A WHITE supremacist has been jailed for attacking a black inmate simply because of the colour of his skin.

Alexander Gray, formerly of Chudleigh, was described and a ‘through and through racist’ after a judge heard that he has a history of neo-Nazi violence that includes running his own online television channel in which he ended his videos with Hitler salutes.

He was in Exeter prison and being escorted to an adjudication hearing in April last year when he broke free and punched a black prisoner in the face, breaking his jaw.

Warders dragged him away as he repeatedly shouted the N word at the other inmate, who had been playing table tennis before falling victim to the unprovoked assault.

The adjudication was one of four disciplinary hearings, two of which involved attacking black inmates, one for telling a chaplain that white people ought to rule the world, and one for drawing a swastika in his cell.

At the time of the attack he was serving a sentence for assaulting two brothers in Chudleigh because one of them had a black girlfriend.

Gray, aged 31, previously of Fore Street, Chudleigh, but now of HMP Bullingdon in Oxfordshire, admitted racially aggravated assault causing grievous bodily harm and was jailed for two years and eight months with a three year extended licence by Judge Robert Linford at Exeter Crown Court.

He told him: 'You were in Exeter Prison following your last bit of racism and were let out of your cell to attend an adjudication. For no reason whatsoever other than the colour of his skin, you ran at a man and delivered a savage punch which sent him to the floor and broke his jaw.

'As you were detained, you shouted racist comments.

'You are a through and through racist. That is what you are. You are a violent and extremely dangerous one at that. You have many convictions for offences of violence.

'I have no doubt whatsoever you fulfil the criteria of a dangerous offender and pose a significant risk to members of the public.

'I have no doubt whatsoever that the racial element was the predominant motivation for you to launch this unnecessary and savage attack.'

Miss Kelly Scrivener, prosecuting, said the attack happened on April 26 last year and left the victim needing an operation to fix a plate in his jaw.

She said Gray has convictions for violence going back to his teens but his racist offending stared in 2019 when he abused police as they arrested for attacking his own father.

He was jailed in 2021 for distributing material that was designed to stir up racial hatred. He set up a Telegram channel named Whiteness in the West Country that proposed turning the South West into a whites-only zone.

He was jailed again later the same year for a racially aggravated attack on two brothers and again in 2022 for racial harassment of a black inmate who he threatened to kill while using the N word.

He has also had four adverse adjudications while in prison including for making monkey noises at black prisoners, two assaults, trying to preach white supremacy to the prison chaplain and drawing a swastika in his cell.

Mr William Parkhill, defending, said Gray grew up in Bovey Tracey but became a racist as a result of spending so much of his life in jail.

He said: 'Since he was 17, by my calculation he has spent ten years in custody. The court will find his attitudes distasteful in the extreme but it was an attitude generated in prison, not in Bovey Tracey.'