this is bbc news. we will have the headlines and all the main news stories for you at the top of the hour, as newsday continues straight after hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk. i'm stephen sackur. eight decades after the world confronted the evil of nazism, significant numbers of people around the world are still drawn to extreme violent forms of race hatred and nationalism. in his youth, my guest was part of that culture. matthew collins was a violent

far—right thug, but he changed sides, became an informer and after years in exile, returned to britain to become a prominent activist for the group hope not hate. what is the most effective antidote to hate—fuelled neo—nazi extremism 7 matthew collins, welcome to hardtalk. thank you. yourjob is rooting out, exposing, the most vile forms of racism, neo—nazism. yep.

the twist is that you, yourself, in your youth, were one of them. do you see traits of yourself in today's neo—nazis? some. some traits. poacher turned gamekeeper. i see some traits. i see in some of them the uncertainty about what they believe, the doubts about what they believe, the sadness, deep sadness, and it's one of the things i look for. if i want to recruit someone, i don't recruit a happy fascist, i recruit someone who's unhappy, who's uncertain. and that's what i aim at and that's what i go for. sounds like you make a real effort to understand their pain. yeah, i think a lot of people think anti—fascists just generally must hate all fascists, but my thing is ijust hate the racism and the fascism. but i recognise, particularly now, the way that fascism is and the sort of people it recruits now, that most of them have had really quite appalling experiences. i try not to hate them.

a lot of them, ijust see they've fallen... they've sort of fallen off the way, they've gone the wrong way, they've taken a wrong turn, or they've been really terribly let down and that's the main thing. so you don't believe in irredeemable evil when it comes to these people and the race hate they peddle, the white supremacism 7 yeah, some are obviously beyond help, but i see a lot pretty terrible experiences, people who've been rubbed up against the wrong way of civilised society, and i think you can gently coerce them back into civil society. you have to also address the issues. they don'tjust run at fascists and say, "make me one of your own." you have to address the issues, the underlying issues, and sometimes, civil society doesn't do that, it refuses to address the issues by which the far right recruit. so, myjob is to get in there and undermine the hatred and bring out... bring out the haters. "get in there," you say, and we'll discuss in detail what that means,

but from the very get—go, would you say you're better at spotting the under... you know, the sort of covert fascist, the person who may not go public with it, but actually, is developing a series of violent extreme thoughts than say the police or the intelligence services? no. no, i wouldn't say that. i think when we're talking about people who've got these covert things going on, you're talking about people now that are hidden very, very deep in the dark reaches of the internet. ourjob is, where possible, to get into these particular chat groups. we haven't got people running around the streets of london saying, "i want to kill a labour mp and i want to blow "things up," because anyone can spot that, but what we do have are people, and some of them

still as yet unknown to us, who are secreted in these dark recesses of the internet, having those conversations, and i would say, put my hands up, in the last two or three years, the security services have taken a forensic look at this and they're getting incredibly better at understanding it. and we'll get back to that, but in a funny sort of way, you've just told me something very interesting about the way in which, from your days as a teenager, getting involved in nazi literature, in extreme thinking, how things have changed, cos you didn't have the internet. now, young people most certainly do and they use it in all sorts of ways, but let's talk about the young matthew collins. is it really true that the first and only book you properly read as a teenager was mein kampf? yeah. and i didn't even read all that either because it's an incredibly boring book. but, yeah, ijust had no... look, i had no interest in getting ahead, i had no... but lots of kids have no real interest in schoolwork or sports or anything else, but they don't begin to sort of idolise adolf hitler. but i did. i know. and it was absolutely... i'm not one of those kids who goes on the internet, although there was no internet, i wasn't someone who was

groomed by some dark and mysterious people. i looked around me at my childhood, at my youth, at my circumstances, and i drew my own conclusions, that i believed my country would be better if all the people who weren't white just left and went away. did you have a lot of hate in your home life? no, absolutely none. my home life was... the older you get, it becomes more and more idyllic, but it was actually pretty special. it was full of warmth, it was full of laughter. most of it was directed at me because i was stomping around the house, sieg heiling into mirrors and ranting and raving about black... ..about black neighbours, but there was nothing in the house that would have... ..that made me the way i was. did you shave your head? did you become a skinhead? i did for about a week. yeah. but you wasn't allowed to have your hair like that in my house. i came home with a skinhead, my mum was very upset. i just wasn't one of those stereotypes... ok, so the skinhead didn't last for long,

but what did last for longer was the violence in you. yeah. because before you renounced all this, you did some terrible things. i did, and from a very... from an early age, in my teens, i was involved in violence. the minute i got involved in these far—right groups, you understand, they take these fears, your concerns about society and your life, and they come back to you and they say the only way to address these is by violence. so, from... i got involved in the national front, as it was back then, when i was 15 years old. i think it was my second or third meeting, iwas involved in a violent confrontation with other people. did you...? yes. i mean, let's be honest about this, because it really matters... yes, of course. ..to make sense of everything, your whole story. i've taken part in horrendous violence. yeah. did you attack, punch, kick, use violence against people purely because of the skin colour? the only one incident i was

involved in that was based on the skin colour was welling library. i would say this, put my hands up, the majority of violence from far—right groups is directed mainly at socialists, the left, trade unionists, people like that. and in the �*80s and the �*90s, the people who were most likely to physically confront fascists were generally trade unionists and left wing groups. you were very happy to yell the n—word into people's faces. absolutely, absolutely. the n—word, the p—word, the w—word, all kinds of words. and we need briefly to talk about welling, cos it's sort of a watershed moment in your life. it was a meeting of anti—fascist activists, campaigners... anti—racists. ..anti—racists... the general good and great of the community. yeah, and it's local to your home in south east london. yeah. you pitch up with scores of thugs. yeah. i mean, you were a thug. scores of thugs, they march in, they see elderly ladies, they see pregnant women, they see men, and theyjust attack. yes. and you were part of it. i was part of that.

and you, presumably, attacked people. yes. how come you have never been held to account for that? well, i have been held to account for that. not in a court of law, you haven't. not in a court of law, i haven't, but i have done everything i could possibly do to redeem myself. i've worked with people who were there that night and were victims of that night. i've gone to talk to people about that evening and about the things that eventuated. and i've spent the last 30 years making up for it. i get that, and we can talk about shame and guilt and learning and everything that you've been through, but itjust seems to me there were old women in that audience who were terrorised. i believe there was one young pregnant woman, who was locked in the toilet and had to hear people like you discuss how they were going to break down the door and kick the you—know—what out of her. yeah, she had hammers banging at the door to get into her. after the meeting, the next day after the meeting, i rang the organisation

searchlight and passed them as much information as possible about what happened. so that was the moment when you turned? almost on the spot. yeah. i think i punched a man... i know the man, his name is dev barrah, i punched a man, and then i watched it unleash. you have to remember, i went to that meeting, believing it was our... and the far right always talk about, "it's freedom of speech, it's our freedom of speech, "it's our right to do this" — they get in there, they start attacking people. i was one of them. and i watched it unfold and i saw it for what it is, this is what freedom of speech means to these people, and i said, "i don't want to be part of this," and the next day, i rang the organisation, as it was then, searchlight, and gave them as much information as possible. and that in itself is fascinating, cos, again, it seems to me there's one thing to witness something like that, be part of it and then decide, "you know what? "that was awful. "and i'm going to walk away." you could have done that... yeah. ..but you went way further. you didn'tjust walk out, walk away from the bnp and the national front and the whole far—right politics, you decided to betray

them, to become a mole inside the organisation. it's a weird sense of morality, but, yeah. there's a number of reasons... you betrayed your tribe. but, yeah, and the older i get, the more i look back on it and draw different conclusions and opinions to why i did it. on the spot, there in that room, when i saw fascism for what it really was... it wasn't about fighting at training stations with groups of lefties and all that, it's about stamping on people's heads, it's about battering the weak and defenceless. and on that spot, i came from a home where we were, in real terms, i guess, weak and defenceless, we were impoverished, we were just three brothers, me and my mum, we were impoverished, we were weak, we were almost defenceless. and i saw people like us, who were just trying to get ahead in society, and i saw my friends, my racial brethren and comrades, stamping on those people and i just thought... do you know? the funny thing is, these racists never go

out and save a library, or save a hospital, of save a school. these people who were in here, talking about — is it dangerous to have a far—right group active in the community? well, i guess it is, isn't it? these are the sort of people that would be saving my hospital, myjob, my classes. so, on the spot, i looked around, i said, "i am completely on the wrong side. "and i've completely misread this and everything about it." that's more than 30 years ago... yeah. ..and there's been a lot of life since then. a lot. you, for a while, were informing on the far right within the uk... can ijust be clear? when you say an informant, i was informing to anti—fascists. this is constantly... i was informing to anti—fascists, not to the... well, not directly to the police. understood, but i'm sure some information reached the police. certainly. i think people who were... anyway, why not? why would you even be ashamed of informing the police? if you decided these were bad people, and that you wanted no part of it any more,

wouldn't you want the police to get involved? i've got no problem with ringing the police when there's a criminal act being perpetrated or carried out, like those people who were assaulted in welling library, but i don't want to be in the employ of the police. that's a moral thing. i'm an anti—fascist, not a police narc. you spent ten years soon after that... yeah. ..in australia, in a sort of exile. is that cos you feared that your cover was to be blown and that you would be targeted yourself by your erstwhile brothers in the neo—nazi...? i continued passing this information for two and a half years. i think we had some pretty good results against some pretty violent neo—nazis. and in 1993, world in action did an excellent documentary, which exposed the early terror group combat 18, and it was pretty clear to some in combat 18 that that information could... could only have come from you. could only have come from me, and the arrangement we'd sort of had beforehand was that you could go and live in australia. i didn't want to go and live in australia, but, "you can go "and live in australia," so...

have you lived in fear ever since then? cos obviously, we're going to talk about your more recent work, which has not only been sort of focused on anti—fascism, tackling far—right extremism, but running informers, trying to find informers, just like yourself, in these groups today in contemporary society. would you say that you've lived in fear all of this time, since then? i wouldn't say i've lived in fear. i've lived carefully, i've lived considerately, and i maintain a very healthy respect for their capability for violence. but by the same respect, we discuss this all the time, my colleagues and i. we exist to tackle them, undermine them, disrupt them, and hopefully, one day, destroy them, but like you say, so long after hitler shot himself in a bunker and he's still got followers and admirers. but no, we don't live in fear of them, but we have a healthy respect that they're very capable of violence and we have to protect our families and our work colleagues form that.

when you say "they", obviously they come in different guises. it's notjust a uk phenomenon. no. we should be very mindful that the far right is very active in many different countries across the world. hate is all over the world. yeah. you were involved with the national front, then the british national party. these days, those two organisations are almost defunct. almost defunct. one organisation that you have been crucial in essentially eliminating is so—called national action. yeah. now, in 2017, you were involved as the handler of an informer inside that organisation. yep. it's a story which has recently been dramatised on uk tv. and in essence, you, working with this informer, managed to foil a plot to kill a british labour mp. yeah. why didn't you work from the very get—go with the police? is it because you have a suspicion of the police? no... well, there's two things

that are quite evident. three days before we uncovered the plot to kill a sitting labour mp, the police told a meeting... ..at the home office that national action was finished, it had gone away. that's three days before it planned to kill this mp. as soon as we got the plan, we knew of the plan and the plot, we rang the police. that's my role in a civil society and theirjob is to investigate it and... so you're not a freelancer, then, in that sense? i work for an organisation and we have a set of rules that we abide by. we're not a plastic m15 or a plastic special branch. we're anti—fascists, we're researchers, we're journalists, we're bloggers, we're film—makers. all of the anti—fascist work we do is to feed back into education programmes to undermine fascism. it's a heck of a sensitive and difficult thing

to get right, isn't it? yes. you know, you say, "i'm a campaigner, i'm "a journalist," and all these different things, but ultimately, you're playing with people's lives. yes. the gentleman that was inside national action, who was giving you information, robbie mullen, he says now that everything that happened ruined his life. and probably mine too and probably rosie cooper's too. rosie cooper, being the mp. yeah, rosie cooper being the mp. all of our lives have changed dramatically. but he would also have to admit, rather that he has dramatic changes and drastic changes in his life, and opportunities which have been afforded to him to change his life, rather to have those challenges, than to have the death of an mp and a policewoman on his conscience. i get that. those are sacrifices and he knew sacrifices when he came to work for us. in a sense, it goes back to the conversation we had about you, yourself, back in 1989, when you decided to turn on your former neo—nazi colleagues. yep.

it's notjust about the decision to walk away and have nothing to do with it, it's about the decision then to be active in trying to eliminate, to stop these people. that involves real danger and now you're advising others to take on that real danger. well, the majority of people who come and work for us, doing this, will come to us for a day or an afternoon, impart information. some will come to us completely lost and broken down and we'll help them back on their feet, they'll give us some information and we'll send them on their way, totally without ever being found or caught. the exceptional case was robbie mullen. as i told him at the time, it's in the book, i said, "this changes everything." had jack renshaw not wanted to kill an mp, robbie mullen would now be living where he wants, totally unknown, the world would never have heard of him, and, you know, that was it. having lived in australia in exile, having addressed

all the dangers in your life, you've written a book, the walk—in, you're now involved in promoting this tv series, are you embracing the spotlight now? no. um... i was on this seat 18, 20 years ago. a clever line i've stolen is... that 15 minutes of fame. one day, you'lljust want 15 minutes of anonymity. let me get now your analysis of what is happening, in terms of the threat posed by the far right. counterintelligence chiefs in the uk have actually raised their assessment of the threat level in recent years. last year, i think, one of the counter terror chiefs said that something like one in five of all extremist incidents in the uk involve neo—nazi, far—right activity. yeah. and they're trying to balance out the commitment they make to it alongside that of keeping tabs on islamist radical terrorism. do you think they've got the balance right, the threat assessment right?

i think so. i think there is a necessity to keep reminding people and i think in particular parents and teachers that, you know, there's insidious isis sort of stuff that goes on in bedrooms and the dark recesses of the internet, similarly these far right terror groups are actually admirers of isis and al-qaeda. their adherence to some of the things that isis and al-qaeda have said about women and women's places in society. so there's a number of reasons... there are real comparisons to be made, are there? national action spent hours and hours disseminating isis beheading videos, disseminating materials about why young boys should rape women. why they should take women as slaves, why women have no place in society. so, parents have a responsibility to understand that... zack davies, who went into a tesco in 2015 and tried to behead a man. you know, he had all this isis imagery and words going on,

he was a member of national action. so they're right to say... and i think where the security services are right now, previously we just thought these are a bunch of bnp nutters, they're not, that's gone, as we said earlier on, completely gone. we're talking about a new, harsher ideology, younger, harsher, more disturbed, more distant, more isolated young men, and this new ideology is — what can we do to get these people over the line to commit a terror attack? that is fascinating. and what we're also talking about is the power of the internet to create global communities. individuals in bedrooms, who are wired and connected to a global community, and we saw that, for example, with the terrible mass murder in christchurch, new zealand, by an australian white supremacist, who had clearly read and imbibed that theory, the great replacement, a sort of weird demographic theory... and the idea about a white jihad, why can't white nazis become "jihadis"

and sacrifice themselves? this is the new ideals. the end result is the same. whether it's the bnp, whether it's a boy in his bedroom, when you have racism, fascism and nazism, the end result to all of this will be violence. they no longer want to stand in elections, theyjust want other people to go out and kill people. and i think they're right to have that terror threat level where it is. you mention elections. one final thought on where we are right now. in europe, we see the success of far—right political movements in mainstream politics. you see it in hungary, you see it in italy today. to you, is that a flashing red signal of warning, or is it in some senses actually a safety valve, where some of these ideas are being mainstreamed in a way which robs them of their danger? well, i'd say, to a degree, that some of those ideals are already mainstreamed by this government. but i think in some of the countries where you see

the far right getting into power, into parliament, you have to understand that culturally, fascism isn't particularly a foreign idea to them, particularly in italy, places like spain, where they've had fascists in government previously. fascism is still a very, very alien idea in this country. intellectually, culturally, socially, it doesn't really exist. we've had nationalists, nazis, we've had hollywood nazis. in those countries, it has a nucleus of support that goes through generations and generations. here, racist ideas are just reintroduced and repackaged time and time again for the electorate. electorally here, the far right has absolutely nothing to gain. the last time it stood in an election, it got about1.5%, i believe, in a byelection, where protest groups normally poll higher. the threat from the far right in this country isn't electoral. in those countries, italy and places like that, the threat from the far right, because they have some electoral success, or they can see some of their ideas getting into power, they're taking a different route.

we've had that route here with the bnp. that route has failed, nick griffin declared it dead, and this is where we are now. final thought. you've been a sort of combatant on the battlefield, fighting violent extremists, far—right ideologies, for well over 30 years. yeah. are you winning? yes. doesn't always feel like it. we have no more bnp meps, we have no bnp members of parliament, we have no far—right councillors up and down the country, we don't have a neo—nazi on the gla any more. we're winning. matthew collins, we have to end there. thank you for being on hardtalk. thank you.

hello. well, it doesn't look like we'll be reaching for those thick coats any time soon. the temperatures are expected to rise a little further in some parts of the country, and we could get 21—22 celsius over the next day or so, perhaps in east anglia and the southeast. here's the reason for the very mild, warm weather — this current of warm air spreading in from the southern climes across spain, portugal, france, heading towards the uk. it's a large area of low pressure that's driving the weather, the winds blowing around it like so, scooping up that warmth from the south, pushing it in our direction. but also, we've got weather fronts, cloud, and rain — and actually, towards the end of the night, or early thursday morning, we'll see more rain spreading into southwestern england, parts of wales, and around the irish sea. so, eastern parts of the country should have a dry start to thursday just about. and, of course, very mild with

the south—southwesterly winds — 1a in london, ten in belfast, about that in glasgow and aberdeen. so, tomorrow morning, a lot of cloud about. outbreaks of rain will be moving from south, due north during the course of the morning and into the afternoon. later, the clouds should break across many parts of the country and, given a bit of sunshine, lengthy spells of sunshine maybe in east anglia in the southeast, those temperatures could exceed 20 celsius. but for most of us, it will be around the mid—to—high—teens, which is above the average for the time of year. then, thursday into friday, we see yet another weather system spreading into multiple areas of low pressure in the atlantic, pushing in these rain clouds. so, rain in the morning — but i think, come the afternoon on friday, it should brighten up. a few showers here and there, stronger breeze out towards the west and every bit as mild for many of us. 19—20 in east anglia, around the mid—teens for belfast, glasgow, edinburgh, aberdeen as well. now, into the weekend and next week, this is the jet stream

pattern, a big dip in thejet stream — that means we have a low pressure nestled within this dip, and that, again, spells weather fronts coming in from the south, and mild air coming in from the south as well. but into next week, it does look as though perhaps those temperatures start to ease by the time we get to around wednesday, and you can see plenty of rain clouds in the forecast here, too. bye— bye.