FAR-RIGHT activists are more likely to be paedophiles, convictions rates suggest, historian and broadcaster Louise Raw has said.

Addressing the Morning Star’s annual conference on Saturday, she warned of a growing acceptance of far-right claims to be protectors of women and children against Muslim grooming gangs.

The Labour historian presented a list of 103 members of groups — including the English Defence League, BNP and Britain First — who have been convicted of such crimes, most with child victims.

The list included John Merritt, described as a Reform UK supporter who raped boys.

She said that taking into account national conviction rates and estimates of the number of far-right supporters in Britain, the statistics suggest they are more likely to be sex offenders than the general public.

“It is so important that we don’t let them to look like the protectors,” she told the event in central London.

Speaking to the Morning Star, she explained that her list of 103 far-right convicts was likely to be an underestimate, based as it is on publicly available data and dependant on courts mentioning defendants’ far-right connections, something they do not routinely do.

With a 2 per cent conviction rate for sex crimes, this suggests an actual number of more than 5,000 sexual abusers in these groups, she said.

A lack of centralised tracking and varying definitions of “far right” makes it difficult to provide an exact number of members in Britain.

But using the estimate of 50,000 from Unite Against Fascism, she said that this suggests one in 10 may be child sex offenders.

This rate is between five and 10 times higher than the 1 to 2 per cent of men believed to be paedophiles across the general population.