Seven police officers who raided the North Yorkshire home of Colin Jordan, former leader of the right-wing British Movement, seized thousands of documents, many of them racist in nature, a court heard.

And the search of Thorgarth at Greenhow Hill, near Pateley Bridge, in August 1998 was followed by another in March last year while Jordan, 77, was in a police cell after being arrested, it was alleged at the town's magistrates court.

District Judge David Tapp has to decide whether or not 11 charges brought against Jordan under the 1986 Public Order Act, claiming publication or distribution of threatening, abusive or insulting material intended or likely to stir up racial hatred, should be sent to Crown Court for trial.

The offences are said to have occurred at various locations between March 1993 and March 1999, with six of them referring to copies of a newsletter called Gothic Ripples.

Two more concern leaflets entitled Election Special and UK General Election 1997, while a ninth count relates to a leaflet called The Two Sides of Jack Straw's Jewish Justice. Others refer to a leaflet entitled Our Stephen Lawrence Report and a booklet, Merrie England 2000.

Mr Tapp, who lifted reporting restrictions on Jordan's application, is expected to give his decision today. He will also rule on whether Anthony Hancock, 53, of St Aubyn's, Hove, Sussex, should face trial on two charges of aiding and abetting Jordan by printing the Jack Straw and Merrie England material.

Both men have pleaded not guilty on all counts.

Prosecuting counsel Nicholas Dean said the 1998 raid followed receipt of alleged racist material by organisations and individuals including MPs.

Nine of the charges concerned items seized in that raid with the other two stemming from material sent out by Jordan in the immediate aftermath.

Jordan claimed the raids were conducted as revenge after an earlier 1991 raid was declared illegal.

He had been awarded £10,000 damages and £3,000 costs and said the police never forgave or forgot.

He insisted that Home Secretary Jack Straw was behind the prosecution.

"He has demanded my head on the block because I have said things critical of his role in society today and accused him of genocide."

Hancock claimed there was a tradition in printing for the publisher whose name and address appeared on any work to take legal responsibility for it.

It would impose an impossible burden on a jobbing printer to have to employ an in-house lawyer to vet contentious or controversial material.