Extreme right-wing terrorism ‘here to stay’, warns MI5 boss

Extreme right-wing terrorism is “sadly here to stay”, the boss of MI5 warned as he revealed agents are investigating teenagers as young as 13.

The threat has “grown and morphed quite substantially over the last five to 10 years”, with a “high prevalence of teenagers” and tackling it needs “new expertise, new sources, new methods”, director general Ken McCallum said.

MI5 took over the lead responsibility for countering extreme right-wing terrorism just over a year ago.

Of 29 late-stage attack plots disrupted over the last four years, 10 have been extreme right-wing.

In a speech from the security agency’s Thames House headquarters in London on Wednesday, McCallum said: “We are progressively finding more indicators of potential threat.

“Extreme right-wing terrorism is sadly here to stay, as a substantial additional risk for MI5 to manage”.

He later told reporters there are cases of “teenagers presenting potential terrorist risk to their community”, adding: “The case that I’m currently aware of, of the youngest person who has featured within our investigations, was a young individual who was 13 years old.”

But he said he was clearly not saying that “all 13-year-olds present a risk”.

In his annual address, the second since he took over the top role in April last year, McCallum said extreme right-wing terrorism comprises a “substantial minority slice of the risk we’re managing” – about one in five of MI5’s counter-terrorist investigations in Britain.

He told how the presence of teenagers is a “rising trend in MI5’s counter terrorist case work” and is becoming more so in extreme right-wing investigations.

Although suggesting some teenagers can be “swept up with this toxic ideology for a period” due to its huge presence online, he warned: “It is already the case that in quite a range of our investigations we do sadly see teenagers, minors, under the age of 18, some under the age of 16, presenting sharp risk.”

While some youngsters pose a terror threat, others are a risk to themselves and “clearly in all such cases there is an important child protection angle that has to be factored in also”, McCallum added.

Asked why teenagers might be drawn to this ideology, he suggested that in some cases it may be a “piece of rebellion as teenagers find their way in the world” and described the threat as an almost “cult-like phenomenon”.

Although there are “rallying” and “iconic” figures, this was not a coordinated threat with a “coherent driving group”, he said.