Leader of banned Neo-Nazi group National Action jailed
32-year old Christopher Lythgoe from Warrington has been sentenced to eight years for being a member of the banned group
Last updated 18th Jul 2018
The leader of the banned Neo-Nazi group National Action has been jailed for eight years.
32-year old Christopher Lythgoe from Warrington was found guilty at the Old Bailey of being a member - along with another man - Matthew Hankinson from Merseyside.
Hankinson was sentenced to six years.
Detective Superintendent Will Chatterton is from the North West Counter Terror Unit and spoke to the media after sentencing:
Another man accused of being a member - Jack Renshaw from Lancashire - will face a retrial after the jury failed to reach a verdict.
He's already admitted plotting to murder West Lancashire MP Rosie Cooper - because of her political beliefs.
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 to campaigner group Hope Not Hate in July last year.
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.
He has also been convicted of stirring up racial hatred in speeches in 2016, it can now be reported.
Lythgoe, from Warrington, 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 Renshaw to carry out the murder of West Lancashire Labour MP Ms Cooper.
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 - 24-year old Matthew Hankinson, of Newton-le-Willows, was also found guilty of belonging to National Action and was jailed for six years.
The jury acquitted 24-year old Garron Helm of Seaforth, Merseyside, of the same charge.
Mr Justice Jay described National Action as having a truly evil and dystopian vision'' of waging a race war.
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 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