Comments by "Michael RCH" (@michaelrch) on "Tommy Robinson is in prison and this is why" video.

To everyone saying that this is fake news, where is it factually incorrect? And please don’t answer by saying that no one talks about grooming gangs. That is whataboutism and not an answer to my question. I sympathise with a lot of what Tommy Robinson is worried about, but I will not put that above the importance of the rule of law. Contempt of Court is an ancient statute and exists for good reason. Is Tommy not guilty of his offence? If not, why not?
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Matthew Cunningham And yet he plead guilty to the offence. Either he had a very bad lawyer or he should be appealing.
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Emerald460 Gaming And yet he plead guilty. Did his barrister get it wrong? If he has grounds for appeal then why isn’t he appealing?
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Matthew Cunningham Either way, it probably does no good Robinson being in prison on balance, given the storm of uninformed conspiracy theories swirling around, and the fact that he is out of circulation and unable to more responsibly articulate some important political points. But the law is the law. Not properly enforcing the law would be a bigger cause for concern in the long term IMO. I am pretty sure Robinson himself feels frustrated and disappointed but I doubt he feels like this was an actual miscarriage of justice as such. Bottom line, it’s a shame he couldn’t wait for the trial to finish before saying his piece, but it’s not beyond possibility that he knew he would get a huge audience on the day but not after it, so he decided to rolled the dice...
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Michael Stewart What would have happened to a journalist in the same situation is pure speculation. They obey court restrictions on reporting. Robinson knew precisely what he was doing. He did it once before and was already convicted. Everything you have said really boils down to special pleading, Like I said, I am sympathetic to his concerns about conservative Islam and Islamism but he does go in for publicity stunts (like invading the offices of Quilliam for no good reason) and sometimes they backfire, as this one did. If he wants to stay out of prison, he should stop breaking the law over and over again.
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Michael Stewart I’ll believe when I see it. The judge who sentenced Robinson would have nothing to do with the appeal. That is the opposite of his the law works, for obvious reasons. I can’t imagine money could be a barrier. I am sure a freeTommy crowdfunding campaign would raise all the money for a top barrister in an hour.
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Michael Stewart The thing is that I broadly do agree with his agenda about dealing with Islamism. But he is also making some big mistakes in how he behaves. Although he was arrested for breach of the peace, he was convicted of contempt of court when it was found that he had been broadcasting to quarter of a million people. That is perfectly correct in my view. Any reporter would have been convicted for breaking the law of contempt of court in this way. It’s just that reporters tend not to break the law because they are not operating the way that Robinson does. If he was thinking of his family then he wouldn’t have risked arrest and conviction in this way. Remember, he committed the exact same offence last year and was convicted. He knew what he was doing, knew he had a suspended sentence and knew that a second conviction would land him in prison immediately. I’m sorry but while I think that it’s right to deal with Islamism and any bias in the system towards Muslims for fear of being labelled racist, I have no sympathy for Robinson’s actions here. After all, just like last year, had the defendants lawyers been able to allege a mistrial due to his actions, then the rapists in question would have stayed free for longer and the whole mess would have cost the taxpayer hundreds of thousands, all for nothing. Robinson could have just waited and publicised the case (and conviction of the gang) AFTER the trial had finished like the rest of the press.
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Michael Stewart If he had all these defences available to him, then why didn’t he use them? This case was subject to reporting restrictions - a tool that is used by the court in dozens of cases every year for many reasons - and he was breaking that explicit restriction. He was breaking the law. He is not a special case because you believe in his political project. The first duty on him was to obey the law, not deliberately and knowingly break it for what amounted to not much more than a publicity stunt.
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Michael Stewart Tbh I just wish Robinson would stop getting himself in trouble. When he does it only does two things. First it fuels conspiracy theories galore, which undermine trust in the rule of law. I find that very sinister. We don’t need to follow the US into a situation where half the voting public believe that the police and courts are politically corrupt. I really don’t that that is true at all and I don’t think that spreading that idea is helpful. Yes, I know that the police and social services were overly sensitive to being accused of being racist and so left a lot of people at risk for a long time, and that is awful. And yes, Robinson did good work exposing that. Well done to him. But that is VERY different to making claims that the government is actually imprisoning people without good reason. That is tantamount to an accusation of a police state and that is, to me, both ludicrous and inflammatory. But just look at Katie Hopkins et al making exactly that accusation on all the media available. That is deeply de-stabilising for the rule of law. Second, if he wasn’t in prison he could actually be out making the case for his project and spreading awareness of his concerns about conservative Islam and Islamism.
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And third! It makes people like me who want to support the message that Robinson is trying to get out there but want no connection to the far right have to spend time dealing with the fall out because Robinson tarnishes the position of moderates who try to argue against large scale Muslim immigration or lack of integration of Muslims into society. When trying to make a point of view win it’s very hard to do that across a broad swathe of society when one of the poster boys for the movement keeps ending up in prison, then supported most visibly by far right extremists. I am not saying they are his only supporters - just the most visible ones that seem to get on the news. This doesn’t help...
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Ilikepyro Well that just makes him a dishonest actor and even more sinister. The way that this is being reported by the right wing media is that it was a politically motivated jailing. If that was his intention then it’s effectively anarchism with a desire to foment something very ugly. It’s a move to undermine the rule of law and unfairly de-legitimise the democratically elected government. That is wholly unjustifiable and harmful to our democracy. I think the government is useless but the remedy to that is voting in a better one at the next election, not a revolution in the streets. Resorting to mob rule and political violence are the beginning of fascism and autocracy and that is the direction that these actions lead. Impatience for change is no excuse.
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Ilikepyro Also, I think this idea that prison will be dangerous for him is nonsense. He will be the best protected prisoner in there. Every white working class man, and other sympathisers, will be at his side protecting him.
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