Like much of Europe and America, Britain has a growing problem with “lone wolf” terrorists who are able to self-radicalise themselves online and act alone without the help or encouragement of a government or a terrorist organization.
Many are driven by a twisted ideology such as religious hatred, racist ideology and homophobia. Research has found that whilst many line wolf attackers have been radicalised in the workplace, prison or military, an ever-increasing number now find themselves – such as genocide-addicted Southport killer Axel Rudakubana – viewing sickening content online.
Notorious UK lone wolf attackers include white supremacist David Copeland who in 1999 targeted black people, Asians and gay men with nail bombs in a 13-day reign of terror in London. His three attacks left 129 people injured with the final blast at the gay Admiral Duncan pub in Soho killing pregnant Andrea Dykes, 27, and her friends John Light, 32, and Nicholas Moore, 31. He boasted his motive had been to start a race war and was sentenced to at least 50 years but is now being held in a secure mental hospital.
In June 2016 on the eve of the Brexit vote, in Birstall near Leeds, neo-Nazi Thomas Mair brutally murdered Labour MP Jo Cox, 41, as she arrived for a constituency surgery in her local library.
Mair, then 53, shot the mother-of-two twice in the head and once in the chest with a sawn-off .22 hunting rifle before stabbing her 15 times. As he carried out his horror attack the extremist screamed: “This is for Britain”, “keep Britain independent”, and “Britain first”. He was jailed for a while life term meaning he will never be released from jail.
The following year Tommy Robinson advocate Darren Osborne drove his van into a crowd of Muslim worshippers outside Finsbury Park Mosque in north London, killing one person and injuring nine others. The Cardiff born EDL extremist is now serving a 43-year minimum sentence behind bars.
In August 2021 sexually-frustrated Jake Davison shot his mother Maxine, 51 dead before killing four other victims, including a three-year-old toddler and her father, after going on a gun rampage in Plymouth.
Davison, then 22, held strong misogynistic views and idolised mass murderers from the incel movement online which heaps blame on women for followers’ sexual failings. Prior to his deadly killing spree he uploaded to YouTube a series of vile videos referencing “inceldom” and police found he had subscribed to extreme incel-related content on the dark web.
