This is not the first time Tommy Robinson has been jailed for his journalism. Last time he ended up in Belmarsh, the highest-security prison in the UK. He spent much of his time in solitary confinement due to the threats to his life from Islamist terrorists there, and suffered severe physical decline and PTSD as a result. This time he has once again been sent to Belmarsh and is in effect a political prisoner. One significant reason why is because the mainstream media has consistently demonised and lied about him and his supporters, and consistently misleading reporting was once again on display this weekend. Here’s the Telegraph‘s headline for example:
‘Churchill statue barricaded as Tommy Robinson supporters gather for “Uniting the Kingdom” march: Police make several arrests after far-Right demonstrators clash with anti-fascist counter-protest’.
I was there for the entirety of the ‘Uniting the Kingdom’ event. It started at 11am at Victoria station and ended after 5.30pm in Westminster. Everything about that headline is misleading. Deliberately so? The enormous crowd of all ages and ethnicity were not ‘far-right demonstrators’ (or ‘thugs’ as many other media reports called them). They were normal, peaceful, patriotic and friendly folk, carrying Union flags as well as those of other nations. Not a single person in the crowd was masked.
The only arrests made on the day were those of counter-protesters clashing with police who were stopping them attacking the peaceful rally. These so-called ‘anti-fascist’ counter-protesters in fact were almost all violent masked Antifa thugs, middle-class Marxists and Islamists, many of whom carried Palestinian flags and chanted genocidal threats against the Jewish State.
What the Telegraph failed to mention was that the Churchill statue had been boarded up before the ‘Unite the Kingdom’ march arrived at Westminster to stop it being vandalised by the ‘anti-fascists’. The boarding was removed when the Unite the Kingdom crowd arrived.
Moreover, the rally was not about Tommy Robinson. It was planned as a celebration of British culture and unity and also as a protest against the two-tier British justice system and the unprecedented, unjust imprisonment of hundreds of patriots following protests stemming from the killing of three young girls in Southport in July. One of those unjustly imprisoned was Peter Lynch, who died in jail on October 19 and in whose memory there was a minute of silence.
Tommy Robinson himself has been a victim of a two-tier justice system for years. Indeed, he was prevented from attending the rally, arrested and remanded in custody the night before on a trumped-up terrorism charge for refusing to give police the PIN code to his mobile phone. This ensured two things: that he couldn’t attend the rally and could be taken directly to court on Monday to face the contempt-of-court charge.
It was not just the Telegraph. None of the mainstream media accurately reported the event. First the very different estimates of the crowd size. Most outlets said a ‘few thousand’ based on a police estimate of 15,000, whereas the organisers claimed as many as 250,000. Because the event lasted over six hours and took place over various locations, with many joining and leaving at different times, it is difficult to give an accurate estimate. At its peak my own estimate was around 40,000. Because I wanted to speak to some of the organisers, I first went to Downing Street, rather than the muster point of Victoria station, as the main stage and one of two large screens were being set up there across the full width of Whitehall. Even before 11am, quite a large group had decided to meet there to be at the front despite the main event not starting until 1.30. I then walked from Westminster toward Victoria; the entire area was closed to traffic as this was the route of the march.
About half-way down Victoria Street the police had set up a barricade to hold the main group of marchers who had arrived at Victoria station. By 11.15 the crowd was already densely packed between the station and that barricade. I estimate at least 30,000 by 12.00. This footage by Hearts of Oak gives a feel for the size of the crowd behind the barricade.
Here is my own on-the-spot report on the background of the event (in which the MSM seems to have no interest or curiosity) filmed by Resistance GB.
I joined the march to Westminster when it left at 1pm. By the time I got there all of Whitehall from the Downing Street stage to Westminster and much of Parliament Square was already full. Fortunately, we were able to watch the proceedings on a giant screen at the edge of Parliament Square.
The event was hosted by podcaster Liam Tufts. There were many speakers including the Iranian-born journalist Mahyar Tousi, free-speech advocate Carl Benjamin, Ezra Levant of Rebel Media, Richard Shaw (the Reform UK party candidate expelled from the party for apologising for believing that Tommy Robinson was a racist) and UKIP leader Nick Tenconi. There were impressive speeches from a group of French feminists called Collectif Nemesis who spoke about their experiences of sexual abuse by immigrants.
The main event was a screening, the premiere of the new Urban Scoop documentary Lawfare. We watched how the two-tier justice system had affected ordinary law-abiding citizens. We saw harrowing interviews with relatives of those who have been unjustly imprisoned after the recent ‘riots’. Giving a voice to these people is something that Tommy Robinson has been speaking about for the last month. It’s a terrible indictment of this same system that it has silenced his own voice again.
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