Cavan Medlock – the Nazi terrorist sentenced a week ago to an ‘indefinite hospital order’ (in other words psychiatric facility detention) for an attempted knifepoint hostage-taking at a solicitors’ office – was, it can now be revealed, at one stage being groomed to join the leadership stream of the UK Independence Party.
In September 2020, Medlock (above, left) entered the offices of a law firm in Harrow, north-west London, and asked to see a solicitor by name. When told that the lawyer was unavailable, he attacked the office receptionist with a six-inch knife.
Fortunately, the receptionist managed to disarm his assailant and restrain him for long enough for other members of staff to help secure Medlock. As well as a sheath for the knife, Medlock’s bag was found to contain handcuffs, gaffer tape and two flags – one a Third Reich swastika and the other a US Confederacy standard.
Medlock’s plan appears to have been to take the solicitor hostage and then, probably, to murder him. The intent to kill was clearly expressed to those restraining Medlock pending the arrival of the police. The solicitor’s ‘crime’, as Medlock perceived it, was that he had at times acted for immigrants and asylum seekers.
The case took so long to come to trial in part because Medlock had, while detained for psychiatric assessment, been examined by at least four expert professionals, and while all of them agreed that he had serious – indeed dangerous – personality disorders, they struggled to give these a tidy diagnostic label (such as ‘paranoid schizophrenia’). There was also considerable doubt whether he was capable of standing trial.
Medlock was, in the end, tried in his absence for two counts he had indicated he would plead not guilty to, as well as others that were not seriously in dispute. His conviction on the two contested counts, on 10 December, enabled the judge to pass a formal sentence that same day – which was, in effect, to detain him indefinitely at the same facility where he was already being held for assessment.
Media coverage of the trial and sentencing led to one of Searchlight’s regular UKIP informants getting in touch with us. Our contact said they recognised both Medlock’s name and photograph from an encounter some nine years ago, at a UKIP set-piece social event.
Our informant identifies Cavan Medlock as having been introduced to them and several others by then London area UKIP chairman John Hellings (above, right) at the area’s 2015 Christmas party, held on 17 December at the Civil Service Club in Great Scotland Yard. Although Medlock was not yet even a member of UKIP, our contact says Hellings was touting him as a desirable figure to take over as chairman of a one of the party’s west or north-west London branches.
Hellings seems to have circulated his new protégé (or ‘stooge’ as our contact puts it) pretty widely at the Christmas bash, because our informant reports that “From brief conversations with Medlock, several of us concluded that he was ‘cracked’ and should certainly not be in UKIP, whatever Hellings might wish.”
That the adoption of Medlock did not turn into the kerfuffle that it promised to be is down to Hellings hoisting himself on his own petard that very same evening. Upon the arrival at the party of UKIP 2015 General Election candidate Nigel Sussman, Hellings called out loudly enough for there to be numerous witnesses to the incident “You north London Jewish c*nt!”
(At least that’s how some eventually reported it. According to our informant, the full remark was “You f•cking north London debt-collecting Jewish c*nt!’)
Attendees were sufficiently shocked that a UKIP disciplinary hearing was rushed into being just two days later, and Hellings was summarily expelled from the party. The incident was hushed up for a while, and only became public knowledge in April 2016, when it was leaked to the press – some say by Sussman himself.
In a way, this was quite useful for UKIP. When asked to comment in April, Sussman told the Jewish Chronicle “It shows that UKIP is not a racist party – unlike Labour, who have not acted against all the antisemitism that has gone on in their party.” Whether UKIP will remain Judeo-tolerant in their current, rapidly developing evangelical Christian phase is yet to be seen. Indeed, the party’s lead spokesman on everything, the ‘reverend’ Calvin Robinson, has recently been hotly disputing the use of the phrase ‘Judeo-Christian’, claiming that Christianity has nothing to do with Judaism.
With Hellings out of the picture, the bromancing Medlock was, says our informant, never seen or heard from again in UKIP circles, which they probably now consider a very lucky let-off. The idea that it might easily have been a man from the party’s leadership stream who was this month banged up for being, in layman’s terms, a batshit-crazy, knife-wielding terrorist should be giving a few Kippers the shivers.