A former Miss Hitler beauty pageant contestant who tried to recruit 15-year-old schoolgirls for banned far-right terror group National Action has been jailed alongside her Nazi ex-fiance.
Alice Cutter, 23, was found guilty of belonging to the terrorist group alongside her former partner Mark Jones and neo-Nazi ‘diehards’ Garry Jack and Connor Scothern following a trial at Birmingham Crown Court in March.
Cutter, who entered a beauty contest as ‘The Buchenwald Princess’ in reference to the Second World War death camp, was today jailed for three years while Jones was handed a five-and-a-half year sentence.
Sentencing, Judge Paul Farrer QC said Cutter was an ‘intelligent and strong-minded woman’ who had offered advice to the leadership of the group on training and security.
Her former partner Jones, 25, had played ‘a significant role in the continuation of the organisation’ after its ban in December 2016, and was involved in organising training camps and ‘grooming’ recruits, he said.
Alice Cutter (pictured) was sentenced alongside her ex-fiance Mark Jones for being members of the far-right terrorist group National Action at Birmingham Crown Court today
Sentencing, Judge Paul Farrar QC told Jones (pictured) he had played ‘a significant role in the continuation of the organisation’ after its ban in December 2016
Cutter (left) was jailed for three years, while Jones received a five-and-a-half-year prison term
The pair, who lived in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, were involved in trying to recruit schoolgirls aged 15 and 16 as part of a plan for teenage recruitment, according to the prosecution.
Barnaby Jameson QC, prosecuting, said there appeared to be a ‘pattern involving Jones and Cutter, who were certainly couple for some time, of recruitment of young people.’
Extreme right-wing group National Action, labelled ‘racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic’ by the then-home secretary Amber Rudd, was banned in December 2016 after calling on followers to emulate the killer of the MP Jo Cox.
Mr Jameson said the group shared a ‘fellowship of hate’ so fanatical that they would ‘sooner break the law than break their bonds of hate.’
They represented a ‘tiny, self-selecting group of young people in this country, for whom Hitler’s work will always be unfinished,’ Mr Jameson added.
After National Action was banned, they used encrypted chat groups on the Telegram app called Triple K Mafia – a reference to the Ku Klux Klan – and Inner Circle, to continue their activities.
The latest convictions bring to 21 the number of individuals linked to National Action who have been convicted of terrorism or hate crimes.
Detective Chief Superintendent Kenny Bell from the West Midland Counter-Terrorism Unit said National Action were seeking to ‘prepare for a race war by amassing weapons and trying to recruit others by the spread of their extreme ideology.’
Cutter had exchanged hundreds of messages – many racist and anti-Semitic – and attended various meetings with other members of National Action
Jurors heard how Cutter entered a Miss Hitler competition in June 2016 under the name ‘Miss Buchenwald’ – a reference to the Second World War camp
Vegan neo-Nazi supporter Cutter had denied ever being a member of the far-right group, despite attending rallies in which banners reading ‘Hitler was right’ were raised.
Cutter became involved with National Action after she was befriended on Facebook by Alex Deakin, 24, who called himself Steampunk Daddy, the court heard.
She entered the Miss Hitler competition, run by National Action founder Ben Raymond, soon after first coming across the group in June 2016.
‘I had it mentioned to me a couple of times and I thought it sounded kind of stupid and didn’t think it was worth doing because I didn’t see myself entering any kind of competition,’ Cutter told Birmingham Crown Court.
‘Anyway I did because I found myself asked quite a few times by Deakin. He asked very persistently.’
Explaining her reasons, Cutter added: ‘I had just made some new friends and thought they might be different to people I had met in the past and I didn’t want to c**k it up by not doing that.’
Cutter admitted to holding racist views and said she considered herself a member of National Action – at least until December 2016 when it was banned.
The court was told how Cutter (left outside court in December) and Jones (right in 2017) formed a relationship in 2016, later moving in together and getting engaged
Jones told jurors of his ‘feelings of admiration’ for Hitler, while the court heard he had a special wedding edition of Mein Kampf (above, Jones’ Nazi-themed illustrations)
But when she attended a demonstration in York – described by leader Chris Lythgoe as a ‘low risk event’ at which ‘women are definitely welcome’ – she was hungover and had to run into a Disney store to ‘calm down.’
‘I felt more ill and I got really dizzy and I had to be walked away by another girl. I left because I was scared and panicking,’ Cutter told the court.
‘I had been sick a lot of times that morning because I was scared and hung over. I went to the Disney shop to calm down.’
Nevertheless, she attended another protest in Leeds, where she was pictured on the steps of the town hall giving a Nazi salute.
Jurors heard how Cutter entered a Miss Hitler competition under the name ‘Miss Buchenwald’ – a reference to the Second World War camp.
Pictured, a selection of Nazi-themed blades. Cutter and Jones were convicted at Birmingham Crown Court for being members of proscribed organisation National Action in March
Jones in Buchenwald concentration camp posing as a Nazi for photographs, 2016
She joked about gassing synagogues and using a Jew’s head as a football. She also texted a friend ‘rot in hell, b***h’ after MP Jo Cox was murdered in June 2016.
Cutter exchanged racist and anti-Semitic messages with her then-boyfriend Jones, who was nicknamed ‘Grand Daddy Terror’ by fellow members, the court heard.
The couple had also sported ‘his-and-hers swastika knitwear’ while Cutter was pictured holding a semi automatic rifle and blades emblazoned with Nazi symbols.
The court heard how Cutter first came across Jones online in 2016, and they were soon staying up all night chatting and sending images from National Geographic to each other.
The pair got engaged on a visit to Fountains Abbey, near Rippon in North Yorkshire and moved in together in Sowerby Bridge, West Yorkshire.
Cutter and Jones, both of Sowerby Bridge, near Halifax, Yorkshire, described themselves in court as avowed National Socialists, but denied any wrongdoing
Garry Jack (left) was sentenced to four-and-a-half years in prison, and Connor Scothern (right) was handed a sentence of detention for 18 months
Avid reader, loves nature and animals… but then ‘jokes’ about ‘gassing synagogues and using a Jew’s head as a football’
Alice Cutter was a ‘central spoke’ of National Action’s online recruitment drive, prosecutors argued.
She partly joined the online beauty pageant to help the far-Right attract new and younger members.
Under the account BuchenwaldPrincess, Cutter, 23, described herself as: ‘Avid reader. Loves nature and animals. Loves European architecture and classical art.
‘Enjoys walking, cooking, breathing. Memes are life. I feel so degenerate, like I’m writing a Tinder profile or something.’
Cutter described herself as a National Socialist, explaining: ‘To me, a National Socialist is a sacrificial citizen – someone willing to put their land and their people to the forefront, regardless of the terror even the people you are fighting for will try and cause you for doing so.
‘National Socialist should be the default for any native person to the nation they belong – upholding traditions, having faith in community and connecting to the beautiful landscape keeps people healthy…
‘My personal investment in NS started out as environmental – I see this as the direct route to a more natural and less pathetic, pampered, unhealthy lifestyle. There is no room for capitalistic softness here.’
When asked about the ‘best gift life has given’ her, she replied:
‘Is it wrong that the first thing that popped into my head was cats?
‘I really want to say cats.
‘But I’ll be cliche and say the discovery of Nationalism…’
But they broke up after Jones cheated on her with a 16-year-old student he was trying to recruit.
Before their split, the pair used the encrypted chat platform Telegram to talk with other members of National Action.
They were found to have made a series of racist and offensive posts, including against black people, Jews and the disabled both before and after the ban.
Jones, a former member of the British National Party’s youth wing and a rail engineer, was described at trial as a ‘leader and strategist’ who played a ‘prominent and active role’.
The 25-year-old, originally the group’s London regional organiser, acknowledged posing for a photograph while delivering a Nazi-style salute and holding a National Action flag in Buchenwald’s execution room during a trip to Germany in 2016.
Having grown up in foster care, he passed his A-levels while living in a halfway house and went on to qualify as a railway engineer.
But in his spare time he was designing logos and posters for National Action and two successor organisations NS131 and Scottish Dawn.
The ‘diehard neo-Nazi’ group was outlawed following National Action members’ celebration of the murder of MP Jo Cox by extremist Thomas Mair in June 2016.
But it continued underground after ‘shedding one skin for another’ and members set up an encrypted chat group called Triple K mafia in reference to the Ku Klux Klan.
Prosecutor Mr Jameson described them as ‘a secretive group of diehard neo-Nazis with no compunction whatever of obtaining their objectives through terror.’
He added: ‘They are a group with admiration for Hitler and advocation of the Holocaust. A group with a shared enthusiasm for ethnic cleansing and eradication of the Jews.
‘You will be forgiven for thinking that the ideology of Hitler had died out at Nuremberg. You would be wrong.
‘For the accused, Hitler’s work will always be unfinished. This is a group for which the final solution to the Jewish question remains to be annihilation.’
The court heard Scothern, 19, from Nottingham, had joined National Action when he was 15 and was ‘considered future leadership material’ as one of their most active members.
He had distributed almost 1,500 stickers calling for a ‘final solution’ – in reference to the Nazis’ genocide against Jews.
Jack, 24, from Birmingham, was described as an ‘out and out fanatic’ who wanted to be part of the National Action ‘revolution’.
He had attended almost every meeting of the group’s Midlands sub-group.
Cutter was jailed for three years, while Jones received a five-and-a-half-year prison term.
Jack was sentenced to four-and-a-half years in prison, and Scothern was handed a sentence of detention for 18 months.
Speaking ahead of sentencing, the director of public prosecutions Max Hill QC described National Action members as ‘diehards’ who ‘hark back to the days of not just anti-Semitism, but the Holocaust, the Third Reich in Germany’.
What is National Action and when was the neo-Nazi terror group formed?
National Action was the first extreme right-wing group to be proscribed since World War Two, and the 85th group to be proscribed in the UK.
It was most likely co-founded by Benjamin Raymond and Alex Davies in 2013 and operated by targeting university campuses as sites for flyering and recruitment in its ‘reign of terror’.
It was an uncompromising Neo-Nazi group that expressed virulent hatred for non-whites and ‘especially Jews’, glorifying Hitler and inciting violence against its perceived enemies.
Mark Jones, 25, had played ‘a significant role in the continuation of the organisation’ after its ban, and was involved in organising training camps and ‘grooming’ recruits, jurors heard.
The extreme right-wing group, labelled ‘racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic’ by the then-home secretary Amber Rudd, was banned in December 2016 after calling on followers to emulate the killer of the MP Jo Cox.
National Action was said to have recruited via close friendship networks or by word of mouth, never exceeding 100 members with no more than two or three dozen attendees at each rally.
In September 2013 the group released a ‘Strategy and Promotion’ document detailing their plans to ‘make way for National Socialism to enter British politics.’