Far-Right extremism on the rise warns Britain's Security Minister

Britain's Security Minister has warned of the rise of far-right extremism, as the latest Home Office figures showed a sharp increase in arrests for domestic terror offences.

The number of people held for suspected domestic terror offences has jumped nearly five-fold in the past 12 months in Britain. Far-right terrorist suspects drove the increase, security sources said.

Speaking after the Finsbury Park terrorist attack, Ben Wallace, the Security Minister, said online propaganda was helping fuel far-right radicalisation, just as it was feeding Islamist extremism.

He said: "One of the biggest problems we all have is multimedia today. The speed and grooming that these people involve themselves in, whether Islamic or far-right, are something we all have to grapple together."

Home Office figures released last week showed that while international Islamist violence continues to account for most terror arrests, the number held for domestic terrorism, which is dominated by the far-right, leapt from 10 to 48 in Britain last year.

The jump came after neo-Nazi group National Action in December became the first extreme right-wing group to be banned as a terrorist organisation. The anti-Semitic, white supremacist group had celebrated the murder of the Labour MP Jo Cox by Right-wing extremist Thomas Mair.

Aaron Winter, an academic at the University of East London who researches far-right extremism, said neo-Nazi groups had increasingly pushed an anti-Muslim agenda.

He said: "In the past number of years, from 7/7 but also more recently, there's been organisation around anti-Muslim activism." There had been an increase in hate crimes such as arson at mosques, as anti-Muslim rhetoric became more prevalent, he said.