A JURY has retired to consider its verdicts in the trial of the founder of neo-Nazi group National Action, who is accused of continuing to be a member after the organisation was banned.

Alex Davies, 27, from Swansea, is on trial accused of being a member of the proscribed organisation after it was banned on December 16 2016.

Barnaby Jameson QC, prosecuting, has told the trial at Winchester Crown Court that the UK Government banned the group after it had “terrorised” towns across the country with its call for an “all-out race war”.

Davies is accused of setting up NS131 – which stood for National Socialist Anti-Capitalist Action and which itself was later banned by the Government – as a continuity group.

He has told the court that NS131 was not set up as a continuation of NA and had different aims and processes.

Davies said that after the ban he was involved in “advancing the cause of national socialism, not the cause of a continuity NA”.

He added: “After proscription, all I am interested in is pursuing legal political activities.”

Davies denies membership of a proscribed organisation between December 17, 2016, and September 27, 2017.