Far-right idiot caught with ‘grossly offensive’ material still a Nazi 20 years on

Gregory Alan Cumming was lucky to walk out the public door rather than be taken to the cells of Newry courthouse on Tuesday after District Judge Anne Marshall suspended the five-month prison sentence for 18 months.

The 57-year-old, from Orangefield Drive in Armagh, had earlier entered guilty pleas to four counts relating to the improper use of a public telecommunication network to send material which was grossly offensive including Nazi and Klu Klux Klan supporting rubbish.

But we can reveal Cumming has a long history of spreading hideous hate speech and has even denied the Holocaust.

In fact he spoke to the Sunday World exactly 20 years ago when he was the leader of the British Nazi Party in Northern Ireland – a political party formed by a bunch of right-wing radicals who felt the BNP wasn’t right-ring enough.

Under the fake name ‘Gary Allen’ Cumming told our reporter in 2003 how he was openly anti-Semitic and the Holocaust was a fiction put about by Hollywood and the Soviets.

“People don’t find our views offensive,” he said back then. “We are anti-Semitic, I don’t have a problem with that. People here are sophisticated and our policies on asylum seekers have gone down very well.

“We are a legal party which is legally promoting policies. We are Nazis.”

Last year when the Sunday World confronted him at his home after he had been charged with spreading hate material, he was less chatty and slammed the door in our face without saying a word.

It emerged in court this week he had lost his job because the attention around his recent offending.

As well as being a leading figure in the British Nazi Party he’s also a former member of the National Front and the British National Party.

Cumming had originally been charged with distributing far right material intending to stir up racial hatred but that charges were finished by the PPS.

On Tuesday at Armagh Magistrates Court, sitting in Newry, a prosecuting lawyer told the court the images and texts were uncovered on a phone found in Cumming’s house during a search.

The material he had sent included a reference to “Comrade 88,” an image and text regarding a person “dousing himself in flammable liquid and setting himself on fire” and an image and text regarding the Klu Klux Klan (KKK), said the lawyer who did not go into further details about their content.

According to the hate symbol database, 88 is a white supremacist numerical code for "Heil Hitler."

H is the eighth letter of the alphabet, so 88 = HH = Heil Hitler and as one of the most common white supremacist symbols, 88 is used throughout the entire white supremacist movement, not just neo-Nazis.

Defence counsel Patrick Taggart confirmed he had seen the material and revealed that the offences had already had a “significant impact” on Cumming who has lost his job since his arrest.

“There’s no sense of feeling sorry for himself but clearly, the investigation has had a significant impact,” said the barrister who confirmed to DJ Marshall that Cumming’s is “no longer a member” of the NF or BNP.

“In terms of the pre-sentence report, he has shown his insight and he has and his recognition of the impact this material has,” said the judge who said that having had the misfortune to see it herself “they clearly were grossly offensive and menacing.”

Describing Cumming’s previously held views as “very concerning,” she said it was accepted “this wasn’t an orchestrated campaign but was misplaced and misinformed directed at people the private group had taken umbrage with.”

And she warned that “people need to be aware…just because you are sitting in the house, alone, as some sort of keyboard warrior, sending these grossly offensive images and texts out to other people, you will be prosecuted.”

But Cumming is a remorseless racist and Nazi supporter who has continued to peddle horrific hate speech for various far-right groups.

In 2005 Cumming was exposed by another newspaper for organising a sickening racist propaganda campaign across Ulster before moving across the Irish Sea to orchestrate the same campaign in Scotland.

The self-confessed racist Cumming said at the time he had been booted out of the White Nationalist Party (WNP) after he attracted too much media scrutiny.

In 2008 Cumming became a "recruiting officer" for the British People's Party – a race-hate party linked Ayran Unity, an online cabal of extreme right-wing organisations and which had members in Northern Ireland at the time.

A literature campaign run by Cumming and his cronies in the WNP coincided with a string of terrifying race attacks across Northern Ireland.

At the time Cumming also complained that his mother, who he said was appalled at his extreme views and his involvement in "white power" organisations, had booted him out of the family home.

He was later literally kicked out of the WNP and given a beating by a fellow fascist.

"I am no longer involved in the WNP,” he revealed in 2008. "I went out for a drink one Saturday night, and I have still got a black eye. He gave me a brave f****** smack - that's the way I have left the party.

"I had a debate with a few of them. I was accused of this, that, and the other. I'm out of it. Most of the people who joined the f****** party have gone.

"I'm out of it. I've been through enough."