Tommy Robinson, jailed for 13 months in May 2023 after a Leeds court reviewed just seven minutes of video, claims his imprisonment stems from politically weaponized contempt charges—while journalists face no consequences for breaching reporting restrictions. Held in HMP Onley’s solitary "block" under threats from Muslim gangs (including ISIS-linked Safeful Islam), he lost three stone from starvation and was denied medical care despite blood tests. Despite tens of thousands marching in support and letters from diverse groups—even Muslims—his retrial looms on September 27th, with plans to expose alleged systemic failures in child abuse, police corruption, and media bias. Undeterred, he vows to continue his fight, calling for donations at savetommy.com to fund legal costs and family support. [Automatically generated summary]
Can you explain the person suspicion on the breach of the peace?
Tommy, we all saw you get in the back of that police car, that police truck.
What happened after that?
So everyone saw visibly I was arrested for breach of the peace.
What I find surprising is no one's ever mentioned breach of the peace.
No one's ever mentioned the fact that's what I was arrested for.
I was arrested for breach of the peace and I was driven to Leeds Ellen Road police station.
So a 10-minute drive from the court.
I got to the police station.
Now, anyone who's been arrested knows the first thing they do is they take you to the front desk where you're booked in for your crime.
You're asked if you want your solicitor and then you're put in a cell to wait for your interview.
This was different straight away.
I wasn't booked into the police station.
I was held in a side room at the police station for probably 40 minutes.
Which straight away I was thinking, the police station is not going to be busy.
It's in the morning.
And I was then taken, I got brought to the front desk and told I'm being moved to court.
I'm being taken straight to court.
Again, I asked for breach of the peace.
They said, no, for contempt of court.
So then they took me in a police wagon, in the back of the court, and I was taken to the courtroom.
What actually transpires is that, now, when people have to ask why this happened in this way, because if they'd have arrested me outside the court for contempt of court, and everyone would have known I'd been arrested for contempt of court, because my solicitor contacted the police station as soon as I've been arrested.
I said, I want a solicitor.
They spoke with my solicitor, and the police station told my solicitor, told my solicitor, Alison Gurden, that I was being released.
I wasn't released.
And then when I arrived at the court, I again asked my legal, multiple times.
I said, I want to speak with my solicitor.
I was told I couldn't speak with my solicitor.
Now, if my solicitor had known, if there wasn't a breach of the peace and I'd just been arrested for contempt of court, my solicitor would have known to send a representative to the court.
But they refused me point blank.
I was not allowed the opportunity to speak with my solicitor.
So why did they tell your solicitor that you had been released if you had not been released?
Did you ever walk free of the police station or the courthouse?
No, I was transported.
I was transported straight from the police station in the van, straight into court, straight into the cell, of court, and then refused the opportunity to speak with my lawyers and brought up before the judge.
I stood before the judge where he watched, I'd say, seven minutes of the video.
Remember, it was over an hour long.
He watched seven minutes.
I was then put back down in the cell.
Still, I was asking for my solicitor, my solicitor.
I was then a prepared lawyer that was at the court was then put before me where I told him again, I want to speak to my solicitor.
So this was a public defender?
A public defender who I asked again, can I speak to my solicitor?
And I asked him, what is it I've said?
What is it I've done?
I was not told.
He just said contempt of court.
I said, but what?
It's still sitting here now.
Bearing in mind I'm going to face another trial in a few weeks.
I've still not been told what I've said.
Can I take you back to when you first met the judge and he watched five or seven minutes of the video?
Did he ask you any questions or say anything or did you just sit there while he watched it?
I sat there while I watched it.
I made it clear that if there was a problem, I'd delete it.
If there's a problem with it, I would delete it instantly if there was a problem.
I think that lots of people have read so many things.
I remember getting to prison and reading in reports that I pled guilty.
I was never asked if I was guilty or not guilty.
I was never asked.
I was never told what crime I committed.
So bearing in mind, I know this.
I know what's happening in court.
I know that I'd asked, can it not get adjourned so that I can speak with a QC?
In fact, that come out in my appeal because in the defendant's notes, it said that I'd asked and said, I want to speak to a QC.
And I was sentenced to 13 months in prison.
So the first time you went before the judge and he reviewed the video, did you have your public defender lawyer with you then?
No, no, I had no one with me then.
So then when you were given this public defender, did you appear before the judge a second time?
I did.
We appeared before the judge a second time where the defence man said that basically if he went up and apologised, then that's it.
Anyway, we went through previous cases.
For example, so that people understand, like Jamie Bolger's killers live under a court order that no one can name them.
People have named them.
They've been before court.
No one's ever been put in prison.
Rod Liddle, Rod Liddell, who's a reporter for the Sunday Times, he breached a reporting restriction on the Stephen Lawrence murder trial.
He apparently nearly jeopardised the trial.
He was given a fine.
No one, if you go through the law, so as well, if you read the law on contempt of court, which was so disheartening for me, and so I'd been put in prison, I'm sat in prison.
I'm reading all of these newspaper reports.
Not one journalist, no one, fought to go and get the transcripts from that court to go and find out what was said in that court.
If anyone would have done that, they'd have instantly seen that I did not plead guilty, that I was not given a fair trial, that it was over in minutes.
They'd have seen all of this.
I thought you had pled guilty because I read that in so many newspapers.
I assumed you did either under bad advice or no advice.
Did the judge ask you whether or not you admitted or to anything?
Did he ask you any questions?
No, he didn't ask me any questions, no.
I did not open my mouth the whole time.
Did the judge particularise anything you said or did wrong?
Did he say you said this word or you did that thing?
Nothing actually.
No, everything I said outside court that day was already in the public domain.
I knew things.
I still know things about that case, about results of that case.
I still know lots of things that I've never mentioned because I was aware that you couldn't mention them.
But the judge, and then when the judge sentenced me, so he sentenced me apparently for breaching the reporting restriction.
But then in his words of what he sentenced me for, which come out in the High Court of Appeal, it was more to do with the fact that I was mentioning that they were Muslim.
And so it seemed that, and he talked about the risk of me prejudiced in the trial.
And bearing in mind, I would do nothing.
I wouldn't do nothing that I thought could jeopardise these trials.
It would go against everything I stand for and everything I want.
The trial had finished.
I stood outside court.
I made sure that I didn't video any members of the jury, because I know you can't, any members of the public.
Literally, the crime that I was sent to prison for was breaching a reporting restriction.
And two weeks after I was sent to prison, obviously I'm reading everything.
I read that the Scottish Telegraph newspaper breached two reporting restrictions a weeks after I went to jail.
Again, if we go to the laws, the law and the advisory to the government is that they should not send any, if anyone breaches a reporting restriction, it shouldn't even be the individual journalist who gets done.
It should be the company they work for.
And they strongly advise that all it should be is a fine.
Now, as everyone's seen, I was sent to prison.
Did your lawyer, the public defender who was assigned to you, did he indicate that he had any experience with contempt of court law?
Was he familiar with your legal history?
No, he just indicated that we don't want to upset the judge.
Did he ask for a delay of a week or two?
Did he ask for any time for you to prepare or for him to prepare?
No.
How long were you actually in the court for?
Ten minutes.
In fact, they were desperate to do it before lunch.
Lunch would have been at one o'clock.
They were desperate for lunch, but I was still arguing the point with everybody that I wanted to speak to my solicitors.
And so it went over lunch.
If not, I'd have been sent to prison before lunch, before one o'clock.
Then they broke for the hour lunch.
So when they broke for the hour lunch, then I was again saying, I just wanted to speak to my solicitor.
Did you ask the judge for a delay or for the ability to speak to your own lawyer?
No, I didn't open my mouth.
I didn't get a chance to speak.
But you asked the police?
I asked the police, I asked the court clerks, I asked the person who comes, I pressed the button on my cell, which is all documented.
We press the button and come to my cell.
I said, I need to speak to my solicitor.
I need to speak to my solicitor.
My solicitor that's just been put in front of me by the state, essentially, a solicitor that I trust, a solicitor that I know is going to work for my best interest.
That's who I want to speak to.
Did anyone else speak in your hearing?
Did any court police?
There was a picture circulating on the Internet of some people looking down from a brick building.
I don't know if that was the judge or court police or anything.
That was the judge and the police that arrested me.
So that was the judge.
When I was outside court, which I didn't, I wasn't aware of until I come out.
That was the judge watching down as, and then the police come down and arrested me.
Did they say anything in court?
No.
I was actually watching your Facebook live stream that day, May 25th, from Canada.
And I remember when you read the names of some of the accused men.
And I think you were reading them from a BBC website.
Is that correct?
I read them from a BBC website.
There's lots of...
So everything...
I just read out...
Did you tell that to the judge?
How could you reading something off a BBC website that was being published at the same time?
How could that be contempt of court?
This is the problem.
The judge hasn't told us what was contempt of court.
So he sentenced me to prison without needing to tell anyone.
In the training day we spent, in the training days we spent to understand contempt of court, which I didn't understand, is you're not allowed to stand on court.
I didn't understand at Canterbury.
You're not allowed to stand on the court property.
And so you didn't, that's contempt court.
You didn't in Leeds.
I didn't in Leeds.
I actually asked the police officer where's the land light?
And he agreed.
So I didn't in Leeds.
I also, every time you speak of an offence, you have to speak of an alleged offence.
No matter how much evidence there is, I knew those men were guilty as soon as I knew they did.
But you have to say alleged offence.
And you checked that box too.
I thought you'd been very careful.
I was very careful.
So you still don't know what they put you away for because the judge never said.
To this day, to this day that you don't know what you've said wrong?
No, I have no idea.
I have no idea.
I'm about to stand a trial again in a number of weeks.
Still, today, we have not been told what it is.
So I expect they'll throw it on us a week before maybe?
It was shocking.
I want to ask you one last thing about that court hearing because you say it was seven minutes.
That's incredible to me.
Given that your video itself was more than an hour.
I didn't even know.
I didn't watch the video.
I hadn't watched the video.
It would have been impossible.
It would have been impossible for the judge to have watched the video.
It takes an hour to watch the video.
And if it had watched the full video, it'd have seen all the steps and all the reasonable things I made and said, the different interactions I had with the public, I made sure that I stayed within the law on what I'd been taught was within the law.
When you were convicted, did the judge in any way indicate the difference between being a criminal convict, someone guilty of someone with a guilty mind who broke the law willingly, versus civil contempt.
Did the judge differentiate between the two in the sentence he issued?
No, the judge didn't mention.
So I was, in fact, myself.
So for contempt of court, you cannot be a criminal prisoner.
Okay, you're a civil prisoner.
What's the difference in how a criminal prisoner and a civil prisoner are treated?
So civil prisoners have more rights.
Civil prisoner have as many visits as you want.
So people can come in and visit you, your family, every day.
Every day.
Also, they're allowed to spend £50 per week buying food, buying toiletries, buying whatever they want off of the shopping system within the prison.
Also, so for my crime, for the crime of contempt of court, not even a crime though.
No, not even a crime.
You go to an open prison.
So you'd be in an open prison where you go home at weekends.
Yeah, it's a category D offense, a completely minimal, completely zero risk offense of contempt of court.
That's what the guidelines are.
That's what the criteria is.
That's how a prisoner should be held.
So a civil prisoner gets as many visits as he likes, gets to spend £50 a week on whatever...
You can buy food, shopping, and also...
And how far does £50 go in prison?
Is it cheap?
No, it goes quite well.
So the difference is when we can get to the difference.
So I was put into prison and I was held as a criminal prisoner.
Now, people may think that was a mistake.
I was held as a criminal prisoner, even though I can't possibly be held as a criminal prisoner because it's a civil crime.
Even though, which we have all the evidence of this, my solicitors made the prisoner aware instantly he's being wrongly held.
If you're not, like, if you're holding him as a criminal prisoner, with, because I was only allowed to spend £12 a week.
And we'll get why that's important in a minute, why spending money was important in your case.
But why don't we pick up from when the judge issued the sentence?
13 months.
Were you shocked?
Of course, I was gobsmacked.
I was gobsmacked.
But I was gobsmacked, but at the same time, for what has happened over the past 10 years with myself, it's not, I know, I know.
And if even if in the most recent demonstration when we had a day for freedom in London, I was saying, and I kept saying to everyone, I wonder what they're going to do next to try and stop.
Because anyone can see the momentum building.
The public are not listening anymore.
They're not buying the media spin on things.
They're seeing the reality of the problems the country faces.
And the attempts to make me the most hated man in Britain have completely failed.
And I was worried.
I was very worried.
Sorted into Normal Location00:14:46
I've been very worried about what they're going to do next.
I'm very worried now about what they're going to do next.
This prison sentence, I land in HMP Hull.
Now, I was worried when I went to prison because I was in Leeds, so I thought I'd go to Bradford, one of the biggest Muslim populations of our country.
I thought I'd go to that prison.
I was put to hull because that prison was full, I believe.
I was taken to Hull.
And then I was put into normal location, which is what I want.
What I wanted, I wanted to be treated normally.
I was put to normal location where I spent two days.
And after two days, I was in the prisoner guards come to get me and said, You're being moved.
Now, I believe this at the time, Lord Malga, Lord, Lord Pearson had wrote a letter demanding my safety, which I was grateful for because I was on this induction wing.
Now, so that people understand when you get to prison, if you ask for protection, if you say, I'm scared, I need help, then you'll be housed with the paedophiles.
I'm never going to do that ever.
It's never, ever going to happen.
And they know that as well.
So I would never do that.
So, because I've done nothing to deserve that, and I'll end up hurting one of them.
So, that's never going to happen.
So, I was put into normal location.
Now, when I was on the wing, there were some Muslims there.
And I did sense that possibly that it could turn violent.
But there was, so people understand out of a wing of 100 prisoners, there were seven Muslims.
Seven percent of HMP Hull is Muslim.
Now, the prison themselves made the decision to put me in the hospital.
Every prison has a hospital, or this prison had a hospital.
They put me in hospital where there were no Muslims, and I was separated completely from the prison population.
When my family got finally in to see me after three weeks-three weeks, yeah, after three weeks was when my family got a visit booked.
Well, let me ask you about that.
So, so all in the course of a few hours, you were arrested, tried, convicted, sentenced, and shipped off to HMP Hull in what, five hours?
Five hours.
Well, it's less than that, because by the time they actually, yeah, it's less than when was the first time you talked to your wife.
So, they give you a pound phone credit when you get to jail.
So, I rang my wife at that point.
So, that night?
And I she must have been shocked.
First thing I asked her is, have you had enough yet?
And it took three weeks for her to be able to visit you.
It took three, and then they you have a visiting hall.
Now, the prison made the decision that it was not safe for me to have a visit in the visiting hall.
Probably right.
And they had, so I had a private visit.
And I had that was when I sent a letter out.
And so I got my visit, my family visited me on the Sunday.
On the Friday, I had my legal visit booked where my QC and my solicitor, Carson Kay, were due to see me.
So this is still at HMP Hull?
This is HMP Hull, and this is for the appeal.
Because obviously, bearing in mind, I know what's going on in court.
I've explained it to my solicitors.
My solicitors have then contacted the court for the transcripts from the court.
The court didn't give them the transcripts.
They give them half of the transcripts.
So my solicitors still were in a position where I hadn't met them personally.
I'd only spoke to them via the video because in the prison you have a video link so you can talk through the camera to your solicitor.
So I'd spoke to my solicitor.
I said, I want to appeal.
Obviously, I want to appeal all of this.
I can't believe what's happened.
So finally, the date set for me to sit down was I'd have been in jail a month.
And the date that I'd have been able, and the reason for them not being able to sit down was because the court had not given us all the information.
So then they would come in to see me on the Friday.
My family visited me on the Sunday.
Monday morning, whilst I'm at, I've been in five prisons before in previous years.
And Hull generally was a prison where the prison staff ruled the prison, not the prisoners, the prison staff.
And the staff were absolutely because I was isolated from the prison population, the prison staff would open my door for two hours a day and I would spend two hours a day interacting with them.
Now, bearing in my concern the whole time was how I spent my sentence in 2012 and the long-term effect that had on me.
You mean by being in solitary?
By being in solitary prison.
The psychological effect.
Is that what you mean?
The psychological effect, which you don't realize at the time.
I didn't realize at the time.
So you were in the hospital wing of HMP Hull, but you were there by yourself.
Yep.
And I was, I was, because they could section off the door at the other end to the other prisoners.
So I was allowed out for two hours a day where I interacted like we're talking now with the prison staff.
So no other prisoners but prison staff.
And they were friendly enough?
Absolutely brilliant.
Outstanding, actually.
Did you have a chance to do any exercise?
Yeah.
So every single morning, they'd open my door and there'd be a, in the hospital, there'd be a little room which would have a like a little mini gym.
So I'd be allowed to use that every morning.
And then they'd also, for an hour and a half a day, take me outside where I'd sit in a garden where they'd sit and have their break or I'd sit with the prison staff.
Again, I'd sit and socialize and talk to the prison staff, which ideally I'd have rather just been, because so that people understand as well.
I had a TV this whole time, yeah.
So that people understand the British prison system.
When you go to prison, every prisoner is given a TV.
Every prisoner, okay?
You have a TV in your cell.
Your cell door would open at approximately eight o'clock in the morning.
You'd get a job.
You'd go to work.
Your cell door would lock about six o'clock in the evening.
So you'd be out of your cell, you'd be working, you'd be interacting.
You'd have pool tables, snooker tables, football pitches, you play football.
That's the prison system.
Just to keep you in a routine, maybe give you some skills, earn some money.
So it's a regime.
So it's a regime.
Everyone has to have a prison regime.
That's your general regime.
My regime was very limited whilst I was in Hull, but I wasn't complaining.
Okay.
Because I was safe.
I was still interacting.
So I thought, I'll be all right here.
But you were the only civil prisoner in Hull, I bet.
Yeah, I was the only civil prisoner.
And Hull were made aware, because my solicitors made them aware, that actually you have to let me have a visit each day.
And actually, so you understand, £12 a week.
Now, it wasn't a problem at Hull, because at Hull, they'd take me out of my cell, I'd go to the canteen, and I'd see the prisoners who were serving the food, and you pick your food and they give you it.
So I'd see, I'd visually see my food.
So it was like a cafeteria.
And you take your trade, so they scoop the potatoes and they scoop things.
And then you put it into your cell.
So you would eat as much as you felt like and you would see the food right before your eyes.
Yeah, fine, yeah.
I'd see the food, so I knew nothing could be done to that food.
And I didn't have that worry.
And then an out of my £12 a week, actually, whilst I was in Hull, I'd spend £12 on the phone so I could keep in contact with my family.
So I could speak to my wife, my children.
And the reason we're talking about food and interaction with other prisoners and safety and money is because HMP Hull, which you say was passable, you were suddenly and without explanation moved.
Is that correct?
So as I say, my family saw me on the Sunday.
They went away from the meeting happy because I told them, I'm fine here.
You saw your kids for the first time then too?
Yeah, my QC is due to see me in my solicitor on the Friday.
And on the Monday, the day after my visit, they just come in first thing in the morning and said, get your stuff back, you're going.
Did they say where you're going to?
No, they wouldn't tell me.
So there was a big secret where they said, we're not allowed to say.
And then all the staff who had been holding me on the unit were all as surprised as me because they were like, they thought to have you in this prison and to have you safe and to have it calm and to have no problems.
That's a huge success.
Massive success for the prison system.
If the goal was the rule of law, the goal wasn't that safety.
The goal wasn't that, which was established.
So everything was going with obviously no complaint.
mean you didn't interact with anyone you were just I didn't put in a prison complaint I didn't I actually asked people publicly to stay away from the prison, to not protest the prison.
That I was being held in fair conditions.
So everything was fine.
I mean, because obviously the prisoner put in the position, the prison's governor is as well, which he made the decision to put me on the hospital wing.
And that's because he has a duty of care for myself.
That's probably a good decision, is what you're saying.
Yeah, yeah.
I'd say going by my previous prison sentences where I basically fought my way through them in different prisons.
Look, he'd done what he thought.
He'd done what would limit violence against me.
You shouldn't have been in there in the first place since you weren't a criminal prisoner.
But given that you were wrongly put in prison, that was as good as it was going to be.
So you can still be a civil prisoner held in prisons.
But what it means is, so you can be in there, but what it means is you have more rights.
Okay, so because you're not a criminal.
You meet your family on the Sunday.
In five days, you're about to meet your lawyers for the first time.
To go through, to go through our appeal, basically to get me out.
But instead, the day after you meet your family, you're told you're moved.
And just so you know, so my appointment's booked.
I've been given the appointment slip.
So the prisoner are aware that my QC and my defence lawyer are coming to see me on the Friday.
It's all booked in.
I previously spoke to them three times via a video in the prison.
I'm then moved to HMP Onley.
And anyone ever explained to you why?
No.
No.
Still, in fact, when I got to Onley, we'll go through what happened.
When I got to Onley and I'm asking the head governor of the prison, why have you took me here?
He said it's above my pay grade.
That's all the answers I got.
It's above my pay grade.
Do you believe him?
I believe that, yeah, I believe that.
It wouldn't have been his decision.
It's not his decision.
No, it's come from above them.
Like, so I've been moved to Onley, and the prison staff who dropped me there, they took me in a taxi.
So the prison staff who took me in a taxi, so they put you in a taxi handcuff to either one, and they sit.
And the prison staff, they're taking me there.
I'm saying, like, look, I know Onley Prison.
Only prison is a London catchment.
So everyone who goes to jail from London, we know the demographic of London.
Everyone who goes to jail from London, London has the biggest Muslim population of this country.
Everyone who goes to London to prison from London, Only is one of those catchment prisons.
So I didn't know the demographic facts at the time, but I knew it would be heavily populated with a Muslim population.
So I kept asking again, what's been sorted?
Has something been sorted?
And they said, it would have had to have been.
There's no way our governor could have agreed with that governor.
Yeah, that wouldn't be for them to decide.
No, they would have had to sort something out.
And this wouldn't have been for the judge back in Leeds to decide.
He wouldn't have out of his hands unless he sends you a prison.
This would be a decision made by the prison authority.
Prison authority and the head of the prison authority, which are politicians.
Yeah.
Essentially.
So basically, and bear in mind, we all know now what fuss had gone on outside of prison in the first three weeks of my prison sentence.
You're talking about the huge demonstrations, a free Tommy campaign.
So this was punishing you, or it looks like, at least, to punish you because there was grassroots support?
It looks.
Yeah, it looks like they weren't happy. with the fact that I would have been able to serve a fairly normal prison sentence.
So I was taken from one of the lowest Muslim population prisons in the UK and I was put in H ⁇ P only.
Only has the highest Muslim population of any CCAP prison in the UK.
Okay, so tell me what it was like going from Hull to Only.
So I get to reception of Only where you're assessed, where you have a talk.
I asked them, I guess you know who I am.
They said, yes, we do.
I said, okay.
So what's been sorted?
Has anything been sorted?
Where am I going in this prison?
And he goes, oh, you're going on to the induction wing.
I said, okay.
I was surprised.
I said, okay.
And then they sent the governor come in.
This was the number one governor.
That's what we would call a warden in North America.
The person in charge.
Yeah.
Person in charge come in.
I made him aware of my concerns at what I thought the prison system were doing.
And tell me what those concerns are.
My concerns were that I think they've intentionally taken me from a place of safety and they're now going to have me killed.
And what did he say?
He said, you're under the name Yakshley Lennon, not Tommy Robinson.
You'll be fine.
Oh my God.
Yeah, that's actually what we're dealing with.
No one will know who I am.
Oh my God.
Did he say it with a straight face?
No, no, he said it with a straight face.
But then it's like then he said, obviously you're aware.
And I said, I know the size of the Muslim population of this prison.
And he kept saying like his robot programmed spiel of we are a prison with a large diverse population.
I said, no, you're a prison with a large Muslim population.
It's not diverse, in fact.
You've got a large Muslim population and the diversity of the prison is not my problem.
I don't care if the prison was 100% black and you put me in there.
Prison Chaos: Muslim Populationispersions00:15:05
My problem is that you have a large Muslim population and statistics and facts show that a certain percentage of those people outside of prison.
If we look at outside of prison, 30% of British Muslims believe that someone, violence is acceptable to someone who's insulted the Prophet Muhammad.
30%.
You go in the prison system, the violent radicalized prison system with violent offenders, that's going to rise.
So then he said, well, what you need to do is you need to self-isolate.
So I've then said, well, I'm not going to self-isolate.
Now, what he wants me to do is willingly isolate myself.
So when they put me on the wing, willingly keep my door locked and say that I want to self-isolate.
I willingly want to be isolated.
I'm not going to do that because I know what six months of being isolated is going to do to me.
I'd rather.
And then he said his comments are, you'll be in danger, though, if you go out of your cell.
Because I said, I'm not going to self-isolate.
And he said, you'll be in danger.
I said, I'm in danger every time I walk out my front door.
I still walk out of it.
Now, I'm going to, you put me, I said, I'm going to walk straight out of that door.
And whatever, and I'm going to defend myself in any situation.
At which point he said, well, I'm going to put you down the block then.
I said, can I?
And I asked again, what risk assessment did you do before you brought me from the lowest Muslim population prison to the highest?
And why have you done this?
Then I'm taken straight down to the block, where again, so people are aware, I didn't ask for isolation.
I'm not asked to be segregated.
I was happy for them to open my door, okay?
Not happy in the sense that I probably would have been killed.
In fact, every member of the staff at the prison told me from that point on, you'd have got murdered, man.
If you'd have been out there, you'd have been killed.
So all of this, because of, it's 30.
So out of 100 prisoners on the wing, over 30, averaging 30, are Muslims.
Let me ask you just for a second about Muslim gangs in prison.
Many of the people who go into prison convert to become Muslim for protection.
Is that a fact?
Yes, these 30% statistics, 30% of Onli's Muslim, not including anyone that's converted while they're in there.
I spoke to a prisoner who was down the block who had been beaten, beaten so bad, boiling water put over him for two hours, beaten by Muslims in the prison because he was having bacon, because he had bacon on his left.
Where was the prison staff during this?
Turning a blind eye?
Only many prisons, as I said, Hull was a prison that was run by the staff on the in fact a government, a government investigation into Onli, not my, this is not me saying it.
Anyone can go and read this government report.
Said it's violently unsafe.
It's dangerous.
When we look at the radicalization within prisons, we know that Muslim gangs have taken over prisons.
This is not me saying it again.
These are government reports.
It sounds like they enforce halal pretty violently.
You'll stop ordering bacon.
Many prisons, to prevent this, have just took pork completely off the menus.
Most prisons now, you just don't get pork.
You're not allowed pork.
So Only still has pork as an option.
But obviously a lot of people, you've got to be pretty brave to order it.
Is there a rival gang to the Muslim gang?
No, no, no.
No, because the Muslim gang is so large.
Anyone who converts to Islam, that's why in the British prison system, so many sex offenders and things like this just convert because no one will give them violent attacks or hassle because they're part of the Muslim Brotherhood.
So if you're a Muslim, you're safe.
You see English lads, white English lads all converting.
The most weak and vulnerable people in our society who have usually been wronged their whole life, when you sit down and speak to most people in prison, if you went and stood outside the prison, get a prisoner coming out and ask them their life story, you'll see that they've been wronged.
They've been wronged in growing up.
They've been wronged by the system.
Whether they have been abused mentally or physically, sexually.
And then you have these people who have so much anger anyway at society at being let down, many of them.
When you hear, when you actually hear, because I've done it, each time I've gone to prison, I speak to people and see the opportunities they had were pretty low.
And then you then have an ideology that will take the anger and direct it and you'll become part.
These people haven't had a community, haven't had a belonging, haven't had a path.
Islam gives them all of that and very dangerously.
And that's why, and most of these people aren't converting.
I've had these arguments with many of them within the prison system.
They're converting to a gang.
They're not converting to a religion.
It's amazing that the governor of that prison is such a fool to think that you wouldn't be recognized.
But basically, when I go through this, they wanted me to self-isolate.
Or they wanted you to get killed.
To get killed, yeah.
What else transpired was that which I put this complaint in to the prison was that the Imam, so basically I got taken to the block of the prison.
The block is a punishment area of a prison.
It's where I spent five months in 2012 in different prisons.
Now the block is usually in the basement of a jail, usually, okay, underneath the prison.
Let me stop you there.
What are the other options?
You mentioned there's a hospital wing in Hull.
No, there's nothing in Only.
So it's what is there besides a block?
Nothing, just normal wings.
Got it.
Normal prison wings where you come out of your cell at 8 in the morning again, where you have a TV.
So you were, instead of the normal prison wing, you were put in the block, which is a heavier.
I was taken straight to the block where anyone who, if you stab someone in prison or you attack someone or you rob someone or you're violent to staff, you then get taken from your normal prison location and you're put in the block.
So that's not even regular criminals.
Those are criminals who then re-offend in prison.
So you're not even supposed to be treated like a criminal prisoner in the first place.
And now you're being treated as a criminal who is offended again.
You'll see it this time.
So we're not.
So bearing in mind, again, the thing that was frustrating me was I'd come from Hull where I was fine.
And here I am now.
And I'm taken down to the block of the prison.
And as I walked into the block, the other prisoners who, because nothing happens down there, you're locked up all day.
As soon as the noise comes, people are looking through the gaps in their doors or the gaps in their window to see who's being brought down, what's happened.
So I'm brought in and instantly, instantly, it erupts.
And I made all the prisoners aware of this anyway.
So I'm then put in my prison cell with a blue mat.
And again, I say, okay, so you're putting, you're making the decision, not me, you're making the decision that you're putting me down the block because you're saying I'm not safe.
Now, what's the symbolism of the blue mat?
What do you mean by that?
So you don't have a bed.
Is it like in prison cells?
You don't have a bed anyway, a normal bed.
You're in prison, yeah.
You have like a prison mattress.
But in in the in wait, and you also have a TV and you also have a wardrobe and you also have a table and you also have a chair.
You have all these things, yeah.
Now, down the block, you have nothing.
You just have a blue mat.
Because the people who are down there, it's basically a smash-proof room.
It doesn't have a normal toilet.
It doesn't have any, it does have, it has nothing that you can smash.
You can't break anything.
So just a blue mat.
And this is right away your first night in Onley.
You're being put into the block in a place where a violent murderer who killed someone else in prison in the yard.
This is the worst place.
This is the punishment.
This is the.
But then even the prisoners that do that, they're still only allowed to spend 14 to 28 days maximum down there.
And how long were you down there?
So in this case, a week, yeah.
So when I went in there, I went in and then one prisoner in the cell next door to me spent the entire night smashing and booting my wall through like he was going to come into my cell.
I reminded him that he's in prison and the prison walls probably dealt to deal with that.
And then, so I spend the first night down there.
The threats are instant.
There was a prisoner called Khan who shouted straight away, there's a price up for me to get me set.
They're all shouting and arguing amongst each other.
I'm then taken the next day.
I get 30 minutes exercise.
So that people understand, you have prison windows here, prison windows here.
Here's the entrance.
So I'm taken out of my cell, and for 30 minutes, I'm put in this cage.
I'm putting a cage for 30 minutes where I walk around the cage on my own with all the other prisoners who are in the block looking at the cage.
So hang on.
So this is not in a gym or a yard.
They've just made a little terrible trap for you.
There's a cage that, yeah, there's a cage which is where you walk around when you're down the block.
So it's just, so this is not a normal exercise facility.
No, no, no.
And you're on display for all the other prisoners, is that right?
You're on display for the other prisoners who are down the block.
So this is inside the prison.
Yep.
It's basically ringed by ringed by a big, huge fence.
So it's like the Thunderdome in Mac Max.
You're in the center of it.
And bearing in mind all of the shouting, all of the abuse, all the threats, which look, I'm used to, yeah, I'm used to this.
You surely can't be used to 100 men screaming they're gonna murder you.
No.
Is that what, let me not assume, what were they saying?
So your husband.
It took them a few days to get my family's names.
But they knew you right away.
They knew me straight away.
So this fool governor, oh, you're Stephen Yaksley Lennon.
So the next day I sat before the governor and I said to him, Your staff will tell you how this place erupted last night when I come in it.
Your whole prison's erupted now because I'm in it and they're all going to kill me.
You would think he would want to get you out of that prison.
He said, he said, I don't think, because I said, is your intention?
Because one point I kept making was about a TV.
Now, the World Cup was on, started.
England were playing.
My rights as a civil prisoner should be a lot more, visits, money, etc.
Instead, I'm being held in this condition where I've got no TV, I've got nothing.
For 30 minutes a day, I'm put out and paraded around all of the other Muslim prisoners that are in there.
So the 30 minutes isn't even a relief.
It's 30 minutes of abuse.
Well, on that first day, which again, I'll send you this form.
I reacted and I say Islam is a cancer and I got arrested for it.
Hang on a second.
You got arrested for saying, for criticizing the religion of Islam.
I said, Islam is a cancer.
I actually said Islam is a cancer and I am the cure.
But I said that I've waited.
Is that a crime?
What were you arrested for?
No, I was arrested for religious and racial hatred.
And again, I've got this arrest for you.
Let me stop you there.
You said the very first night you were in there, your neighbour's trying to...
For the whole night, he smashed it, he's going to kill me.
A guy named Khan is saying there's a price on your head.
Were they arrested?
No, no one was arresting.
When you go into the cage and for a half hour being screamed out, tell me some of the things they said to you.
Everything you can think of.
Well, I want to hear it.
Just that I'll be killed, I'll be murdered, that my family will be murdered.
Just comments about my wife, comments about my family, about my daughters.
Any arrests?
No, no arrests, no.
Were they locked down?
Were they shut down?
No, when I got before the governor the next morning, so when I was called in to see the governor, I said, one man spent six hours the whole night last night.
And again, my stress with it was that I was fine in whole.
You've now purposely taken me to a prison where they can then use the threat against me to put me on solitary confinement and surrounded by people who want to do me harm.
So your comment about Islam being a cancer, not the most polite thing to say, but I would imagine it's a gentle reaction compared to the death threat.
It's a very calm reaction.
So that's what it was?
There was a reaction to them screaming at you.
There was a reaction to just...
So who called the guard on you?
Was it?
No, so a prison governor heard.
So basically I get this, which you can include this arrest form on the video.
I'll give you the wrist form.
It says, at this hours, and it gives the hours, I heard Yaxli Lennon shout, Islam is a cancer and I am the cure.
So the governor himself heard that?
One of the prison staff.
So the prison staff heard everything before that and was fine with that.
This really is the case.
Which was the point.
So I thought, okay, so now, if I don't want to face further arrests, I just have to remain silent whilst all of this is going on every day.
What happened after?
I mean, you're in prison already.
Were they going to do have a...
They give you extra days and things like that.
So I asked the governor, so when I went before the governor, I said, I want to speak to a solicitor about this.
And I asked the governor, are there blasphemy laws in this prison?
And what's going on with all the threats against me?
How come no one are those people being disciplined?
And I never heard another word after this.
Did he answer those questions?
No, he said, you've asked for your solicitor.
This will now be adjourned.
So it's like a little mini court here.
They adjourned it.
I then spent a week where after the first day, it was a Muslim who was bringing me my food.
So this is where it changes.
Yeah, you talked about in Hull, you would go cafeteria and you'd say, give me some of that and give me some of that.
And you could see the food was the same all the other prisoners had.
And then tell me what it was like in Online.
Well, I'm not allowed out in my cell.
So my food would be brought to me on a tray with my name on top of it.
There's your food.
And it would be prepared by Muslim prisoners.
A prisoner from the normal location would come down to the block to do the food.
It was a black lad who was a Muslim.
Within a day, I was, how's your dinner, Tommy?
How was your dinner?
The shouts coming from the other prisoners.
The shouts.
Why would they say that?
Because I know, especially in this prison as well, anything can get smuggled in.
Most prisons have mobile phones.
Weapons.
I saw through my window crack another prisoner being beaten with a bar like this big.
This sounds like a chaotic, wild place.
It doesn't sound like it's governed at all.
It's not governed.
The prisoner's government.
Law of the jungle.
So I watched as this was, so I know that now that I'm in this prison system, now that I'm in only and my food's being brought to my cell.
With your name on it.
And comments are being made already, laughing about, how was your dinner, Tommy?
Did you enjoy it?
Laughing.
So I tend to say, I'm not eating.
What did you think could be in it?
Well, if I was in...
You can get anything smuggled into prison.
Prison Food and Abuse00:05:39
Anything you want.
Poison?
Well, you can, yeah.
You get rat poison easily.
It's only that big.
Now, I'm not going to sit and keel over in my cell and give a victory away like that to people who despise me and want to kill me.
And again, I should have £50 a week to spend, but I've only got £12.
And so is that your own money or money?
No, no, your own money.
Money that people send in.
So when you say you should be allowed £50 a week to spend, you're only allowed £12.
That's even your own money.
And that would be to buy things from the prison.
From the prison shopping list.
So I bought, again, I've got the receipts of what I bought each time.
I bought five tins of tuna, an I love you card to send to my wife.
Two packs of space raiders and five pound phone credit.
So how much tuna, you said five tins of tuna is that per week?
Yeah, perfect.
So like one tin a day.
One tin a day.
Now that that's not a lot of energy.
That's not a lot of vitamins.
Did you have anything else?
No.
Water?
Fruit.
Fruit and water.
So for the first week, I didn't eat a single thing.
And the prison were aware I didn't eat a single thing.
Because I had no tuna.
Because to get your forms, you have to, to get your forms, to get your canteen, you're a week behind.
So I filled out a form when I got there.
And then a week later, my tins of tuna would come.
So for the first week, I ate not a single thing.
Did you have water?
I'd have water, yeah.
Did you have any fruit?
No.
Because you can buy fruit on your canteen as well.
And then you get fruit.
So basically, you fill out your week's food, and then you get it the next week.
So even the meals.
Did the prison say anything?
I mean, if you were on a hunger strike or if your health was in jeopardy, I mean, not eating for a day or so, but not eating for a week.
They took me after one week.
So one week, I haven't eaten.
The reason I haven't eaten because I can't eat anyway.
So they've took me to see the governor.
And every day I was putting in complaints saying, I believe, which people have read and they've been mocked.
I believe I'm being mentally tortured.
And the reason I'm saying that is because I know I should not be behind my door 23 and a half hours a day.
I know I should be getting a visit every day.
Know I should have £50 to spend.
I know I should be able to eat.
And I know I should not have been moved from a safe environment.
Again, journalists should be asking the question.
People should be asking the prison system should have to answer.
The government should have to answer.
Why was I moved from no problems and no risk into the biggest Muslim population of the country?
Why was I then put into a position where I was paraded for 30 minutes a day amongst them?
Why would I be spent non-stop threats?
Now, after one week, I had no TV.
So obviously, I'm just sitting in a cell listening to all this.
I can't comment because I've been arrested in the first week for commenting.
So I put in these complaints saying that this is this is, and again, you have to understand that my main concern here is I know I've got six and a half months to do, and I know what I was like last time.
So I know that if they're going to hold me in this room like this for the next six months, I'm not going to come out in a good place.
And I was really worried about that because interacting with my kids and family and everything was affected when I spent the last solitary confinement.
So all of these things were worrying to me.
I also knew that my appeal date, obviously I've missed, obviously they'd moved me.
So I hadn't had my meeting with my lawyer.
So how long was it before you even met your lawyers?
So then it wasn't.
So once they got me into HB Only, my lawyers were trying to make an appointment.
It was at least another week.
No, it was not.
So the appointment was meant to be Friday.
So it was another week before I got to see my lawyer.
That's a month.
Yeah, at least.
A month.
At least.
Now, I understood because I was there at your court of appeal hearing.
Your lawyers said that when they tried to meet you, the meetings were either cancelled or shrunk to less than an hour.
Is that true?
So they struggled to get, they were trying to get the meeting, which they weren't being responded to.
And then they finally got the meeting.
Now, when they had the meeting, it was a two-hour meeting to see my lawyer.
This is the first chance I've got to go through now to go through the case.
And I'm sitting there.
My meeting's meant to start at two o'clock, my legal meeting.
My lawyers got to court, got to the prison at one o'clock.
So they got there an hour early.
It's meant to start at two o'clock.
I got brought in at quarter past three.
And this is all, this is though you heard my QC in court.
My QC said he's never experienced this.
What is going on?
So what excuse was given?
They don't have to give an excuse.
The same way when my, so when I was held for those first seven days without a TV in solid down the block, my lawyers put in a letter saying, just to give you prior notice, we're putting in for a judicial review.
We're going to take you to court.
They have 28 days to respond to any letters.
So they don't have to even reply for 28 days.
And the TV thing, I saw the mainstream media was mocking that.
It's not because you want to watch sports necessarily.
It's because you're in a room with sensory deprivation.
Is that the reason you need a TV?
That's my guess.
My reason A was the World Cup was on.
Yeah.
So you do like the sports.
I love, I'd usually have been at the World Cup.
My also other reason was I just spent, I'd had a TV for the first number of weeks in Hull.
My main reason is that, look, lock yourself in a room with nothing at all.
Yeah, nothing at all.
Nothing.
Yeah.
Moved To Isolation00:09:02
Where you only come out of that room to walk around the cage and you're only for 30 minutes a day.
Do that for a week.
A day goes like a week.
You have no interaction or knowledge of what's going on really in the world.
You're not speaking to anyone.
You've got no one to talk to.
It would drive you mad.
So yeah, so I know that six months of this.
So in my complaints, I'm saying, look, give me a TV.
At least give me.
And here's the other.
And 750 prisoners are in Only prison.
And every other one of them has got a TV.
Including the murderers.
Unless you're down the block.
When you're down the block for punishment for 14 days, you don't have TV.
So what I kept saying is, you're punishing me now, which you are, because you can't keep me safe.
Now, I didn't bring myself to Only, you brought me here.
You must have done a risk assessment before you brought me here.
You must have.
And then I, so in the.
Have you ever been given access to your prison files?
No.
We're trying to get them.
No, we're still waiting.
We're trying to get my blood samples to show how I'm malnourished I was.
Let me ask you about that.
So you didn't need a bite for a week.
I didn't even buy a bite for a week.
And then the prison governor, the number one governor, asked to see me.
And when I saw him, he asked, if we move you cell, so from the block to a normal cell.
Now, in a normal cell, they're just better cells.
They're bigger.
You have a window that opens this much instead of not all.
In the block, the window doesn't open.
So you have a window that opens this much.
You have a bigger cell.
You have a more comfortable bed.
You have a desk.
Things like that.
So if we move you onto the wing, the normal wing, will you eat?
And then he said, you need to sign this disclaimer.
And he gave me a disclaimer which said I would be self-isolating.
So I then again said...
So he's extorting you for food.
You're seven days starving.
He says, I'll give you food if you sign away.
So then I said, I've told you already, I'm not self-isolating.
He then said, well, you'll stay down here.
I said, well, I'll stay down here then.
I'll stay down here then.
But obviously, you're aware, until I get my canteen, I can't eat anyway.
At which point then he changed the disclaimer and he rewrote it, where it basically said, we will move you to another cell, but you will not be allowed to integrate with any other prisoners due to the stability of the prison.
You will not be allowed to work.
Now, this is where it gets quite key.
When we're on about £12 a week, what I can spend to have enough to eat, if you can work in prison, like everyone works, because everyone gets a job, you can spend another £12 a week, right?
And then you can get enhanced, where you have good behavior and the prisoners see you behave well, you then become enhanced where you can spend another £12 a week.
So, but bearing in mind, I'm a civil prisoner, undisputable.
No one can say I'm not civil because the crime is civil.
I should have £50 a week.
I should be able to buy food.
I wasn't.
I was then, once I was moved to the block, once I was moved from the block, people were saying, oh, you wasn't on solitary confinement.
I was then moved to another cell where I was not allowed out of that cell once.
The condition that I had to sign, if I wanted to be moved, was that they were forcefully isolating me, which I wanted it to say because I wanted it to say, I'm not isolating myself.
And that was a key point for me.
I'm not isolating myself.
You put me on that wing, I'm coming out.
And whatever happens, happens.
And if I get killed, I get killed because you're doing that.
And I'm not going to, and I don't know if it's my own, like part of my own, I'd see anything else was being a coward.
But I know I'm going to get killed at the same time.
So I'm not going to ask for separation.
And they've then put me there.
They've then asked them.
And in the form that I had to sign to get moved from the block, it said, which again, this is public.
It said that the only time I'll be allowed out of my cell is when the rest of the prison is locked for lunch.
So between half one and half two, I'll be taken from my cell, escorted down to the block, back to the block.
Back to the block.
Where I have a shower and I walk around the cage again.
Now, these are only little things, yeah?
But not little things.
My wife's at work and my children are at school between half one and half two.
So essentially, I can't speak to much of kids now.
Now, what's frustrating is all around the prison, all you ever hear, see and read about is mental health, A, and keeping prisoners in contact with their family, which is super important if you don't want them to re-offend.
All of these guidelines and things they try to do.
So, there's like posters, posters, and whole massive cis-brochures.
Whole massive cis campaigns, yeah?
Psychologists.
Yeah, whole campaigns.
Did you see any psychologists?
The first day I got in there was the mental health were there with the governor, where I expressed to them.
Did they say a word?
No, I said to them, everything I think you're doing and the reason I think you're doing it.
I kept asking, why have you taken me here?
You're going to now hold me on solitary for six months.
I know what you're doing.
They then told me you won't be here in a week.
Specifically said you will not be here in a week.
Who said that?
The governor.
He said you will not be an onlife for a year.
You won't be an onlife in a week's time.
So then I think, okay, I'm getting moved.
I never got moved.
Did these so-called mental health advisors?
They come and saw me the day before I went home.
And what do they say there?
I told them again, I need to be out of my cell.
And then, so I wrote complaints after complaints after complaints.
One of the complaints I said is that for an hour a day, just let me on the field.
Let me run around the field.
And again, I felt like everything was dangling in the carrot because then they replied to the complaint, which I've got, saying we are going to do that, basically.
They didn't do it.
They never done it.
Now, so not once did I come out of my cell.
Once I got put onto the wing, into the wing location, this was obviously, again, my cell location, which I think is quite important.
Anyone can check this.
I was in cell H Wing, which is induction wing, cell nine.
I can show you an overhead view of the prison because I've done it on Google Maps to show.
And then directly opposite my window was the industrial unit, which I've said was a mosque, used as a mosque.
It is used as a mosque.
On a Friday, it's a mosque.
On a Sunday, it's a church.
Now, every prisoner in that prison who's Muslim will walk past my window to go in there to pray.
This is when you're in the block or when you're in the window.
When I got moved onto the wing.
Now, the thing that they made me sign clearly stated that if there were problems when I'm on the wing, they would reassess my security situation and basically put me back down the block.
Where in the block there's no electricity.
So the reason they're saying we're not giving you a TV, even though there is a TV point, they're saying the electricity is not working down there for TVs.
That's what they told me.
So in my mind, I'm going to be put back down the block.
So when I got put on the wing, I had prisoners, Muslims at my cell door constantly.
Some of them, there was a lad from Brixton, lovely lad, who wasn't, in fact, was saying to the others, just leave him alone.
But the majority of the time it was just frets after frets after frets.
And my window.
Did anyone stop them ever from coming to your door to issue things?
Never.
No, one of them was moved.
So one of them in the cell opposite me was moved.
Now, this was a prisoner who came to my cell and told me that he had a message for me from Saiful Islam.
And who's Saiful Islam?
Safeful Islam.
Saiful Islam means sword of Islam.
That's his name.
He's in jail for ISIS terrorism.
He's the leader of a terrorist group in Britain called Amazruddin.
He was the second in command of that group.
He's from my hometown of Luton.
He's physically had run-ins with me in my hometown of Lutham.
He's like the leader of the radical Muslims in Britain.
And he was passing a message on to me of things that were going to happen to my family.
Can you say any of them here?
Or would it put your family at risk for saying it?
He knew things.
He knew things about my family.
Like location or names or ages.
He knew names.
He knew all the names of my children, of my family.
And I then, so the prison, and he told me he'd come from speaking from Safeful Islam.
Now, when I saw the female member of staff, there was one female member of staff.
I said to her, look, I'm a bit concerned now.
This isn't normal.
This isn't, because I was getting spat through my window, shit come through my window.
The end, what I did on my window was I just shut my windows.
Yeah, after the first couple of days.
Okay, so when you say spat and and human excrement yeah, that's because you were on the outside my, so my cell with my cell, my bed's here um, my bed's here and the windows here, the window, the bed isn't.
You can't move your bed it's, that's the way it is.
And the windows here now, both the windows, they only open this much.
Yeah, but you know the boiling, well, the boiling summer we had in Britain.
I had my windows open and um, and within a few days, it was clear that I couldn't have my windows open because of the shit and spit and just people at my window.
Now, did you have to be on the ground floor across from the market?
I could have been on any floor.
Did you?
Did you bring this to the attention of staff?
Um no, I didn't.
Letter to Wife00:07:45
No no, I did.
The staff were very aware of the threats and the things coming out the window, but I didn't ask for a move because I didn't want to be put down the block.
It said clearly at the bottom of my thing, if there's, if there's, issues with you on the wing, you'll be put.
It said it clearly which again, people can read now, was anyone ever charged for throwing things through your window?
No, of course not.
But then this prisoner who gave me the warning, the prison officer went and checked and he had just come from a maximum security prison um, where this prisoner, where safety Islam, was being held.
So it was a credible message, it was legitimate.
Yeah, and what happened to him?
They moved him.
They moved him eight.
So that's?
Did they move him down the block?
No no, no.
So so you can be a messenger with a death threat to someone's family from a terrorist and your punishment is you move to another cell with a tv in it and then, and when you complain about it, you're down in the block.
Yeah, and and even, and then.
So when I said so, I mean i'm on complete isolation anyway yeah, i'm taking out for 30 minutes a day where i'm walked down.
I wrote my wife a letter in this um in the first week I was in h p only, and it was an.
It wasn't a letter to go public, it was a letter for me to detail, detail a lot of things I needed to say to her.
Because because, to be honest, in that first week I generally in that first week I didn't think i'd make it out of there and in fact I thought I know what their intentions are.
Now I know what's gone on in my previous sentence sentences.
So I I wrote her a letter basically apologizing to my wife and it was me apologizing not for anything i've done, but for the situation that she finds herself in, that we find ourselves in, and then and I also, and that really it was to explain it it was important for me say, if I got killed, in that prison sentence there was a lot of things that I hadn't said, that I needed to say, especially with regards to uh,
just with regards to my wife and and then to my children.
So I wrote three individual letters to my children where I wanted to say to them, Joan, the thing that was killing me most was that if say say, I got killed and they grow up without a dad, then they'd be angry at me for thinking that I didn't care about them.
Yeah, i've done this last time man, I didn't care about them as to why I done, why I do what I do, and so I, I individually, and I broke my heart to write it, And then they didn't send it.
They held back the letter.
Why did they do that?
How do you know that?
Because they give me a form and they give me a form saying the letter's not being sent because they think it's going to end up online.
What difference does that make?
It's your letter.
They think it's going to end up online.
And I know that may seem like a little thing, but it knocks you.
It's like a last will and testament.
Can you tell me what you said to your wife?
Is it too personal?
To my wife, it was apologies.
There's been times over the last years where I haven't been living with my wife, where I've been living at my mum's and things like that, where I've made mistakes even across my marriage.
And yeah, and it was just, and then it was apologies about the, because everything that goes on with me, I may be serving a prison sentence.
She's serving a sentence on the out.
And then, and then also, the letter I wrote was prior to the police going to see my wife, but it was then just things to tell my children about their characters.
Did you tell these things to your wife after you got out?
Did you say them to her?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, so, so it's not, and even with my kids, it would be that it would be trying to tell your wife, or you're trying to tell your wife, which I've tried to tell that many times, that this isn't about my kids, yeah?
This isn't about our kids.
This battle is about every single child and the next generation of children across this country, even the people who hate me, even the people who despise me, even the politicians, it's about their kids and their kids, and it's about everyone's kids.
So, this goes beyond the need of my children.
The need of my children, yeah, I should shut my mouth and just be a dad.
But it's far bigger than that.
And essentially, it's like if we remain silent, if we ignore and we don't stand up to the blatant wrongs that we can see, to the blatant dangers we see our country in and our families in and our communities in, if we don't, then essentially, if there's going to be a battle and someone's going to have to put themselves up, then let it be me, not my son.
So, I could, and trying to explain that to your wife, who's not politically minded or doesn't really, all she cares about is being a mother to the kids and our kids.
She doesn't think deeply about, she doesn't view the country, she doesn't, or do you know what I mean?
It's like, so it was to put a, it was a 10-page of me not just breaking my heart.
And I actually said in the letter, this isn't a suicide note, I know it reads like it, because I generally, at that time, I'm thinking, why if they move me to this prison, they're going to let them have a shot.
Yeah, I found out that the Imam, the prisoner who works down the block, when I spoke to him, he said, when I was going out in the excise yard, he said, I knew three days before you got here you was coming here.
I said, how do you know that?
He said, the Imam was telling everyone.
So then I'm thinking, so the Muslims in the prison have had an opportunity to prepare themselves.
When I previously got violently beaten in prison, I was locked in a room.
I knew that those Muslim lads didn't know I was going to be locked in that room, yeah, because I could tell by their faces.
Now, if you give someone an opportunity, then they're getting nice, then they're getting blades.
They're going to be ready for me when they get that one opportunity to touch, to have a swipe at me.
They're going to get it.
So I'm weighing all that up and I'm thinking of why I've been moved from one prison to another.
So I'm generally, I don't think I'm coming out of there.
And there's a lot that I wanted to say or I want to say, not just to my wife, but to my children.
And then when they stop the letter, it would end up online.
What's that guy?
What law does it?
Because my previous.
And then my lawyers have contacted the prison, saying, give us a copy of the letter, which they didn't again.
And then, and then, so then, yeah.
So when you were in HMP Hull, when you were in the hospital wing in the safer prison, you did write a letter.
Oh, did you?
And I know it got through because I saw it posted online.
I wrote pretty, yeah, so I wrote, I wrote a letter, I didn't say, so I wrote letters to my wife from HMP Hole as well.
I wrote her a brief letter, but it wasn't a letter because I thought, I looked around and thought, I'm all right here, yeah.
So when I was in Only in that first week, I thought, I'm not all right here.
So they didn't stop your letter at Hull?
No.
The one that was online was incredibly touching.
I want to remind you of something you said.
I mean, you had a lot of sense of humor in that letter.
You talked about how Donald Trump Jr. mentioned your case and you joked that was worth the whole thing.
But he also wrote about your son.
And I've had the pleasure of meeting him.
He's just like you, Tommy.
And how he couldn't understand what was going on and how he wanted to go to do something bad so he could be put in prison to be with his dad.
And I heard from your wife that he slept with an old shirt of yours that hadn't been laundered just so he could smell his dad until the scent was gone after weeks.
What did you say to your kids in the letters?
So the letters were just to talk about them.
Just to talk about, to also, I wouldn't want them to try, as children, so they under, yeah.
Kept Shielded, Attacked00:08:32
I can't just for them to understand that everything I do, I do it.
Do they understand what you're doing?
Do they know about these subjects?
Have you kept them shielded from these?
I've kept them shielded from knowing the severity of the risks, of the threats.
For example, when I was in Onley, my door opens, and again, this is, my door opens at about nine o'clock at night.
Where's your wife?
How am I meant to know where my wife...
The only time I can ask you that.
Three members of prison staff.
Now, bearing in mind, the only time I'm allowed out of my cell, they've specifically made it so it's not when I can ring my wife and children.
So where's my wife?
And I said, I don't know.
They said the police are trying to find your wife.
I said, okay.
And I said, why?
And they said, there's intel that she's going to be attacked with acid.
Now, and then they shut my door, basically.
That's basically it.
And then they said, do you know what she is?
And then they shut my door.
So then to say I didn't sleep a wink, man.
And I'm waiting and waiting.
That's not a genuine question.
That's a taunt.
Yeah, the sickening thing is, is like, so basically my wife gets, the police knock on my wife's door and they give her a little leaflet of what to do when you're attacked with acid.
Oh my God.
You've got to see the leaflet.
It's so pathetic.
Which police force was that?
Edwardshire Police.
And then two days later, three days later, they go to my mum's and they do exactly the same.
What to do when you're attacked with acid?
Did you call the police on the list at all?
Oh, no, one of the things is that you cannot get weapons.
You cannot have a weapon to defend yourself.
So basically, you cannot break the law.
One of the thing guidelines is do not break the law.
So then basically I'm sat in prison thinking, my wife's going to get attacked.
All right.
Or my mum's going to get attacked.
Because I went to my mum's two days later.
And then I have the mental pull of, is this even real?
Because, or is this to mess with me?
Is this to psychologically destroy me whilst holding me on solitary confinement, whilst putting me in these positions?
And then the fuck, so the first thing, the opportunity I then get to use the phone when I do get hold of my family, you can imagine my wife's situation of how she's feeling.
You can imagine the stress and worry about all of that.
And it's just like, and then the whole time I'm reminding myself that, I mean, I'm in here for standing outside a courtroom and telling people the names of men who, again, I can't comment yet legally on what happened at their trial, but of men who are alleged to have raped up to 100 young children.
And I'm a civil prisoner and I shouldn't be in it.
I shouldn't be held in these conditions.
I can't eat.
I then put in forms.
I put in a complaint saying, look, if you make me enhanced, I get an extra £12 a week.
Then I can buy more food.
They replied.
I've got the copy of their response.
They replied saying, we have to see your good behavior.
Oh, my God.
To make you, to make you enhanced.
But because you're not out of your cell, we can't see you behaving well.
And it's like, are you for real?
You know, I know there's a phenomenon here in the UK called cage prisoners.
It's all these former al-Qaeda prisoners from Guantanamo.
Oh, they have people queuing up to defend them.
This is the other thing that was so disheartening.
For me, I know what's gone on.
I know it's a kangaroo court.
I know I've been illegally imprisoned.
I know everything that has gone wrong.
I now know that my rights are being trampled over.
My human rights, we talk about contempt of court.
I mean, I'm a court.
I'm supposedly in prison for contempt to court.
We're sitting outside Westminster.
It's them who are guilty of contempt.
They're guilty of contempt for civil rights, guilty of contempt for justice, guilty of contempt for free speech, guilty of contempt for democracy and the most recent things.
And I'm sitting in prison knowing all of this is happening, knowing all of that every single day, the threats, the threats, the threats, the constant, which isn't a situation that it had to be.
All they had to do, which my solicitors wrote to them, as soon as they moved me to Onley, my solicitors wrote and said, move him back to Hull.
He was fine.
Do you know what they said?
Which I've got again in writing, is that for them to move me to a prison that matches my racial prejudice, my racial prejudice would be immoral and illegal.
So to put me in a prison which has the most, and bearing in mind, when I put my complaint in, one of my complaints said that 7% of the whole was Muslim, 30% of Only is, I feel like you've purposely endangered me.
Their response was, if you speak negatively about our Muslim population again, you'll be on the IEP system, which is again arrest.
Now, they're the ones, H ⁇ P Only and their staff and their governor are the ones that said I wasn't safe, not me.
They're the ones that put me down the block and held me on solitary confinement because they said that I'd be violently attacked, not me.
It's not what I've done.
I didn't isolate myself.
They then held me for months.
Probation come to see me.
So a week before my appeal, a week before I had my appeal, I had a probation officer who had been to see my wife and assess my home for my release from prison.
And then they come to see me where they informed me that one of my conditions, because my HDC, which is where you're released on TAG, my tag date was coming up in September.
TAG is what you call it.
Tag is where you have an electronic tag around your ankle and you go home.
And so basically, if you get a 30-month prison sentence, after three and a half months, I'd be let home.
Where for another three months, I'd spend where I have to be in my house between seven and seven.
So seven o'clock at night and seven o'clock in the morning, you have to be at home.
So probation, this is the probation service.
So they come to see me because they were assessing my property.
They went to meet with my wife and my family about me being released on TAG.
They then told me that my condition, this is where it becomes very apparent what all of this is about.
My condition upon release will be I will be banned from the internet.
Banned from using the internet till June 2019.
What does that have to do with you tell me?
You know my previous prison sentence when I was leading the English Defence League, my condition, which was for legally entering America, my condition then was not to contact the EDL.
So anyone who wants to sit and say that this case, this current case, is not politically motivated, that means that they'd have to accept, they'd have to accept for it not to be politically motivated, they'd have to accept that the judge, by accident, incorrectly, a judge of 30 years or whatever, a top judge, would not realize that he has to ask me if I'm guilty or not guilty, would not have to tell me what I've done wrong, would not have to let me speak to my solicitor.
So then they'd have to buy into that.
They then have to buy into the fact that the prison accidentally holds me as a criminal prisoner, not a civil prisoner.
They'd then have to buy into the fact that just by accident I was moved from the safety of whole into HMP only and put under all of these conditions.
They'd then have to see that it's normal for someone to be banned from the internet.
That would put you out of business and it would shut you up on a hundred other matters.
You're unrelated to this court case.
Which is what all of this is about.
Who would have drafted that tag condition?
Who would have the probation service?
I don't know.
Run by the government.
Just the internet completely.
Yeah, I'll be banned from the internet.
Till June 2012.
That's what this is about.
This isn't about you standing outside of a court case.
This is about you having any opinions on any matter whatsoever.
It's about them silencing and stopping, which is something they've had a tactic to do and tried to do for multiple years.
Now, if I sit here now, and to be honest, Ezra, I come out of jail, clearly I'd lost a lot of weight.
I've put nearly a stone back on.
Well, I asked you, you told me when you went in, you weighed up, I'm going to just say it in pounds, 190 pounds, and you came out just over 150 pounds.
What's that in stone?
How do you say it here?
Three stone.
That's not healthy to lose that much weight through starvation.
Of course not.
Blood Test Shock00:05:15
And it's not healthy.
And I also know the worry in my head the whole time while I'm in there is I know what I went through 2012 when I come out of prison, which I never spoke publicly about because again, it's quite embarrassing.
Even now, I'll never compare it to anything anyone's been through at war.
It's nothing like it, yeah.
It's nothing like it.
But it is purposely done.
Everything that's happened with his sentence, the isolation, the purposely putting me in a position where they can say, because of his safety, we need to put him in solitary.
Because of that, the threats to my wife, the police visits, all of these things that I'll say are purposely done.
I knew that I'm a lot better now, even now.
When I come out of prison, I went straight on holiday for two weeks.
Which meant I didn't have to communicate, really talk.
I just lay by the pool and I spoke to people, a couple of people that were other families on the holiday.
When I come back from Honolulu, I took my kids out.
And this is the, John, the most different, the most thing that angers me, frustrates me is that if you put something in front of me, I'll fight you.
Put something there and I'll fight you.
And that's what I've done for 10 years.
Whenever they've knocked me down, I've got back up and carried on fighting.
And then what they've managed to do, I'll come out of jail.
I've gone away with my family.
I know I'm not right.
I know at the time I'm not right.
When I saw you the night you got out of prison, you looked shaken.
I was shaken.
My speech.
You weren't yourself.
You weren't yourself.
And even now, now I know I'm not myself.
I went to come out of, and I tried to go to watch, I went to watch Lou and play football.
And I took my kids.
Because I knew even when I was in prison, I know I have to get out of myself.
When my visit, that family come to visit me by the end in HMP only, I didn't want to see him.
Now that's messed up, yeah?
And I would have butterflies for five hours before going to see my own family.
And in the end, you don't want to come out of your cell.
So when I was at first, I'm complaining and arguing, get me in the gym, get me this, get me this.
By the end of it, you're just laying on a bed.
Festival.
and so I know all these things every single day every opportunity I've done my 30 minute there was four times in one week where they didn't even get me out for the 30 minutes every day Every Tuesday I wasn't allowed out at all for 24 hours because there was a judge doing adjudications and they were too busy down the block.
So I know I need to get out.
So when I come home from Odelay, I thought I need to get back into the system.
I want to get back out there.
I went to a Luton Town football match.
I left at half time.
It wasn't just because we were losing.
It's because, and I was supposed to have my friends come around to watch the boxing, which I cancelled.
And it's because I wasn't right.
I know I'm not right.
And do you know how upsetting it can be when I think that they've got away with doing it?
Losing that kind of weight, not on purpose, but because you're being starved.
That's a medical, that's a medical extreme condition.
Did any doctors prescribe you supplements, vitamins?
Did they take tests?
Did you examine it?
I had a blood test.
I told every member of that staff how concerned I was about my weight loss.
And they must have seen.
I was shocked when I saw you when you got out.
I couldn't believe it.
All they had to do, all they had to do was make me enhance.
So I'd had another £10.
Another £10 would have been another six or seven tins of tuna a week.
And what do they care?
It's your own money.
But did a doctor ever see you?
So a doctor took my blood test.
So what I sensed is that when I went to court, so basically, bearing in mind it took them a couple of hours to send me to prison.
I've then gone before, it took me two months before I can get back into a court, see a judge.
Now, when I went before the court, the high court, the judge heard everything, yeah.
So he knew how wrong it all was.
They still kept me in prison for another two weeks in solitary confinement.
He could have released me, he should have released me on bail there and then.
So when did the doctor take your blood?
So when I come back after that court case, because I think in court it had been made public about my health, about my worry, about my concerns, about my solicitors' concerns, then they, and then, So a day before my verdict, a day before my verdict, the mental health team come to see me and they took me for a meeting where I sat before the mental health team where I said to them, like, I can't do another four months this, yeah?
So it was only when your story was told in public court did a doctor, they would have seen you wasting away, but it was only when the public court...
He come and took blood samples.
Did he ask you any questions or did he just take blood?
Did he ask you?
No, they asked me questions.
Every time I spoke to him, I told them, you need to get me out of this cell.
Did he give you any diagnosis?
Did he give you any prescriptions?
Did he say, give this man more food?
No.
Did you ever see that doctor again?
No.
Are you sure it was a real doctor?
No, so I don't know.
I don't even know if it's a nurse or a nurse or someone on their rounds or someone who works in the prison in the healthcare.
Have you ever got the results of that blood test?
No, my solicitors have been trying to get it now.
Did you go to a doctor once you got out of prison?
Yeah, I did.
That'll be interesting to see.
But you've put £10 back on?
Difficult Position Revealed00:13:41
I put £10 back on.
I've been to see a doctor, a Muslim doctor.
A lovely fella.
So I've been to see him.
He's diagnosed me.
Again, it's an embarrassing thing because I'm not going to sit here and say, Joe, it's actually, it's embarrassing, it's humiliating.
It was done to you.
It winds me up because they've been allowed to do it.
And it didn't have to be this way.
No one can justify it.
No one can answer the question.
Do you know the media?
All of this can happen.
All of this can happen with the full support of the pol every single politician in that building and every single media outlet, not one, not one media.
When your letters begging for food, begging for some social interaction, asking for just a simple TV, when those letters were obtained by the Daily Mail, instead of writing about your abuse, they mocked your handwriting style.
They said that it was a handwriting of someone who was insecure.
Well, you were insecure.
You were surrounded by people who are threatening me every minute of every day.
My wife was under threat.
My mother was under threat.
I'm held, I knew, I knew in conditions I was, look, it's 2080.
You would not hold, you would not be allowed to put a dog in the position they put me, treat it the way they treated me without the RSPCA coming and doing soundbacks.
You shout at a dog, you barb a dog, you give a dog no exercise, you put a dog in a box in that heat.
You're exactly right.
And it's and it's um everyone who's seeing these human rights lawyers, everyone, everyone fell over each other and pushed each other out of the way to give hit piece after hit piece to BBC Channel 4 Sky News.
They all done big hit pieces on why I deserve to be in prison.
I remember they had a human rights lawyer on explaining why you ought to be in prison.
Here's the thing.
Even after the Court of Appeal quashed the original sentence and just devastated it in five ways.
They didn't just sit on the you see.
Now I was worried.
When I was in prison, I didn't believe my solicitors telling me they've got to let you out.
And I'm saying, they're not going to let me out.
I know they're not going to let me out.
I'm sitting here now.
I'm still having to seek medical treatment.
I'm still...
I face another Cork trial now on the 27th of this month.
For the exact same matter in Leeds.
The exact same matter.
The court of appeal didn't have to order that.
The court appeal didn't have to order it.
And in fact, when they did order it, I never thought they'd go through with it because I thought this was just to save a bit of face.
Because obviously it's been proven of what they've done.
The whole world's watching.
Now the headlines aren't Tommy Robinson freed and quash conviction quash.
The headlines are Tommy Robinson to be retried.
I thought, I get it.
They're saving a bit of face.
This is the government who are ordering a retrial.
Now, what they're saying by retrying me is that they don't think the two months, two and a half month prison sentence I've served, the two months on solitary confinement, the treatment, they don't think that that warrants enough of a punishment for standing and talking, not inciting.
And to anyone who says I was jeopardizing the trial, the trial had already finished.
Yeah, the trial had already finished.
These laws that are being used on the Muslim grooming gangs, I think that we should have journalists challenging these in courts of law.
But the journalists are not challenging them.
They're not standing up for free speech or journalists' rights.
They're actually happy to see they were all ecstatic to see me imprisoned.
I saw some of your supporters writing to Amnesty International and other groups like that when you were in prison and I was copied on the replies.
They would say, oh, it was nothing to do with free speech or human rights.
It was a violation of a court order.
But now that the Court of Appeal has proved that false, you would expect Amnesty, Reporters Without Borders, all these civil liberties groups to speak out now that you've been vindicated by the Court of Appeal.
Dead silence, not just from them.
Where are the liberal journalists who would say, well, I disagree with Tommy Robinson's style, but this is the UK and we don't send people to prison for 10 weeks for we've never sent a journalist to prison.
Where is 70 years of contempt callers?
Where are those people who used to stand up for civil liberty?
Again, as I speak about Islam, and that is so terrifying for anyone to be seen to sort of side with or take up my case that they all run a mile.
You've seen yourself.
How impossible was it to find a lawyer to represent me?
We went through seven law firms before we found someone who would represent you in Canterbury.
And it's because they're scared.
Seven law firms.
We're almost out of time, Tommy.
Why don't you tell me about both of those?
Because I saw that picture of you coming out of prison with six big duffel bags.
I thought, what's in the duffel bags?
You told me those were letters and cards from every single place.
Why don't you tell me about those?
Because you're in prison in a box.
So my concern through all of this, through everything we've done, I've done, is that I will, no, in fact, inevitably I will be killed.
I know I will, yeah.
That's something that in the early years was hard to come to terms with.
I've completely, I'm at ease with that now.
My worry was that it would have been for nothing.
My worry was that bearing in mind the government campaign and the media campaign and all this hate campaign and all the campaign against us to slander me, I'd be killed and forgotten about and it won't bring about change.
Now, and I really thought that deeply after Lee Rigby was beheaded, just not far from here.
When we have a soldier beheaded on our streets, and in fact, nothing doesn't just change, the situation gets a lot worse.
Since Lee Rigby was beheaded, 2,000 Muslims were allowed to go fight for ISIS and 600 of them come home.
Nothing's changed.
We're more in danger than we've ever been.
Nothing's changed.
So when I can see a British armed serviceman beheaded on the streets and the problem Excel, and not just Excel, but the politicians bend over each other for who can defend Islam the most after it.
Then the exact sanctions and reason why the man done it, why the man committed the terrorists, Lee Rigby's killer handed a woman a piece of paper with 55 verses from the Quran that he says forced him to do it.
So when you still, when we're years on, we're still struggling to debate or talk about these issues and there's no mainstream people talking about it.
I thought I'll get killed and it won't have had an effect or it won't have made a difference.
And then I watched the response to my arrest and the how can I, without getting emotional again, is to say that going forward, I now know that it would not, it would, I think, cause a revolution.
So again, like if I have this minute, first of all, I'd like to talk to my supporters, but to the to the government, to the people in positions of power pulling strings, like I'm sitting in a winning position now because in this battle.
Because even if I'm killed, which I think you'll let happen or you'd want to happen, there's going to be a revolution in this country anyway.
And for me, I want debate, change.
I want all these issues brought to the forefront.
The whole world has watched and talked about the Muslim paedophile grooming rape of our youth since my arrest.
I'm sitting here and I sat in prison.
Yeah, I didn't like it, but I smiled many times.
And I smiled a lot.
And I smiled because everything I do, and to be honest, I say I'll sacrifice my life tomorrow to bring the change that's needed.
If I'm willing to do that, then all I want is the positive outcome.
All I want is a safe and prosperous future for the next generation of our children.
I don't think that we should be having to bow our heads and cow every time you hear a bang in London.
I don't think four terrorist attacks last year that were successful, 12 stopped.
All of these things, the next generation of children being taught that they should be ashamed of who they are, their identity, their culture, their history.
Our own identity, our own culture is under attack.
And I want our next generations to feel pride in who they are, pride in where they come from, and actually to understand who they are and where they come from.
And to understand the sacrifices that have been given to them for free speech, free speech, which is being curtailed across this country, all of those things.
And I sit here now in quite a comfortable position.
I don't think I'm in a difficult position.
I think they are.
I think that because if I'm killed, I'm going to succeed.
If I'm not killed, I'm still going to succeed.
Because I may have had a struggle period now, but everything you try to do is not going to work.
You will have to kill me.
And even by killing me, or even by allowing me to be killed, it's still going to have the negative effect that you wish for.
And if you can't see now that the populist revolution that is swinging, I spoke about it, Ezra, for 10 years.
I said nine years ago on stages, the swing from left to right that you can't stop.
There's no Islamic organization with funds in the world that can stop it.
There's no police force that can stop it.
There's no government that can stop it.
None of you can stop it.
It's underway.
It's happening.
The elections in Austria, the elections in Italy, the elections across the whole of Europe.
It's coming.
And I know I'm on the right side of history.
So essentially, I sit there and those people's support and sitting and seeing the public support gave me that feeling that I've doubted.
And that feeling that I need to, every time I kiss my kids and walk out of the door, to know that it will carry on and it will continue no matter what happens.
And I know that.
And again, my faith.
And I also know, because in previous prison sentences or previous things that have happened, but this, the world's watched this, and the world is quite shocked with what's gone on.
It's actually not the worst that's gone on.
There's far worse that's gone on.
And I know, yeah, and I sit in a position where I'm comfortable and I know that at the minute I may be having to concentrate on the 27th of September where I'm sure, I'm sure I'm going to be offered a deal.
In this deal, I'm going to be told if I plead guilty, I will get time served.
That means you won't have to go back to protection.
I won't have to go back to prison.
And then the only difficult position in any of this is just because of my family.
Because my son cried every day for two months.
I thought it would take a couple of weeks and it'd ease up a bit.
He didn't.
He absolutely rocked him.
And I then have to make a decision that will put my son at upset my family, but not, but I don't want to do a deal.
I done a deal when I left the English Defence League for the same reasons because they had me over a barrel ready to go back to prison in solitary confinement.
I don't want to be in that position again.
I don't want to make a mistake again.
So I don't, yeah.
I know now, I sit here comfortably now, and I know that no matter what happens on the 27th of September, where I truthfully believe I'll be back in prison, because unless I curtail it, unless I come to an agreement with them that saves their faith, I think I'll get slammed.
And under whatever technicality they use to say that, the facts are the court case had finished.
The facts are I didn't say anything that could have jeopardized that trial.
The facts are journalists across our country breach reporting restrictions day in, day out.
Every week there's a reporting restriction breached.
The facts are no one goes to jail for it.
The facts are that the British public and the world have viewed this.
They've seen what's gone on.
I sit here very comfortable knowing that my family will forever be looked after.
I've got no worry about that anymore.
That was my main worry.
I'm full guns blazing.
And I'm blazing in a way that I think I'm going into positions and places where even when I worked for you, Ezra, I knew you had my best interests at heart.
I knew you did.
You didn't want where if I said I'm going to do this, Ezra, you'd be saying, no, you're going to get seriously hurt.
You're going to end up in prison.
I think that to be able to bring about the change that's needed, you can't think about that or worry about those things.
You can't, because you'll never get the change done that's needed.
So I now know that even coming out of this, coming out of court on the 27th of September, I will go full steam ahead and I don't need to worry anymore.
Or I don't have the doubt anymore that A, my family won't be looked after and B, that people won't care.
Because what really come, what really was a really, it was a bit of, was reading the letters.
I read from 2 o'clock, 2 p.m. till 7 p.m. every day.
That was my, I tried to get self in the regime.
And I read, and the letters and knowing how much it means and the feeling, the passion that has look, I become a symbol.
It's not all, it wasn't all about because of me or because of whatever.
It became a symbol for people who feel oppressed, who feel silenced, who feel marginalised, who feel that they're being led down a path and our country's being led down a path and they're concerned.
Bailey's Symbol of Resistance00:03:27
And I read so many letters of concern from grandmothers, from mothers, from old people, young people, gay people, straight people, Muslim people.
I had letters from everyone, everywhere.
And what became apparent is the size of the feeling.
And I think that was viewed by the tens of thousands of people marching on Westminster after seven days.
I think that they should really, it should be a wake-up call for them, not for me.
I keep getting told I'm in a difficult position, even by my lawyers.
I don't think I am.
I know what I know.
I know what I want to do and I'm going to do.
And I want to play a part, whatever part I can, in bringing awareness and attention to issues that are, quite frankly, not just being ignored, but being covered up.
Well, we'll be there on September 27th at the Old Bailey as they put you to trial again.
The Old Bailey?
The Old Bailey is a court for the biggest terrorist or murder trials, the most senior court of our country.
I'm there for talking into an iPhone outside a courtroom.
And we know it didn't prejudice the trial because the trial ended.
So we know the verdict's been given.
The judge actually said that.
I'm in there.
And whilst, just again, I'll just finish on these reporting restrictions.
I sense these laws being used.
And I'll go off point again now.
At one point, I was arrested and I was given an attempt at giving under football law legislation.
And what they said is they wanted to ban me from football stadiums.
Now, included in this ban was a map that would ban me from the entire Muslim community of Luton and the Luton town centre.
So on Saturdays, I would not be allowed into Luton, my hometown.
The train station town centre or the entire, they drew a map around the entire Muslim community.
Now, what they've done in this case was they used football legislation to try and invoke this law, which would limit my freedoms.
Now, it was thrown out of court by a judge.
It cost me thousands of pounds to defend.
The judge's comments were: the case against me was dishonest, vague, and cagey.
It wasn't the police, because Beds Police actually stood up for me in the case when they were put in court.
It was the football policing unit, which is the Home Office.
It was the government.
Now, these reporting restrictions, I believe, I still believe, are just another law and another way of silencing and stopping people from being knowing the full details day in, day out of what's happening in these cities.
And essentially, the minute this case is done on the 27th of September, I'm going to work with others to bring videos and documentaries to every town and city, from every town and city.
with the details and all of the people who are in power.
This is why they don't like me, I believe, because the people in power, as in the people who took payoffs, didn't lose their pensions, knew these young girls were being raped, stood by and allowed it, police officers, senior police officers, politicians, care workers, I'm going to find them.
And the whole British public is going to be made aware who they are and what they ignored and the horrific crimes that have been happening to generation of our children.
The Last Lion's Fight00:02:36
Well, Tommy, we'll be there to cover you.
You're a former employee of ours, but we still support you in your mission.
I've called you the last lion of the UK.
And lions are untameable.
And lions are a symbol of the United Kingdom.
I see them everywhere, Trafalgar Square, Buckingham Palace.
And we support you.
We'll be there on the 27th.
We want you to stay safe, but we also want you to fight.
I'm grateful, as well.
I'm grateful to you, Ezra, for stepping in as well.
On behalf of our thousands of supporters of you.
And to every single person, any person.
I haven't made another video since I come home.
This is the first one.
So I want people to understand just how much the support meant and the feeling of knowing that I have that support.
I'm actually the week after next.
If you're one of the people that wrote to me, I'm going to be doorstopping.
I kept my letters.
I went through my letters and I put that to that side, that to that side.
Story, news, story, follow-up.
So I need to go through them all, but I want to, I can't knock at every single person's house.
That'll be exciting if people get home, visit from Tommy.
I want to knock to bring flowers and chocolates to some of the people and the women.
And I want people to make sure they know how much their support meant.
Tommy, thanks for spending time with us.
Thanks, Ezra.
Cheers.
That was my feature interview with Tommy Robinson, The Last Lion of the United Kingdom.
What he told us was heartbreaking, enraging, inspiring, desperate, but a little bit hopeful too.
That was the edited version of our conversation.
We actually spoke for more than two hours.
If you want to see the extended cut, you could find it on our website, therebel.media.
Tommy has to go back to court.
The Attorney General is insisting on a retrial for contempt of court for that same incident back in Leeds in May.
They actually want to convict him again, maybe to even throw him back in prison.
Just yesterday, I received a new invoice from Tommy's law firm, Carson Kay.
They're a good firm who won at the Court of Appeal, but now they have to prepare for his second trial.
It will cost tens of thousands of pounds.
And I'm sorry to ask you again, but if you are at all moved by Tommy's case, please help us by going to savetommy.com.
Any surplus after the lawyers are paid will go to Tommy's family to help take care of them.