RICHARD PENDLEBURY Tommy Robinson becomes global celebrity

Tommy Robinson is back in jail. Perversely, for him this is a kind of triumph. 

Until his incarceration for contempt of court last week, this football hooligan turned anti-Muslim rabble-rouser and founder of the far Right English Defence League had been fading into an angry obscurity.

When Twitter banned him earlier this year for apparently breaching its ‘hateful conduct’ policy, he had ranted that the Establishment was out to silence him. Yet few took any notice. That has changed with his imprisonment.

Today, a dubious alliance of individuals and interest groups from across the globe, many of whom had not heard of Robinson before Tuesday, consider him to be a ‘martyr’, a ‘hero’ and a ‘political prisoner’.

The Twitter hashtag FreeTommyRobinson has gone viral courtesy of the far Right’s not insubstantial online community, and messages of support for the father of three from Luton have been posted on social media by such figures as President Donald Trump’s eldest son, the disgraced American comedienne Roseanne Barr, Meghan Markle’s sister Samantha and even an adviser to the Israeli prime minister.

More than 500,000 people have signed an online petition demanding his release from jail and hundreds of pro-Robinson protesters marched on Downing Street last weekend. 

Yesterday, his supporters gathered again in Leeds where he committed the offence. Another ‘colossal’ march is planned for June 9.

Hundreds of pro-Robinson protesters marched on Downing Street last weekend. Others marched in Leeds today (pictured)

The abiding narrative from his supporters is a classic conspiracy theory: that his imprisonment is part of that Establishment plot.

They claim he was jailed after a politically motivated trial expedited at record speed. His conviction, they add, was kept ‘secret’ by the State until a reporting ban was overturned.

The intention is not just to silence him, they say — but to silence him for ever: he will likely be murdered behind bars by Islamist extremists while the prison authorities turn a blind eye; Britain has become a police state; etcetera, etcetera.

The truth is rather more mundane.

Robinson, 35, already has criminal convictions for assault, drug possession, passport offences and more recently, mortgage fraud.

On this occasion it was his transgression of the Contempt of Court Act 1981 which landed him in jail.

As we shall see in more detail later, he was jailed for potentially prejudicing a case in Leeds Crown Court after filming both himself and people involved in the trial outside the court while it was taking place. 

The footage was streamed live on his Facebook page.

The judge’s decision to apply reporting restrictions on his conviction — restrictions which were challenged by media outlets and have now been lifted — led many of his new idolisers to claim that he is being treated as a ‘special case’. 

And this has been enough to turn him into the far Right’s hottest cause celebre in years.

You have only to look at social media to see that. Much of the support comes from America, where the so-called alt-Right, members of the gun lobby and white supremacists, are trying to turn Robinson into their equivalent of Nelson Mandela in his prison cell on Robben Island.

Leading the way was Donald Trump Junior, who likened Robinson’s jailing to the British government oppressions which led to the American revolution of 1776. 

‘Don’t let America follow in those footsteps,’ he urged his 2.84 million followers.

TV’s Roseanne Barr felt the same. ‘He was just arrested — which is a death sentence — please get involved!’ she tweeted ludicrously last Saturday. 

Ms Barr has, of course, had a rather eventful week herself after she wrote on social media two days later that a black former adviser to President Barack Obama looked as if ‘muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby’.

The Twitter hashtag FreeTommyRobinson has gone viral courtesy of the far Right’s not insubstantial online community (protester pictured in Leeds) 

The ABC network promptly cancelled her top-rated TV sitcom. Barr blamed her comment on her sleeping pills (among other things).

Meanwhile, far Right Canadian activist Lauren Southern let rip with a 12-minute rant against Robinson’s conviction on her YouTube channel, which has half a million followers.

‘How do you immediately get sentenced to 13 months in prison over a minor arrest if it’s not political?’ she raged. ‘I’m living in a world where my friends are being arrested at every turn because of their political opinions.

‘What kind of dystopian f***ed up ‘progressive’ future is this?’

It should be noted in passing that Miss Southern was barred from entering the UK in March on the grounds of her distribution of racist material in Mr Robinson’s Bedfordshire home town during a previous visit. 

Her leaflets said ‘Allah is a gay god’. She claimed the provocation was a ‘social experiment’.

A more practical suggestion of help for Robinson came from a German anti-immigrant MP, Petr Bystron, who has offered him political asylum in Germany.

‘I would be willing to fly to the UK and have you sign the asylum papers in Hull Prison if you so wish,’ he added in his letter.

A less expected contribution came from Hananya Naftali, who is said to be the social media adviser to Right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. 

Hundreds of protesters shut down Whitehall last weekend as they chanted for his release 

He tweeted, and later deleted: ‘Free Tommy Robinson! He has done nothing wrong and it is his right to express his freedom of speech.’

These were just the more notable comments among many thousands.

In the U.S., gun-owners are tweeting that his case is why they defend their right to carry assault rifles. Many of these tweets are simply howls of hate.

However, few of these people seem willing to see through the fog of their odious bigotry to understand the real reason why Robinson was jailed. 

Instead, they see the case as the political persecution of a man who once likened Muslim babies to time-bombs and, in 2011, threatened the entire Muslim community with EDL retaliation in the event of an Islamist attack.

So who is Tommy Robinson?

His real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon and he was born to an English father and Irish-immigrant mother and grew up in Luton where Muslims make up 25 per cent of the population.

He says he was always aware of tensions between the different communities.

In 2004, he joined the deeply racist British National Party. The same year he was jailed for 12 months for actual bodily harm after punching and kicking an off-duty policeman during a domestic incident. He duly lost his job as an aircraft engineer and retrained as a carpenter.

Today his supporters gathered again in Leeds  (pictured) where he committed the offence. Another ‘colossal’ march is planned for June 9

His rise to national notoriety came as a result of a small demonstration in 2009 in which Islamist protesters shouted ‘terrorists’ and held placards saying ‘Anglian soldiers go to hell’ and ‘butchers of Basra’ as soldiers from the 2nd Battalion The Royal Anglian Regiment paraded through Luton town centre after returning from Afghanistan.

Robinson and other local white football fans led a backlash against the protesters.

So it was the English Defence League came into being, with Robinson, then 26, as its leader. 

He was first mentioned by name in the national press the following year when the EDL supported a demonstration against a new mosque in Harrow, north west London.

Soon, the EDL would have so-called ‘divisions’ linked to other football supporters’ groups across the country.

The attitude was aggressive, the rhetoric profoundly anti-Muslim and often overtly racist. EDL marches usually ended in violence.

Robinson said he hoped that merely the idea that the EDL might visit a town would be enough to correct multicultural backsliding by local authorities.

Then, in 2013, he suddenly quit the EDL. This led to a strange interlude.

A Tommy Robinson supporter is pictured scaling the gates of Downing Street in central London last weekend 

Robinson stepped down under the apparent auspices of the anti-radicalisation charity the Quilliam Foundation, which was run by a former Islamic extremist.

Robinson told a press conference he left the EDL because of his disenchantment with neo-Nazi infiltration. He wanted to bring harmony rather than hate.

But the relationship with Quilliam fell apart and trouble soon followed him again as his criminal record grew.

Having already been convicted of football hooliganism-related affray, in 2013 he was jailed for attempting to use someone else’s passport to travel to the U.S to meet supporters. The next year, he was again imprisoned, for 18 months for a £160,000 mortgage fraud. Last year, he was filmed brawling at Royal Ascot.

Since leaving the EDL, he has returned to anti-Muslim activism.

His Facebook account has 850,000 followers. He has tried, unsuccessfully, to establish a UK branch of the German anti-immigrant movement Pegida.

Robinson’s path to his latest stretch in jail began in May last year when he turned up outside Canterbury Crown Court with a cameraman from a far-Right Canadian media organisation called Rebel Media.

They claimed they wanted to speak to defendants at an ongoing trial and Robinson was arrested for contempt of court. 

The Contempt of Court Act 1981 is a cornerstone of British justice, designed to ensure defendants receive a fair trial, and breaches can be punishable by up to two years in jail. 

It applies to active court cases and restricts the publication of material that might prejudice a jury when it considers its verdict. 

A Make Britain Great Again sign is waved at the free Tommy Robinson protest in London 

Breaches of these restrictions are considered ‘contempt’ and serious ones can cause trials to collapse, with a cost of hundreds of thousands of pounds to the taxpayer.

For the Canterbury offence, Robinson was given a three-month prison sentence suspended for 18 months and warned that he faced jail if he repeated his actions. 

He did so outside Leeds Crown Court last week when he streamed to his Facebook account the footage of himself and people involved in the trial — which is subject to reporting restrictions so the Mail cannot explain details of the case.

The footage lasted around an hour and was watched 250,000 times within hours of it being put online.

Initially arrested outside the court for suspected breach of the peace, he was then charged with contempt of court and sentenced to ten months.

The suspended three months was also activated, to make his jail term 13 months in total.

Until his incarceration for contempt of court last week, this football hooligan turned anti-Muslim rabble-rouser and founder of the far Right English Defence League had been fading into an angry obscurity

The video footage was played to Judge Geoffrey Marson QC as Robinson, who pleaded guilty to contempt, sat in the dock.

The judge told him: ‘I respect everyone’s right to free speech. That’s one of the most important rights that we have. With those rights come responsibilities. The responsibility to exercise that freedom of speech within the law.

‘I am not sure you appreciate the potential consequence of what you have done.’

He added: ‘Not only was it a very long video, but I regard it as a serious aggravating feature that he was encouraging others to share it and it had been shared widely. That is the nature of the contempt.’

Judge Marson QC initially imposed reporting restrictions on Robinson’s conviction for fear that publicity would also carry the risk of seriously prejudicing the ongoing trial at Leeds Crown Court.

This was lifted on Tuesday after a media challenge, though only after media outlets outside the UK had reported Robinson’s jailing.

The reporting restriction had also effectively prevented the UK media from properly reporting the reasons for a march by Robinson supporters on Downing Street last weekend, demanding his release.

Robinson’s arrest and sentencing took place within a space of only five hours — a speed which has excited conspiracy theorists.

But it is not unusual in such contempt cases. Take, for example, that involving David Davies, 39, who was imprisoned last year for a similar offence.

Davies had broadcast live footage of a person giving evidence in a dangerous driving trial at Cardiff Crown Court using his mobile phone. 

He was arrested, and that same day the judge sentenced him to 28 days behind bars.

What now for Robinson? The fear is that he will capitalise on his new-found notoriety online, where he remains a dangerous influence. 

Just ask those worshippers who were outside Finsbury Park mosque in north London last year when Darren Osborne drove a van into them, killing one.

At Osborne’s trial, the court heard he spent hours online looking at Twitter and Facebook for racist material and followed the output of Tommy Robinson.

A suicide note, found in the van, parroted Robinson’s rhetoric.

Now that Tommy Robinson is trending again online, it is deeply worrying to think that other Darren Osbornes might be inspired by this malign individual thinking him to be an heroic victim of a criminal injustice.