ANTI-FASCISTS must be alert to the “blurring” of the far right and the Conservative right as government policy becomes increasingly extreme, Hope Not Hate’s Nick Lowles said today.

In a fringe meeting at the POA conference, Mr Lowles warned the rhetoric of Home Secretary Suella Braverman was “far more right wing than the British National Party manifesto was under Nick Griffin.

“The BNP said ‘we’ll reduce numbers,’ ‘we’ll give people some money to go home,’ but they never had a policy of sending people off to Africa. One of the real problems that we have is that while we don’t have a big fascist movement in this country, the cordon sanitaire, the barrier that kept fascism on the extremes, for 30-40 years on the margins of society, is gone.”

Mr Lowles and colleague Matthew Collins spoke to prison officers about their work campaigning against the far right in communities and the risks involved in working with sources inside fascist groups.

Exposing far-right activists like Tommy Robinson — the subject of Mr Lowles’s new book Tommy — prompted threats, harassment and intimidation from their supporters, they said, with tactics ranging from “low-level harassment” — such as ordering dozens of cash-on-delivery takeaways and directing them to Mr Lowles’s home after midnight — to serious threats to harm their children.

Despite far-right attempts to spread hatred of particular communities based on accusations that they are involved in grooming children or sexual abuse, it was striking that in “almost every case” of far-right terrorism since 2017 there were charges related to paedophilia as well, Mr Collins pointed out.

“It’s often not reported but when you look at the charges in almost every case it will say he was planning to make a pipe bomb or whatever, and then down at the bottom it will mention possession of obscene child pornography.” He said the far-right was increasingly misogynist, noting the growth of “incel” culture.

The pair discussed Tommy Robinson’s monetisation of far-right activism, and the need to engage with communities exposed to far-right propaganda and address real concerns over issues like grooming when the far right try to exploit and racialise them.