New Netflix true-crime documentary Nail Bomber: Manhunt examines a series of London bombings, which took place over three weekends in April 1999 across London – in Brixton, Brick Lane and Soho.
The bombs were made and detonated by far-right extremist David Copeland, who targeted Black, Asian, and LGBTQ+ communities.
While the police launched a manhunt to track him down, leading to Copeland’s arrest, many others were involved in the capturing of the Nail Bomber, including an informant known as Arthur.
Arthur – an anti-fascist activist – got to know Copeland when he joined the intelligence-gathering wing of Searchlight, a magazine that worked to infiltrate and monitor far-right groups.
“I like being a spy. It’s a buzz!” he explains in the film, when asked why he decided to get involved.
Posing as a member of the British National Party, Arthur met Copeland on a number of occasions in 1999, and was one of the first people to link him to the bombings before his image was made public by the police.
He played a vital part in getting the Nail Bomber arrested for the crimes, as they met at rallies where Copeland talked of hatred for “people with brown faces.”
Speaking of his time in the BNP, Arthur reveals in the documentary: “In 1999, I was undercover in the BNP. The British National Party was the law and order party. We projected ourselves as decent, honourable, law-abiding citizens. We were the good guys. But behind that, you’d be going to a BNP meeting at a church hall or the back of a pub and people were distributing hit lists, overtly Nazi propaganda, and bomb manuals.
“It was their dream that someone would go out and blow up someone they suggested to target, so it was pretty extreme. My assumption was that they’d keep the Nazi thing out of the way for new recruits, but straight away they were saying it was a good thing. I was shocked. I was scared, but I was also very excited.”
Arthur says the BNP were never suspicious of him during his time in the group, explaining in the documentary: “I guess they were thinking, ‘Why wouldn’t any white man want to join the group?'”
During his years as a mole in Britain’s far-right, Arthur became “immune” to racism, revealing in the film that he even started to doubt whether the Holocaust ever happened due to far-right indoctrination.
“I’d love to say that I thought it was all bulls**t, but definitely they indoctrinated me,” he reveals. “I was thinking, ‘Maybe I’m naive, that I follow the mainstream’.”
Despite helping the police to track down Copeland, Arthur still feels guilt to this day that he wasn’t able to solve the case sooner, saying, “I wish we had been able to stop it, to stop people being killed and injured. I think about that a lot – I thought I got over it, but it comes back.”
Arthur left the group a decade later, and although many far-right members still believe his cover story, he fears his identity being revealed.
“These are dangerous people,” he says to the cameras. “They still believe I’m a Nazi.”
Nail Bomber: Manhunt is available to stream on Netflix from Wednesday 26th May. Read the true story behind Nail Bomber: Manhunt. If you’re looking for more to watch, check out our TV Guide. Visit our Documentaries hub for all the latest news.
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