Sunday, 30 January 2022

It is Vital that We Defeat Tommy Robinson and his Hate-Filled Ideology.

 


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.

 

[1]https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/newsbirmingham/thousands-take-part-in-telford-protests-as-tommy-robinson-airs-documentary/ar-AAThab3

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Robinson_%28activist%29

[3]https://hopenothate.org.uk/2022/01/11/tommy-robinson-is-a-hypocrite-when-it-comes-to-opposing-child-sexual-exploitation/

 

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