McKenna and his partner Tina Smith, a 54-year-old bus driver, were also amassing an arsenal of weapons and constructing homemade bombs.

Their digital devices revealed extreme far-right views and detailed discussions about launching violent attacks.

The raid on McKenna’s caravans uncovered a substantial haul of weaponry, including six converted Turkish Ceonic P320 pistols, a shotgun concealed within a torch, a replica AK47 assault rifle prepared for conversion, and components of a Sten Mark II submachine gun.

Officers also recovered “dum dum” bullets, hollow-tipped ammunition prohibited under international law due to the catastrophic injuries they cause upon impact.

Inside the makeshift workshop, investigators found a lathe, drill, and welding equipment used to transform imitation weapons into functioning firearms.

The search also revealed 4.5 kilograms of homemade “black powder” explosive, along with two improvised bombs constructed from plastic fish baiters stored casually beside the dining table.

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One device had been packed with shrapnel to maximise casualties, with 34 additional baiters ready for conversion into explosives.

The investigation that brought down McKenna’s operation began in May 2024 when police received intelligence about Faisal Razzaq, a man with a notorious criminal past.

Razzaq had previously served 11 years behind bars for his role as lookout and getaway driver in the 2005 armed robbery at a Bradford travel agents that resulted in the murder of PC Sharon Beshenivsky.

Publicly presenting himself as a legitimate businessman running a luxury car hire company, Razzaq was secretly acting as a “top level weapons supplier” distributing McKenna’s converted firearms to criminal buyers.

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Surveillance operations led officers to intercept a vehicle heading to Notting Hill Carnival in August 2024, where they discovered a loaded converted pistol with hollow-point ammunition.

Forensic analysis traced the weapon back to McKenna, prompting the wider investigation that ultimately exposed the entire criminal network. The couple’s hateful ideology was laid bare in text messages presented to the court.

McKenna wrote to one associate: “Our only chance for survival is strike now while we have the numbers and unalive the f** lot of them.”

In another message, he declared: “We have to fully dominate the Muslims or there will never be peace,” adding: “I have a bunch of s**t. I’m stockpiling. Hit them on the approach. Ambush them.”

Smith expressed equally violent sentiments, writing: “They have to be gone from this country. Shoot them all.”

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Prosecutor Emily Dummett told the court that McKenna had been “stockpiling explosives, firearms and improvised explosive devices for, as in his communications, a race war to fight and kill the Muslims, the immigrants, and so on.”

Messages sent between February and August 2024 called for “a revolution ASAP” and revealed McKenna contemplating “kicking it off himself.”

The Buckles Lane site has expanded dramatically beyond its authorised 31 pitches for travelling showmen to 111 pitches hosting 835 static caravans, with 76 per cent of its more than 1,000 occupants living there without permission.

Former Thurrock Tory MP Jackie Doyle-Price said: “Thurrock Council continues to look the other way and has done nothing to make the site compliant with the law. It was made very clear to the council that if things were not sorted it would become a lawless place and this is what is happening.”

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Detective Chief Inspector James Tipple of the Met’s Specialist Crime Command said dismantling the gang meant “some of the most dangerous members of our society will be off the streets of London for a very long time”.

Since McKenna’s arrest, there has been a marked decline in converted blank firearms appearing in London shootings.

A Thurrock Council spokesman said: “Thurrock Council has an injunction in place which prevents any further development of land at Buckles Lane and action has been taken to enforce on this injunction several times.