Extremism

 

30% of UK terror plots disrupted by MI5 were far right, says security chief

The new head of MI5, the UK's domestic security service, has warned that nearly 30% of the major terror plots it has disrupted at a late stage since 2017 have been from far right extremists.
Ken McCallum said that the pan-European threat from the far right was increasing with "bitty, but meaningful international connectivity."
In his first engagement with reporters since taking the job in March, McCallum said far-right extremism was not on "the same scale as Islamist extremist terrorism. But it is growing: of the 27 late-stage terrorist attack plots in Great Britain disrupted by MI5 and counter-terror policing since 2017, eight have been right-wing extremist."
He added that was not the case for the four years before 2017, and that "quite a few young people [are] attracted to this ideology, which does tend to suggest this threat will be with us for some years to come."