What happened to the white supremacist ordered to read Jane Austen?

"I’ve got them. I’ve not got to grips with any of them"

Welcome to Scout, a newsletter investigating the British far-right. Thanks for reading our first article. We’re revisiting the strange case of the terrorist who dodged prison with a suspended sentence and a demand from the judge to read the works of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens. We went to find out if he’d done his homework.

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The white supremacist who was spared jail and ordered to study classic works of literature says he still has “not got to grips” with them, Scout can reveal.

In August, Ben John was convicted of possessing 67,788 documents of violent antisemitic material, including viable bomb-making instructions. In addition to a two-year suspended sentence, a judge demanded he read Pride and Prejudice, A Tale of Two Cities, Twelfth Night, and generally, the books of Thomas Hardy and Anthony Trollope.

Ben John, leaving Leicester Crown Court in August. Credit: Chris Gordon for the Leicester Mercury

Standing shirtless on the doorstep of his parents’ home in Lincoln last week, the 21-year-old former student said he has not read the books asked of him. “I don’t know how to put it,” he said. “I’ve got them. I’ve not got to grips with any of them.”

He added that he had time to study them ahead of January 4th, when Judge Timothy Spencer QC said John would be tested. “I’ve still got a month,” he said.

Asked which books by Hardy and Trollope he had purchased, John said he couldn’t recall but that they were “buried somewhere” in a box in his home. He said that he had read Pride and Prejudice in secondary school, adding: “I was already familiar with that anyways.”

He was confused over the format of the test next month. “I don’t know how it will work,” he said, when asked if he knew what exactly he needed to study. “We don’t understand it ourselves. I don’t know what the agenda is behind it… All I know is I’ll be getting it soon.”

Lincolnshire Police described John as a "white supremacist with a neo-Nazi ideology". According to prosecutors in his case, the material found on his computer showed he admired Nazism and Adolf Hitler. He was found guilty of possessing a record of information likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism. It’s an offence that carries a maximum of 15 years in prison. Judge Spencer gave him a two-year suspended sentence, plus two years on licence. Then he spoke about the importance of classic literature:

Have you read Dickens? Austen? Start with Pride and Prejudice and Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Think about Hardy. Think about Trollope.

On January 4 you will tell me what you have read and I will test you on it. I will test you and if I think you are [lying to] me you will suffer. I will be watching you, Ben John, every step of the way. If you let me down you know what will happen.

What happens next?

Campaign groups said John's interview with Scout confirmed their fears that his sentence was inadequate. When John was sentenced this autumn, activists complained to the Attorney General’s office, criticising the judge for handing down a “pathetic” sentence. The Court of Appeal will review it, but a date has not been set.

A spokesperson for Campaign Against Antisemitism, which protested to the AG, said: “Ben John left court with a mere suspended sentence and some English homework. Given his extraordinary luck, it would be astonishing if Mr John does not even do the reading assigned to him, which would serve only to prove the critics of this incredible sentence right.”

Nick Lowles, CEO of Hope Not Hate, the antifascism campaign group, said John’s sentence could encourage others. “We believe the main deterrent to most offenders comes in the social cost associated with being caught and convicted,” he told Scout. “While prison must be an option for hardened extremists intent on terrorism, it won't always be the right path. Whatever the correct sentence for Ben John may be, the judge's apparent failure to treat his offences with the gravity they warranted sent an awful message.”

Ben John’s legal situation

So could John’s admission that he has not read Charles Dickens send him to prison? If you saw the newspapers when John was first sentenced, you might have got that impression. Plus, Judge Spencer said John would “suffer” if he lied during his test. But lawyers who discussed John’s case with Scout explained that when judges issue suspended sentences, there are set conditions that can be attached to them like unpaid work or drug rehabilitation requirements. “Reading a book certainly isn’t one of them,” Matthew Scott, a criminal barrister and legal commentator, told us.

Still, Silas Lee, another barrister, suggested that John would be unwise to go into his review date in January without picking up those books. “A judge might take a dim view of a defendant he has released if they don't follow their recommendations,” he said. “If he were to breach an order in those circumstances, he is unlikely to get any more leniency.” When John’s case is discussed in the Court of Appeal, the AG’s team will suggest the whole sentence was lenient, and not just the order to read old books.

Campaign groups argue that John's case is more serious than just downloading extremist documents. He was referred to Prevent, the government's counter-terrorism scheme, shortly after his 18th birthday. He had published a letter claiming to represent the "Lincolnshire Fascist Underground", in which he fumed against gay people and immigrants. That's when the authorities started looking into him.

Some of the documents on John’s computer belonged to Order of Nine Angles, a Satanic neo-Nazi group founded in Shropshire. Harry Bentley, John’s defence lawyer, unsuccessfully argued that his case was about “not deleting items on a computer”. While he was convicted on one charge of possessing terrorist material, John was cleared of six other counts as it could not be proven that he read any of those documents – just that they were on his hard drive. 

The charge that stuck related to an edition of The Anarchist Cookbook. Made by an American activist in 1971, it has since been disavowed by its author after he found God. William Powell, who has begged for his book to be taken out of circulation, wrote bomb recipes based on books in the New York Public Library. His edition is available on Amazon Prime, although the content within it is said to be ineffective and out-of-date. Later editions of the text, which feature dozens of weapon and bomb-making recipes, are deemed more dangerous.

Part of John’s sentencing included a Serious Crime Prevention Order that lasts five years and requires him to stay in touch with the police and let them monitor his online activity. There isn’t much to see publicly. John maintains a LinkedIn profile where he likes posts by De Montfort University in Leicester, where he studied criminology. His current job is at an Italian restaurant in Lincoln.

At the end of our conversation, John told me he “didn’t know what to think” of the sentence review. “I’m not sure what the case is,” he said. “That was ambiguous in the first place. The whole case.” He would not be drawn any further, saying that he was standing there without a top on and it was cold. He stopped the interview and went back inside.