Tommy Robinson: we need the truth
Tommy Robinson is one of the great beneficiaries of fake news – and the restrictions placed by the courts upon the reporting of the real facts of his case have only helped him further. To his fans, Mr Robinson – born Stephen Yaxley-lennon – is a champion of free speech, while his critics are part of a politically correct conspiracy to silence him. The reality is that he is an extremist and a thug. He has been a member of the British National Party, a founder of the English Defence League (which he left, he claimed, because he was concerned it had been infiltrated by the far Right) and a founder of the anti-islam organisation Pegida UK. He also has criminal convictions for assault, attempting to enter the US under a false passport and mortgage fraud. Yesterday, Mr Robinson was freed from prison on bail after winning an appeal against a conviction for contempt of court, for which he was initially sentenced to 10 months. He will have to face a re-hearing for the allegation.
What happens next is predictable: Mr Robinson’s supporters will falsely suggest that he has been cleared and that the initial conviction was an attack on free speech. This is rubbish. Ironically, the ability of the press to explain why it is wrong is curtailed by the courts, which have ruled that we cannot detail the background to Mr Robinson’s arrest for fear of prejudicing a separate trial. This comes after the High Court ruled in Sir Cliff Richard’s case against the BBC, when it effectively declared it unlawful for media organisations to name anyone under investigation by the police – privileging privacy over free speech.
This sort of draconian action risks becoming a spectacular own goal on the part of the justice system. It makes the courts look anachronistic in an age when so much information – some of it wilfully inaccurate – can be sourced online, and it lets enemies of proper journalism accuse the press of being partners in an establishment cover-up. Nothing could be further from the truth: everything Mr Robinson campaigns on has been reported by journalists, and thus the courts have given him the oxygen of publicity he doesn’t deserve. The best way to expose the truth about this man is a public airing of all the facts – which reveal he is no friend to law and order, but someone who is accused, through his actions, of potentially undermining it.