Tommy at The Old Bailey

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Here’s Tommy Robinson’s speech before going into court. Notice the size of the crowd!

From Canadian columnist, Andrew Lawton, here’s his experience with the scurrilous British press:

I Overheard How Reporters Talk About Tommy Robinson

Before he walked into the Old Bailey for what was supposed to be a contempt of court hearing, Tommy Robinson said the media were the “enemy of the people.”

It was a line that got uproarious applause from the growing crowd of supporters.

I was inside at the time, with a front row seat to how some members of the press talk about Robinson when they think everyone agrees with them.

To be clear, and as I wrote Sunday, my working visit to the United Kingdom this week is out of a commitment to facts and fairness, not a support for Tommy Robinson. That open-mindedness wasn’t shared by at least two members of the media covering the case.

While I was preparing my own coverage before the judge’s arrival, two reporters were conversing behind me.

Both reporters—a man and a woman—were from the Press Association (PA), a British wire service. They aren’t columnists, but news reporters whose work fills the pages of publications across the United Kingdom.

I would normally not share details of private conservations—especially those in which I was not a part. In this case, the conversation was taking place surrounded by people, with no attempt to be discreet. The reporters just assumed everyone around them shared their worldview.

They mocked and chuckled at the “enemy of the people” comment, even asking a couple of arriving journalists from other outlets if they knew they were enemies of Britons.

Over the next few minutes, the bias became even more apparent.

The male reporter had seen commentator Ezra Levant outside and remarked to his colleague that Levant had apparently broken an unspecified law.

“He needs to be arrested,” he said in a markedly non-jovial tone. “He’s whipped up hate.”

The reporter didn’t extrapolate and his colleague didn’t respond.

Moments later, the female reporter said there was no ambiguity about Robinson’s guilt.

“He is in contempt of court,” she said. “There’s not really any doubt.”

Of course, when the presiding judge made the decision to refer the case to the attorney general, it was because he thought there actually was enough doubt and complexity to warrant a fuller hearing.

As the two reporters discussed the size of the crowd outside, they openly agreed to downplay it.

One of the reporters had been told by a member of the law enforcement team that there were at that point 1,500 people outside.

After some banter, the PA reporters agreed they would say “hundreds.” The reason was to not “give it credit,” the female said.

These quotes are direct and were transcribed either while they were being uttered or seconds later. They also didn’t come to be secondhand—I heard them myself.

A Press Association spokesperson said they are “inaccurate” and “misheard”.

“The Press Association is held to the highest standards on all aspects of its journalism by customers across the UK and the world. Fairness and accuracy are the cornerstones of PA reporting, and our coverage of the Tommy Robinson case today is another example of these standards,” it said. “We decline to comment further on inaccurate and misleading accusations based on fragments of misheard, private conversations.”

Members of the media aren’t allowed to record court proceedings, so all I have to go on is my word. But a recording does exist. The courtroom’s official recording device had been turned on, so I will be working to get a copy of that audio.

There was a lot of hostility towards the media at the rally. One man, thinking I was a mainstream media reporter, dumped a bottle of water on me (and my laptop bag) while calling me “scum.” There’s no excuse for that conduct, regardless of the intended target.

When I was filming the rally after the court appearance, one of the speakers (with whom I had shared my Press Association story) handed me the microphone and asked me to share it with the crowd.

Having never turned down a microphone in my life, I read the quotes to the attendees, who chanted about their disgust with the media. Some were downright nasty. While I understand the frustration, I don’t like painting an industry with one brush. Those who are letting their agendas get in the way of their coverage need to do better.

As a columnist, bias doesn’t faze me. Bias masquerading as journalism does.

Two Canadians, Lawson and Levant, have given us some clear windows into Tommy’s work and to the animus arrayed against him. You can’t publish venues like Levant’s Tommy Trial Reports in Britain. Sad…

17 thoughts on “Tommy at The Old Bailey”

  1. “I stand here elated, jubilant outside this court..”

    Tommy’s oratory just keeps getting better. How many British politicians could have pulled a passionate devoted crowd of that number? Certainly not P.M. May. I do hope Tommy aligns himself with UKIP and takes his fight to the political arena. Tommy possesses a rare commodity in politics. He is a man of principle, he’s honest and trust worthy. He’s not a fake. He says what he means and means what he says. It’s obvious he’s not in this for the money or power.
    He’s exactly the sort of leader people rally to. And to the Elite class, he probably is the most dangerous man in Britain.

  2. Tommy Robinson said the media were the “enemy of the people.”

    One of the enemies of the people. Politicians and academics (especially economists) are also enemies of the people. Or rather, enemies of white people, especially genuinely Christian ones. Why this is so, when politicians, academics and the media are so heavily white themselves, is one of the great mysteries of the universe.

    • No mystery when the schools teach liberal dogma rather than facts, conformity rather than thinking for oneself.

      • It remains a mystery, because why do the schools teach that when the educational establishment and philosophiariat are so heavily white?

        I should have mentioned bankers as another enemy of the people. Heavily white again, of course.

  3. Why shouldn’t the British people be furious? Or, people in all Western countries. For many decades the MSM has been complicit, cheerleaders even, in the civilizational assault on Western civilized life. In all domestic issues, including the importation of the Third World, they have shown but utter indifference to the violence and harm done to the lives of the average person. One German journalist admitted as much at Chemnitz. For over 50 years the news media had the choice to either stand with those oppressing the people or with us. They have chosen the former. They are reaping what they sow, and rightly sow. This is the fate of collaborators.

  4. From above:

    “…These quotes are direct and were transcribed either while they were being uttered or seconds later. They also didn’t come to be secondhand—I heard them myself.

    A Press Association spokesperson said they are “inaccurate” and “misheard”….”

    Next time, may I suggest the application of Project Veritas techniques to capture these quotes on video so subsequent denials will self-incriminate.

    • Andrew Lawton overheard these comments as he sat in the courtroom awaiting the judge’s arrival. The two reporters were sitting behind him. I’m fairly certain that video and audio recordings were banned. Andrew immediately noted their words into his smartphone instead.

    • It is illegal to record or video inside the court house, so the official recording is the only one that can be used.

  5. Islam abhors democracy. I sometimes wonder how much of the pushy, overblown liberalism of the past several decades was sparked and kindled by muslims as preparation for the low-intensity (but rising) inimical campaign we’ve seen more recently.

  7. The BBC website ignores the thousands of pro-TR supporters and interviews our old friends from Hate not Hope (sic) who accuse TR of ‘dividing the country’ – NO, the county is being divided by those who excuse the muslim sexual predators; these perverts are the criminals, these and those who aid and abet them, and those who would create one law for the white man, and another, more lenient law, for the brown man and [sodomizers] of the little children who are their sad victims.

    But I expect the ‘white supremacist’ 10-year-old girls ‘forced’ the poor oppressed Pakistanis to become pedophiles, so it is the girls’ own faults; they should have been at home playing with dolls and not hanging around at school where they could pick up ‘innocent’ Asians as they went out the gates.

    Hope not Hate is so up their own rear ends that they cannot see past their own utopian fantasy – diversity never excuses perversity.

  8. These reporters live in a liberal culture and cannot get promoted if they do not breath it as well. To ask someone to have the courage to give up their future for truth borders on the impossible – ask Tommy Robinson.

  9. “… a London judge referred the case to the UK Attorney General, saying it was too complex an issue for him to decide on his own.”
    Too complex?
    Really?
    The Court never defined what allegedly had been in contempt of Court.
    The Court did not observe its own rules re publication of restrictions.
    Very complex.

    • The British idea of “justice” seems built on the Whim Theory…”it is what we say it is. Shut up.” At least it seems so to an outsider.

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