-90s had happily consigned itself to ranting about repatriation, street fighting with leftwingers and casual violence against blacks, Jews and gays? The answer is quite simple. Nazism is becoming globalised, and America is taking the lead.

The weekend Copeland bombed the Admiral Duncan bar in Soho, the Sunday Herald revealed the staggering international connections between British Nazis, men like Copeland, and American organisations like the National Alliance, the group whose leader Dr William Pierce inspired the Oklahoma bombing. Pierce told the Sunday Herald that he was working with British Nazis to spread the idea of "leaderless resistance" a concept most closely resembling the cell-structure of conventional terrorist groups like the IRA. Under leaderless resistance, individuals devoted to fomenting race war take action themselves, without the authority of any governing body or army council. Working in cells of one, two or three, the concept exists to prevent operations being penetrated by the intelligence services.

Through his membership of the NSM, Copeland, and the men leading the organisation, had a direct path to men like Pierce. The NSM and NA are closely allied. Copeland would also have had access to men like Tommy Metzger, leader of White Aryan Resistance, who has been sued for incitement to kill blacks. Many members of C-18 and NSM share membership of the National Alliance. The NA also has a British wing.

The British extreme right - men like Copeland - are in direct contact with ideologues like Pierce and Metzger on an almost daily basis. One of the far right's key activists in Scotland, Stephen Cartwright, was deported from America last year by armed federal officers on his second trip to the States to establish even greater links with organisations like the National Alliance. Cartwright is a key figure in bringing the thinking of Pierce to Britain.

Cartwright, a prominent member of the BNP and former C-18 activist, met with Pierce just as Copeland was beginning his bombing campaign. Pierce wrote the blueprint for race war and leaderless resistance with his novel The Turner Diaries, where right-wing terrorists attack the federal government and launch genocide against blacks in America. The book inspired Timothy McVeigh to bomb Oklahoma's federal McMurrah Building claiming the lives of 168 men, women and children in 1995.

Anti-terrorist officers in the UK see Pierce's mentorship of men like Cartwright as one of the most disturbing developments in the history of Britain's far right. The Sunday Herald has learned that at least one cell of extreme rightwingers in Scotland, linked to C-18, are stock-piling weapons. The BNP are busy trying to distance themselves from Copeland. Seeing themselves as a legitimate political party, the BNP are desperately pointing out that Copeland was mixed up in organisations which were infiltrated heavily by Special Branch and MI5. With that in mind, they are concocting a conspiracy theory of their own - that Copeland was either an agent provocateur, or the unwitting stooge of an agent provocateur, acting on behalf of the state to destroy the extreme right wing.

Cartwright was dispatched to America by Nick Griffen, BNP leader, to formally launch the American Friends of the BNP, a fundraising and propaganda arm of the British right. The AFBNP is backed by Pierce's National Alliance, supporters of KKK leader David Duke, and the Council of Conservative Citizens. Duke is chair of the Republican Party in Louisiana and the CCC, unashamedly racist, has a strong middle-class following and is supported by Trent Lott, the senate majority leader.

During Cartwright's visit to the states, the AFBNP raised #10,000 for right-wing groups in Britain. Cartwright, also a member of the British arm of the National Alliance, was given an audience with Pierce, taking his ideas of leaderless resistance and the globalisation of the far right back to Europe. Pierce, who is banned from the UK, staged a huge meeting in Greece in 1998 where delegates from far-right groups across the world listened to Pierce's vision of a global far-right fraternity and theories of race war.

The path from Pierce and Oklahoma to Copeland seems clear. The National Alliance are directly linked to Combat-18 and the National Socialist Movement. Pierce's ideas of leaderless resistance, an Aryan wake-up call and race war, found expression in the Nazi bomber Copeland. And Copeland was terrorising London, while other racist gangs were attempting to launch bomb attacks in other parts of Britain - a development which even Scotland Yard's elite Anti- Terrorist Squad interpret as pointing towards some kind of wider conspiracy.

In an interview with the Sunday Herald, in the middle of Copeland's bombing campaign, Pierce said: "Britain is in a very precarious position. You can't sit on your hands while your race degenerates Unless the white race is preserved, we are heading for a bloody and painful showdown. There is only an ocean between the UK and the USA We need to build bridges to ford the gaps. I am moving beyond moral support of white races in Europe to actual concrete support. We are sharing methods of resistance."

Not only are Pierce and men like Cartwright and Griffen open about their racist views, the security services, in Britain at least, have riddled far right organisations with moles. So if C-18 and the NSM were filled with informers, why did Special Branch, MI5 or the anti- terrorist squad not move against Copeland earlier, or at least have him under surveillance? His name was known to the anti-fascist campaigners and magazine Searchlight long before he started bombing London; in fact, on the day of the final bomb, Searchlight had passed his name onto the Yard as a possible suspect. Yet the bombs still went off.

Copyright 2000
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