It is a Saturday afternoon in late January and there is just enough sunlight to suggest that things might get warmer some time soon. In Southwater Square in the Shropshire town of Telford to protest against notorious racist rabble rouser Tommy Robison trying to use a rally in the town to relaunch his career, this time as an investigative journalist and filmmaker [1].
“We’re here to vent our anger,” an activist tells me both at Robinson and
the Johnson government, which this week as its twists and turns over ‘partygate’
became even more convoluted seems finally have crossed the line into absurdity.
Activists have come from across the midlands and
beyond to attend the event, something attested to by the banners and placards
on display. These range from huge beautifully embroidered ones belonging to
trades union branches held up on heavy wooden frames and will become
increasingly hard to mange as the day gets windier, to simple placards made of
cardboard and written out on the train on the way to Telford.
Robinson, real name Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon
[2], is a right-wing activist linked at various stages of his political career
with the BNP, the British Freedom Party and other, mostly now defunct, far right
groups and was an adviser to former UKIP leader. His claim to fame, or
notoriety anyway, is as the leader of the English Defence League from 2009 to
2013. His journalistic career has, to date been limited to writing for Canadian
far right website Rebel News and appearing in ranting Facebook videos.
His criminal career has been more prolific, Robinson
has racked up convictions for crimes including violence, stalking and
immigration fraud. These have seen him jailed on numerous occasions, his most
recent brush with the law in October last year saw him made subject of a five-year
stalking order for harassing a journalist.
On the day of the rally Robinson is thought to have brought
some 1500 supporter to Telford, newspaper photographs of them marching from the
railway station show several giving Nazi salutes.
Arriving earlier in the day with a party of activists
from Stoke-on-Trent I encountered a small number of his supporters along with the
increased police presence mounted to curtail any potential flashpoints. They
were, drawn straight from fascist central casting, older seedy looking men with
short hair and tattoos drinking from cans and scowling at everyone they deemed
to be different from their perceived norm.
Braver in crowds than alone most stayed silent or
shouted muffled comments when they were a safe distance away. Later as the
protest column approached where Robinson was holding his rally some more
courageous of his supporters would periodically run up to us to shout abuse,
usually holding up a mobile phone to record their ‘bravery’ for posterity. The
overall impression was of deep anger without much in the way of intelligence to
give it focus.
Robinson had been planning to hold his rally, at which
he would be airing a film allegedly exposing links between the local Muslim
community and child abuse, in the square where the counterdemonstration was assembling.
This, one activist told me, had been quashed by councillors for the town and
they had been relocated to a carpark by the station.
The abuse claims made against the Muslim community in
Telford have not been proved and anti-racist group Hope Not Hate draw links
between Robinson’s making them and a longer history of far-right groups using sexual
allegations as a slur, citing as an example accusations of paedophilia made
against the Jews in 1930’s Germany.
They also highlight the significant hypocrisy Robinson
has shown in relation to paedophiles amongst his own supporters saying he has ‘an appalling record of confronting paedophilia
and abuse within his own team and amongst his supporters. Lennon has
consistently ignored or even defended occurrences of these crimes in his own
ranks, proving that he is more concerned with attacking Muslims than actually
combatting CSE or challenging sexual violence’ [3].
They point to the high number of active paedophiles
identified as leading members of the EDL, including Brett Moses, given a
suspended sentence for ‘child grooming’ in 2010, Leigh McMillan jailed for
sexual offences going back to the 1990’s and, most sickeningly the convicted
murderer Robert Ewing.
Hope Not Hate condemn sexual abuse in all its
forms but point out that Robinson is using unfounded accusations to stir up
division and promote a political ideology filled with prejudice and hatred.
They write ‘Child sexual exploitation reaches across all communities, and these
sickening actions involve men from all ethnic backgrounds. Lennon’s relentless
exploitation of others’ pain is an insult to survivors and to those who work
tirelessly to demand justice and build support services for survivors. His
failure to condemn child sexual exploitation within his own ranks only
highlights his hypocrisy as no ally of the pushback against CSE’.
This would be echoed in the speeches made on the
day, Louise Regan, a national officer with the National Education Union said he
was ‘scapegoating’ the Muslim community to further his political ambitions,
adding that it was ‘absolutely crucial’ that people came together to oppose
him. Wahid, a spokesperson for the Muslim community in Telford denounced
Robinson as a ‘thug’ and a ‘racist’ who had repeatedly told lies, adding that
as a father himself he ‘abhorred’ child abuse but refused to keep quiet when
unfounded accusations are used to sow division.
Other speakers linked the rise of support for
extremist views to a decade of austerity economics and the social divisions
intensified by the pandemic. They called for working people to come together to
oppose fascism and to fight for improved public services.
Robinson may have been forced to relocate his
rally, this hadn’t deterred his supporters from traveling to Telford to hear
him and an undercard of right wing ranters speak. This became apparent as we
reached the carpark where it was being held, which had been fitted out with a
stage of the sort seen at music festivals, a powerful PA system and a huge
screen.
This, one activist told me, suggested that
Robinson was being backed by ‘serious money’ from some source. A worrying
prospect only slightly relieved when another activist pointed out to me, and with
the aid of a bull horn to the star of the circus, that ‘he’s so stupid he can’t
even fly the flag the right way up’.
It would be easy to see Tommy Robinson as a clown,
the latest in a long line of far-right bogeymen who rise up, caper about the
stage for a moment and then sink back into obscurity. There was little in his
film, portions of which we were treated to from the far side of the road where
we were corralled by the police, that suggests his latest re-invention as a
journalist will be any more successful than any of his numerous other ones.
There are though things that should give pause
for thought followed by some sleepless nights. Putting on an event the size of the
one in Telford does require serious money, more certainly that the, allegedly,
bankrupt Robinson could lay his hands on. The anger on which he thumps out an
awkward tune like an ape trying to play the piano is very real and runs deeper
in the community than just the usual suspects standing in the cold clutching
their flags.
As an individual Tommy Robinson is a clownish figure,
a strutting bully long on angry invective but forever short of much in the way
of reason to back up his arguments. He might though serve as a useful, if
noisy, place holder for a far right that can see a moment of opportunity approaching
and just needs a leader with better social skills to make it appear acceptable
to a public frustrated by the failings of mainstream politics.
That makes it even more important, something highlighted
by all the speakers on the day, that all sections of the left come together to
defeat not just Tommy Robinson, but the hate filled ideology for which the is,
for the moment, the front man.
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Robinson_%28activist%29
