UK not taking far-right fundraising seriously enough

The Royal United Services Institute has warned that an ‘unwillingness’ to engage with the threat posed by far-right extremists is creating a vacuum in which such groups can flourish.

The Whitehall thinktank says that the focus placed on Islamists has meant that counter-terrorist authorities tasked by the government with looking into financing have not done enough to understand how far-right individuals and groups raise funds.

The report emphasised the importance of financial leads in investigations such as the one into the killing of the Labour MP, Jo Cox, by the extreme rightwing terrorist Thomas Mair. Following the murder, it was discovered that Mair had spent approximately £500 purchasing manuals on the construction of bombs, the assembly of homemade pistols and issues of a journal published by a US neo-Nazi organisation.

The authors also questioned the lack of clear evidence in the public domain about the funding of National Action, the far right group that was banned in 2016 after it celebrated Cox’s murder. The paper also warned that the potential pursuit by police of dangerous far-right groups and its financing was being frustrated by the lack of a clear, legal definition that could be applied to such extremism.