Jack Renshaw: Neo-Nazi who said homosexuality was 'unnatural' revealed as paedophile who groomed young boys
Former BNP youth leader who plotted to kill Labour MP told police he was a straight virgin
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A neo-Nazi who plotted to murder a Labour MP with a machete is a convicted paedophile who groomed underage boys, it can be revealed.
Jack Renshaw’s past offences could not be reported during his trial for alleged membership of the terrorist group National Action, which was banned over its “racist, antisemitic and homophobic” ideology in 2016.
But restrictions lifted when the jury failed to reach a verdict on charges that Renshaw and two other defendants remained members of the group after it was proscribed.
Renshaw previously admitted plotting to murder Rosie Cooper, the Labour MP for West Lancashire, and a police officer who investigated him for child sex offences.
The 23-year-old was first arrested in January 2017 over speeches where he called for the genocide of Jewish people. He was later jailed for three years for stirring up racial hatred.
Police who seized his phone as part of that investigation discovered evidence that he had groomed underage boys online.
A court heard that he set up two fake Facebook profiles and contacted the boys, aged 13 and 14, between February 2016 and January 2017.
Communicating via the Facebook messenger app, the former British National Party youth wing leader boasted to the youngsters that he was rich, could give them jobs and offered one of them £300 to spend the night with him.
He also requested intimate photographs of the pair before one of the boys reported the messages to his tutor and the police were contacted, a jury was told.
Investigations led to the seizure of two BlackBerry phones from Renshaw’s then family address in Blackpool, Lancashire.
Another two phones belonging to Renshaw were later recovered and they showed evidence of searches for homosexual pornography.
When interviewed, he told police he was a straight virgin who did not believe in sex outside of marriage, and viewed homosexuality as “unnatural”.
Renshaw told a jury at Preston Crown Court that counter-extremist group Hope Not Hate had maliciously hacked his mobile phones to send messages of a sexual nature to the teenagers.
But jurors did not believe him and convicted him of four counts of inciting a child to engage in sexual activity.
He was placed on the sex offenders’ register for 10 years and was told by Judge Robert Altham his 16-month jail term would start after he has completed his sentence for inciting racial hatred.
Renshaw’s terror trial heard that he accused the police officer who first interviewed him, DC Victoria Henderson, of “fabricating” the grooming evidence and developed “resentment against the police”.
In July 2017, he told fellow neo-Nazis of a plan to murder Ms Cooper with a machete, take hostages in a pub and lure DC Henderson there to kill her too.
Renshaw said he would then would commit “suicide by cop” by pretending to have a suicide vest on, and leave a video behind claiming the attack had been done on behalf of National Action.
The plot was exposed by former neo-Nazi Robbie Mullen, who raised the alarm with counter-extremist group Hope Not Hate.
After more than 48 hours of deliberations, a jury failed to reach a verdict over whether Renshaw, of Skelmersdale in Lancashire, and two other defendants were members of National Action at the time.
Jurors were discharged on Tuesday and prosecutor Duncan Atkinson QC said he could not seek a second retrial.
Renshaw had admitted making preparations to kill his local MP and threatening to kill DC Henderson. He was remanded in custody to be sentenced on 17 May at the Old Bailey.
He denied membership of a proscribed group alongside Andrew Clarke, 34, and Michal Trubini, 36, from Warrington.
Former National Action leader Christopher Lythgoe, 32, of Warrington, and his right-hand man Matthew Hankinson, 24, from Merseyside, were convicted of membership at a previous trial last year.
Renshaw’s plot was mounted a year after Labour MP Jo Cox was stabbed and shot by white supremacist Thomas Mair, who was praised by National Action.
It became first extreme right-wing group to be proscribed by the government since the Second World War months later, and has been linked to several plots.
Another National Action follower, Zack Davies, tried to behead a Sikh man in Tesco because he “looked Asian”, while teenage neo-Nazi Jack Coulson made a pipe bomb and Ethan Stables planned a massacre at an LGBT+ event in Cumbria.
On Tuesday, the security minister warned that the far-right threat was growing in the UK because the internet had provided a “virtual safe space” where extremists can network.
“Sometimes we find them looking at Isis terror manuals to learn how to make bombs,” Ben Wallace told the Defence Committee.
“[Extreme right-wing individuals] are starting to pose significant danger.”
Mr Wallace compared current far-right extremism with the supposedly non-violent Islamist ideology spread by Anjem Choudary in the early 2000s, seeing followers go on to commit terror attacks and join Isis.
“It is a bubbling group of extremists and we need to get in there using Prevent, using diversion, to prevent them from becoming tomorrow’s terrorist groups,” he warned.
“There have always been neo-Nazis at large but it is a recent phenomenon that they are more capable, more organised and more able to live in a global community.”
Update:
A spokesperson for the BNP said: “Jack Renshaw was expelled from the BNP before the end of the mandatory probation period of two years that every new member has to face.”