John Surtees
FSB
This was a political trial, pure and simply a disgrace to whatever remains of British justice, now reduced to a tool of an oppressive government determined to silence dissent.
On 28 October a jury at Southwark Crown Court found Tommy Robinson guilty, by a 10 to two majority, of two counts of harassment causing fear of violence against Daily Mail journalists Andrew Young and Jacob Dirnhuber. The offences arose from his response in August 2024 to a MailOnline article that tracked him to a family holiday in Cyprus and wrongly accused him of “stoking race riots from his sunbed” amid the unrest that followed the Southport murders. He faces sentencing in December and a possible prison term.
The verdict is not justice. It is the latest chapter in a sustained campaign by the British state and its media allies to destroy a man whose only real crime is refusing to shut up about mass immigration, Islamist extremism, grooming gangs, and the two-tier policing that protects favoured groups while punishing native dissent.
The Daily Mail’s role was worse. They disclosed Tommy’s personal information without his consent, probably with the intention of exposing, harassing, intimidating, or endangering him. They published the location of Robinson’s family holiday, complete with details that put his children at risk in a climate of extreme tension. Online users quickly shared the hotel details. Robinson’s kids were scared. He reacted, as any father would. He contacted the journalists, posted about them, hired private investigators to locate addresses, and applied pressure to get a photograph of his ex-wife removed and to force accountability for endangering his family.
In a country where the police and every other organ of the state have repeatedly failed him and people like him, ignoring grooming gang scandals for years, looking the other way at parallel societies, and prioritising “community cohesion” over British children, what else was he supposed to do? Sit quietly while a national newspaper painted a target on his family’s back? He acted to protect himself and his own because he can expect no help from the authorities. That is the reality for anyone who challenges the official narrative.
Compare the standards. The Daily Mail’s disclosures and sensational framing during a national emergency gets a free pass. Robinson’s pushback gets criminalised as “bully-boy, intimidatory tactics.” Journalists are entitled to do their job without fear, yes. But newspapers are not entitled to recklessly endanger private citizens and then cry victim when the target fights back. If the roles were reversed, if a left-wing activist or favoured minority figure had been treated in the same way by a right-leaning outlet and responded with pressure, calls, and online exposure, the establishment would have framed it as legitimate accountability or even heroic resistance. No charges. No CPS Special Crime and Counter Terrorism Division involvement. No solemn lectures about “weaponising social media.” The double standard is palpable.
This case does not stand alone. Look at the long record of state action against Robinson. Assault convictions from his younger days and football-related disorder, fair enough, perhaps, but a false passport case when trying to enter the US, mortgage fraud, multiple contempt of court findings, including for live-streaming outside grooming trials where reporting restrictions protected the accused, and later for repeating claims after a libel loss involving a Syrian refugee and a stalking conviction. Time after time the machinery of the state has been mobilised against him.
Some of these involved genuine, but minor, wrongdoings that would ordinarily involve a slapped wrist or a fine. I mean, just recently a joke of a judge sentenced a man who had stabbed his girlfriend 10 times to community service. But not ‘far-right racist’ Robinson. No, for him there is only selective enforcement designed to bankrupt, imprison, deplatform, and exhaust a persistent critic of the corrupt British state.
Contempt prosecutions for exposing what the authorities preferred to keep quiet about organised sexual exploitation of white working-class girls by predominantly Pakistani Muslim networks were particularly revealing. When the state fails catastrophically and a citizen documents it, the citizen becomes the problem.
The pattern is clear: they are out to destroy him for his political views. Robinson founded the English Defence League in response to Islamist agitation in Luton. He has spent years highlighting the grooming scandals that official Britain minimised for fear of ‘racism.’ He has documented no-go areas, demographic change, and the consequences of mass low-skilled immigration. For this he is treated as a greater threat than the actual predators or the ideology that produces them. The establishment’s message is unmistakable: challenge the sacred cows of multiculturalism and you will be pursued relentlessly through the courts, the media, the banks, and the platforms. Ordinary criminals get soft treatment. Political heretics get the full works.
If a left-winger had done what Tommy did – or far worse – no case would have been brought. Imagine a prominent progressive activist responding to a hostile right-wing newspaper disclosing sensitive information about their family’s holiday location during a period of unrest with phone calls, social media posts identifying the reporters, and private investigators. The Guardian and BBC would call it ‘holding power to account.’ Politicians would defend free speech. The CPS would find no public interest in prosecution.
We have watched activists occupy streets, target journalists, set up opponents by publishing names and addresses, and intimidate speakers for years with minimal consequences when the cause is ‘progressive’. Two-tier justice is not a conspiracy theory: it is observable practice. Robinson’s politics place him outside the protected class, so the full weight of the law – and more – falls on him.
Compounding all this is the constant negative publicity. For years Robinson has been the designated national villain: ‘far-right,’ ‘extremist,’ ‘hate figure.’ Mainstream media, including the very outlets now claiming victimhood, have saturated the public with this framing. In that climate, the chances of a truly fair hearing in a British court becomes vanishingly unlikely. Juries are drawn from a population bombarded with one narrative. Prejudicial coverage is not a bug: it is a feature of the campaign. When the entire institutional culture treats a defendant as radioactive, the presumption of guilt is inevitable.
This is not the Britain of Magna Carta or the tradition of robust free speech that once allowed unpopular opinions to be aired without the state mobilising to crush the speaker. It is a state tyranny in which the boundaries of acceptable debate are policed by prosecutors, judges, and compliant media. Robinson is, perhaps, a crude, imperfect vehicle for these arguments. He is not a polished politician, and his background is rough working class, but none of that justifies turning criminal law into a political weapon. When the state decides certain viewpoints are too dangerous to tolerate, and uses harassment statutes, contempt powers, and selective prosecution to achieve what open censorship cannot, real justice is impossible and British courts now carry as much respect and credence as those in Stalin’s Soviet Union.
What can ordinary people do? First, refuse the narrative. Support independent platforms and journalists who still report the grooming scandals, demographic data, and policing disparities without euphemism. Donate to legal defence funds if you can: sustained lawfare is expensive by design. Attend peaceful protests and make clear that two-tier justice is noticed and rejected. Speak plainly in private and public: the emperor has no clothes on immigration, integration, and the preferential treatment of certain communities. Vote for candidates and parties that prioritise the interests of the existing population over abstract internationalist dogma. And do not abandon the principle that a man is entitled to defend his family when the institutions that should protect him will not. Silence and compliance only encourage the next case. Oh – and boycott the Daily Mail.
Tommy Robinson’s conviction will be celebrated by those who equate dissent with danger. It should alarm anyone, left, centre or right, who values a justice system that is blind to politics. A country that jails its critics while shielding its failures is preparing the ground for deeper division and more persecution. The verdict is in. The disgrace is permanent until the public rejects the machinery that produced it.
This article was originally published by the Free Speech Backlash.
