New Delhi: Some see him as a far-Right demagogue, others a free speech crusader. Love him or loathe him, either way, nobody can ignore Tommy Robinson, the man at the centre of one of the largest anti-immigration rallies Britain has seen in years.
Over 100,000 people carrying flags of the United Kingdom and England marched through central London in the “Unite the Kingdom” anti-immigration rally organised by the anti-Islamist and anti-immigration activist Saturday. Police said at least 26 officers were injured while policing the protest and four suffered serious injuries when the protestors threw bottles and other objects at the police.
Robinson, born Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, took the stage at the rally, saying, “Look around you. Feel your strength. You are part of a tidal wave of patriotism that’s sweeping across this country.”
“This is the biggest demonstration in Britain’s history… We rode the storm. We weathered the storm. And today we are the storm,” he added.
The Right-wing activist then played a video that included images of convicted members of a grooming gang, followed by a video of a white woman crying, a tactic he has used in the past to link immigration with sexual exploitation. Tech giant Elon Musk also joined the protest virtually, speaking to protestors about “uncontrolled migration” via live video chat.
Robinson—who calls himself “a journalist, activist and public figure fighting for the forgotten people of the UK” in his YouTube channel @TommyRobinsonOnline—first shot to prominence in 2009 when he helped found the far-Right English Defence League (EDL) in his hometown of Luton. The EDL is known for its criticism of Islam and rejection of the UK’s immigration laws.
Though seen as a polarising figure, Robinson’s ability to rally tens of thousands of people underscores his influence among some sections of the British public. He has 1.6 million followers on X and 467,000 YouTube subscribers.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned the Robinson-led “Unite the Kingdom” demonstration, saying it sent a “shiver” through the UK. In an interview with Channel 4 News Monday, Starmer described the demonstration as “plastic patriotism”, adding that it had been more than “just very bad behaviour”. He said: “It sent a shiver through so many of our communities who now feel more scared than they did before. I understand that.”
Less than a week before the protest, Robinson reiterated his views on Muslims and immigration in an interview with Brian Rose’s “London Real – Transform Yourself”.
In the interview, he said Islam is “terrorising the country” and warned “the future vote bank is the Muslim community”.
“Who do you appease for the vote? You appease them. We don’t care about them anymore,” he added. “Go find me any Muslim with a non-Muslim. You’re not going to … You might find them working together, but as soon and work finishes, just like when school finishes, it’s the Muslims and it’s the non-Muslims. You’ll find whites with blacks, well integrated, well assimilated.”
Robinson has also been vocal in his criticism of “grooming gangs”, pointing to immigration as the root cause of the problem. “Grooming gangs” are used to describe groups of men who target vulnerable girls for sexual abuse, often over extended periods of time.
“When you look at the grooming gangs, the scandal across every town and city was covered up, it was hidden successfully by the government, even by the royals they knew. They all knew. The leaders of our country knew. The police force knew in every town and city. They knew and they actually conspired to keep it hidden because it’s not a convenient truth for them—because what it does is it highlights their own policy flaws,” Robinson said in the interview with Brian Rose.
In January 2022, Robinson created a documentary series called “The Rape of Britain” on the alleged sexual grooming of young girls in Britain. About 1,500 people attended the screening for the first documentary, and he followed up with four more episodes.
Reports of young girls being groomed by gangs of men, in some cases of Pakistani descent, first surfaced in 2002 after Ann Cryer, a Labour MP at the time, warned that it was taking hold in her Keighley area in West Yorkshire.
In January, the Starmer government asked Baroness Louise Casey to carry out an audit on the nature and scale of group-based child sexual abuse. A government report published in June, which focused on “grooming gangs”, identified an institutional failure to protect children and teenage girls from rape, exploitation and serious violence. It also identified clear evidence of “over-representation among suspects of Asian and Pakistani-heritage men”. In June, Starmer announced a full inquiry into “grooming gangs” based on the findings of the audit by baroness Louise Casey, who is a member of the House of Lords.
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Tommy Robinson’s run-ins with the law
Over the years, Tommy Robinson has had several run-ins with the law. This includes convictions for violent acts, financial and immigration fraud, cocaine possession with intent to supply and public order offences.
On 27 May, he was released after serving seven months in prison. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison last October after he admitted to contempt of court during a libel case involving a Syrian refugee schoolboy, Jamal Hijazi. He was set for early release after the High Court reduced his sentence. The judge stated that there was an “absence of contrition or remorse” from Yaxley-Lennon but added, “He has given an assurance that he will comply with the injunction in the future, that he has no intention of breaching it again, and that he is aware of the consequences of what would happen if he breached the injunction again.”
A video that went viral in the UK in October 2018 showed 15-year-old Jamal being attacked by another student at a school in Almondsbury, Yorkshire, in northern England. Reacting to it, Robinson shared footage on his Facebook page, alleging that Jamal had threatened to stab a boy at school and assaulted “young English girls”. Jamal and his family received death threats as a result of these videos, which were viewed by around one million people.
In 2021, Robinson was forced to pay 100,000 pounds (about Rs 1.2 crore) in damages after the High Court found that he had defamed Hijazi. Additionally, the judge issued an order that barred him from making the same accusations again.
But in February 2023, Robinson started to reiterate the allegations and created a documentary that he shared on his X account, claiming that the state had “silenced” him. He screened this documentary for audiences in London’s Trafalgar Square in July 2024.
His documentary, Silenced, has 146.2 million views on X. Elon Musk is among the roughly 100,000 people who retweeted it. In 2018, Robinson was also banned from X, formerly Twitter. But when Musk acquired the platform in 2018, he was permitted to use it again.
He has previously served at least three different custodial sentences—in 2005 for assault, in 2012 for using false travel documents to travel to the US illegally, and in 2014 for conspiracy to commit mortgage fraud.
Kasturi Walimbe is an alum of ThePrint School of Journalism, currently interning with ThePrint.
(Edited by Sugita Katyal)
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